Hebrews 11 – Broken Heroes

Sermon manuscript from Sunday, April 21, 2013. Preached at Pioneer Baptist, Neosho.

Introduction

This morning we are going to look at Hebrews Chapter 11. This is a familiar passage of scripture to many of us where the writer of Hebrews gives us a sketch outline of the history of Israel played out through the lives of individuals. We often call it the “Heroes of Faith”.

This chapter, like all scripture, can be read in one of two ways. We can view it through our own eyes – concentrating on the human perspective – or through the eyes of God concentrating on His perspective. I think this passage is most often read and preached from the human perspective, which is what leads us to think of the people featured here as ‘heroes’ of faith. We can easily think that it was the extraordinary faith of these individuals that led them to great exploits on behalf of the Lord. But in doing so we betray the fact that we subtly, if not out rightly, think of faith as something that we manufacture. We forget the great truth of Ephesians 2:8-9:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

You see, faith is the gift of God. It is God himself who grants us faith when he issues us promise. In our case, that promise is the glorious truth of the gospel, which we believe because we can rest assured that the one who made that promise is faithful and reliable. But if we study, we can see that each of those mentioned in Hebrews Chapter 11 was also made a promise which birthed faith in them. This chapter is not meant to highlight extraordinary people, but an extraordinary God who works through broken heroes.

What is faith and where does it come from?

The writer begins the chapter by providing a definition of faith:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Faith is much more than just hope or belief. Faith is an assurance of God’s promises that is based on knowledge of the character of God. Faith does not look to the circumstances of one’s life for assurance. To live by faith is to know that our assurance, security and stability are in Christ alone regardless of our circumstances. Faith does not even rely on the heart, but on the promise of God. Faith believes that Christ is sufficient even when the heart condemns, as John points out in 1 John 3:19-20:

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.

Only faith in Jesus Christ can give us the assurance that our sins are forgiven and we have fellowship with God even when our own hearts condemn us. This kind of faith causes us to abide in Christ, and abiding in Him we will bare much fruit, even as our ‘heroes’ did.

As we read Hebrews 11, we will notice over and over again that the writer the little phrase ‘by faith’. It is of extreme importance that we understand what is meant by that phrase, and we touched on this in the introduction. Faith is the gift of God. Faith is not a natural quality in mankind; it is something which is created by God through the issuance of a promise.

In John chapter 6:63-65, Jesus told his disciples:

“The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

There is no stumbling into faith. There is no struggling into faith. Faith cannot be achieved by any work or effort of our own. Faith is granted to us through the promise that God speaks to us. Our faith, like the heavens and earth themselves, is spoken into existence by God. This is why Paul tells us in Romans 10:17 that:

…faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Faith is an absolute assurance that God keeps His promises and draws its strength from its object – which is God – not from itself. The people mentioned in Hebrews 11 did not have unusually strong faith, but their faith was rooted in the character of God and not the circumstances surrounding them. Sinclair Ferguson said:

True faith takes its character and quality from its object and not from itself. Faith gets a man out of himself and into Christ. Its strength therefore depends on the character of Christ. Even those of us who have weak faith have the same strong Christ as others!

I think we need to approach Hebrews chapter 11 (and the rest of scripture for that matter) from this Christ-ward perspective if we are going to understand it. If we look at these ‘heroes’ from a strictly human perspective, we are apt to become discouraged thinking that our faith pales in comparison to theirs. But when we look at them with the understanding that faith is the gift of God and draws its strength from the character of God and not our own, we can begin to see our heroes as broken and faltering people like ourselves that God used to accomplish his great purposes. It might be helpful to read through Hebrews 11 replacing the phrase ‘by faith’ with ‘by God’s gift of faith’.

Like us, each of the people outlined in Hebrews 11 received a promise from God. Their faith, far from being a natural ability or something they could muster, was created by God through that promise:

1. (V.7) Noah built the ark having been ‘warned’ by God of the coming flood.
2. (V8-12) Abraham was promised an inheritance in the Promised Land and as many descendants as the stars in the sky.
3. (V11) Sarah was told that she would have a baby boy.
4. (V29) The people of Israel were told to cross the Red Sea on dry land.
5. (V30) Joshua was instructed to bring down the walls of Jericho with marching and a trumpet blast.

We might ask what special qualities these ‘heroes’ had that caused God to select them?

Faith, being a gift, cannot be earned. Paul uses Abraham to illustrate this point in the opening Romans chapter 4:

For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness…

Basically God made Abraham a promise which Abraham believed, and God credit that belief – that faith – to Abraham as righteousness. God did not choose Abraham to be the father of a great nation because of some particular quality in Abraham.

Even a quick study of the people mentioned in Hebrews 11 reveals that they were far from perfect. There appears to be nothing particularly special about any of them, and in many cases they were not naturally gifted to suit their calling. None of them earned their righteousness before God, but like us they received the gift of faith that God offered them through His promises – faith that was credited to them as righteousness:

1. We are told in Genesis 6:9 that Noah “was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.” But in verse 12 we are told that “God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.” Was Noah not part of the all in all flesh? So was Noah selected by God because he was a blameless man, or was Noah given faith in God through the promise of God which was then credited to him as righteousness?
2. Abraham lied twice about his marriage to Sarah. He took his wife’s servant as a wife to bare him children despite the promise of God that he would have numerous descendants.
3. Sarah, when told by God that she would have a son in her post-menopausal years, laughed.
4. Moses – called to lead the people of Israel – was self-admittedly slow of speech and had some serious anger management issues.
5. (V31) Rahab – called of God to hide the Israelite spies in Jericho – was a prostitute.
6. (V32) David – called a man after God’s own heart – was a murderer and adulterer.

God’s favor and calling are never earned. God does not choose to give faith to any of us on the basis of merit. In fact, there is nothing we can do as sinful people to impress God at all. God seldom selects people on the basis of their natural gifting. Perhaps the greatest evangelist of all time – the Apostle Paul – said of himself in 2 Corinthians 11:6 that he was “unskilled in speaking.” In fact God often chooses to use us in the very place where we are weak so that His glory will show through more clearly. As he told Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Paul, another of our ‘heroes’ of the faith, described his missionary exploits among the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 in this way:

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Here is a man bring used greatly of God to expand the early church who says that he was among those he preached to in weakness and fear and much trembling. Hardly an obvious choice for someone who will spend nearly his entire life in public ministry. And yet he was tremendously successful as a missionary. If Paul had been reliant upon his natural gifts and abilities, he would have run away from all that God had in store for him. But he walked by faith and not by sight.

How much did our ‘heroes’ rely on their experience of God’s faithfulness?

I think that part of the reason that we become confused about faith is that we often place faith in what we anticipate God will do rather than in the character of God himself. We base our faith on our past experiences with God. We expect God to come through for us in certain ways, and when that doesn’t happen we often become disillusioned.

One of the interesting things about Hebrews 11 is that so many of the people God chose had to live by faith in His promise alone for long periods of time. They had no experience on which to base their faith.

1. It took Noah nearly 100 years to build the ark. This was getting up morning by morning and sawing, planing and joining thousands of board feet of lumber. He did all of this never having seen a single raindrop, let alone a flood. He did not even have experience of the promised events, let alone God saving him through those events.
2. Abraham and Sarah were ‘as good as dead’ when they were promised a son within a years’ time. Abraham lived 25 years between the promise of God that he would become a great nation and the birth of his heir.
3. The scripture says that ‘the way of women’ had passed for Sarah. No wonder she laughed at the promise! Her experience not only told her that what God was promising was unusual, but impossible!
4. The writer says that ‘by faith’ Moses observed the Passover in Egypt. There was no previous experience on which to base his observance of this extremely odd practice. By any standard, this was an outrageous request. But Moses accepted the promise of God and ‘by faith’ the Israelites were spared.

All of that is to say that these people trusted the word of God. They did not look to experience to tell them that God was trustworthy. They trusted His character alone. Not that they never doubted, but their faith was not in the outcome looking forward, but in God’s character. They walked by faith and not by sight.

Until we can look to God’s promises alone – backed by the character of the one who makes the promises – we will ever look to our circumstances and past experience to guide us. If any of these people in Hebrews 11 had ultimately allowed themselves to trust their circumstances, culture or past performance rather than trusting the promise which God had made them, they very well may have never accomplished what God had called them to.

This kind of faith gave them an outlook on life which the writer describes in verse 13 as acknowledging that “they were strangers and exiles in the earth.” They held a unique God-ward view of the world which did not count their circumstances as being greater than the character of God. They did not play by the rules that the world set forth. By faith, they played by God’s rules alone. Nothing truly shook their faith because it was anchored in that rock-solid, unmovable character.

What qualifies us to become ‘heroes’ of faith and do great things for God?

So we see that our ‘heroes’ were not so different from ourselves. They were sinful people too. But they were held by this faith in the unshakable character of God. We are often held by the shakable hope that ‘everything is going to work out ok’. In truth, everything does work out ok, but when we have pre-conceived notions of what ‘ok’ means, we will often be disappointed by this kind of faith. Faith in Christ’s character never disappoints because, as the writer tells us in chapter 13, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” When we build our hope on anything less than Christ’s pure blood and righteousness, we are bound to be horribly disappointed.

One thing I think Charles and I strongly agree about is that a weak gospel message produces weak faith. I already quoted Paul this morning, saying: my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Too often today, what passes as gospel is really a message of reliance upon our own perceived goodness. We teach people to look inside themselves for answers which are not there. We train them to rely upon their works as a means of satisfying God. We speak ‘plausible words of wisdom’ to them and then are surprised when their faith rests upon that wisdom. This is not the faith of Hebrews chapter 11. That faith comes by a presentation of the promise of God with a demonstration of the Spirit and Power and rests on the power of God.

As I said in the first point this morning, faith is the gift of God that is created by hearing the promise of God. I will do my best to present that promise without human wisdom. The promise is this:

Jesus Christ became our sin on the cross at Calvary and died as sin, defeating sin. He then rose from the dead, defeating death. He has become the righteousness of God for any who believe. We are a sinful people, far from God’s righteousness. If we wish to have peace with God, we must become perfectly righteous. Because we are sinners by birth, we can never do that. Which is why Christ lived a life of perfect righteousness in our place and died in our place to pay the penalty for our sin. Heroes of the faith are not perfect people. Heroes of the faith are people who hear the promise of God and receive it with faith. The promise is that if we place our faith in the work of Jesus Christ rather than our own work we will have eternal life. God’s promise to each of you is that if you will receive Jesus Christ as your righteousness you will inherit eternal life.

Those of you who are already believers need to hear this every bit as much as unbelievers. No matter how long you’ve been a Christian, faith still comes by hearing. If you are weary, struggling with circumstances, with a culture, with a heart that beats you up, remember – God is greater than all of these things. He made you a promise, and you can trust that promise because of the one who made it.

This is all God’s doing. If your heart is stirred this morning, that is God’s doing. Do not allow yourself to be deceived into hardening your heart. Let the promise create faith anew or renew your faith right now.