By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. By faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones.

Hebrews 11:8-22 ESV

Proverbs 27:21 says, “The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and a man is tested by his praise.” Because we naturally praise what we love and delight in, what a man praises is fitting test for determining what his heart truly loves.

In a similar fashion, the heroes that a society praises necessarily reveal what that society loves, delights in, or values as the highest good. Indeed, the present lack of any almost universally beloved real-life heroes is itself a sign of our divided worldviews. Of course, in the world of fiction, comic book superheroes had their moment of glory, which appears to have already faded away. Again, what values are being praised by heroism is the test for why these modern mythologies were so successful and are increasingly no longer so. I believe the baseline appeal of many of the most popular superheroes is their own hunger for fatherly approval, which reflects our society’s own groaning under fatherlessness. Interestingly, the more they attempt to engage in social issues, the less popular they become. Spider-Man’s futile struggle to hear the approval of his deceased father-figure uncle has already hit a cultural nerve that no single headline could ever capture.

Recently, I’ve been reading the tale of one of Rome’s heroes, Aeneas. His story was written by the poet Virgil at the commission of Caesar Augustus only a decade or so before the birth of Christ. Beyond pleasing Caesar, The Aeneid was immediately received as the heroic mythology of Rome’s foundations that Virgil intended for it to be. Indeed, it immediately became the essential text of a Roman education, just as Homer’s poems were used in Greece. Augustine said, “Virgil certainly is held to be a great poet; in fact he is regarded as the best and most renowned of all poets, and for that reason he is read by children at an early age–they take great draughts of his poetry into their unformed minds, so that they may not easily forget him” (City of God, I.3). Given how frequently Augustine cites Virgil, he knew that statement to be true by experience. Roman children were catechized through the Aeneid because the Romans viewed Aeneas as a mythological embodiment of Rome and what it means to be Roman.

Indeed, he is not the tantruming toddler that Achilles was nor is he the scheming liar that Odysseus was. Though the Greeks produced aesthetically beautiful art, even the Romans could identify the hopeless despair that undergirded it all. No, Aeneas was a hero marked by piety. His journey from the burning city of Troy to the Italy is not about his own glory and honor but about founding the Roman people, a people destined to “rule with all your power the people of the earth… to put your stamp on the works and ways of peace, to spare the defeated, break the proud in war” (VI.981-984). Aeneas carried the godly burden of establishing an eternal city that would bring enforce peace through all the world by breaking the proud in war.

We would do well to remember that the original readers of Hebrews lived under the seemingly all-encompassing shadow of Rome at the height of its dominion and with centuries of global rule still before it. As Jews, the city of Jerusalem also ever stood before them. The city of David and of the only temple to the living God on earth, a temple now abandoned by God after the final sacrifice had been made.

Two cities, each bursting with stories of its peoples’ heroes, vied for their affections. Yet both were, at best, only shadows of a truly eternal city still to come. Despite what the nonbelieving Jews may have claimed, the heroes of faith throughout the Old Testament had their eyes set upon that everlasting city. Indeed, for we who are of faith, the saints here in Hebrews 11 are more than our heroes; they are our ancestors. The Romans took great pride in being the children of Aeneas, but we are children of Abraham, the man of faith, and are blessed alongside him.

THE FAITH OF ABRAHAM & SARAH // VERSES 8-12

In our previous text, the author of Hebrews began his survey of the heroes of the faith with three men of God who lived before (and in Noah’s case, through) the time of the flood. He now naturally moves on to the time of the patriarchs, which is recorded for us in Genesis 12-50. As we will see in the verses before us, the faith of Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph is recounted for us, yet the figure that appears most is Abraham, whom Paul rightly calls “the man of faith” (Galatians 3:9). In the first section of our text, we find three instances of faith: two of Abraham (vv. 8-9) and one of Sarah (v. 11).

Verse 8: By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.

The event being described is found in Genesis 12:1-3:

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Notice that, as the author Hebrews makes clear, Abraham was not told where he was going. God did not inform him that he was going to travel hundreds of miles down to Canaan. He was simply told to go until God showed him the country where he would stop, and in one of the most amazing verses in the Bible, verse 4 says, “So Abram went, as the LORD had told him…” Abraham obeyed God. Rather like with Noah, God gave Abraham a command that could only be obeyed by faith. Only by an assurance of things hoped for and a conviction of things not seen could Noah build the ark and Abraham roam the earth until God showed him the land of Canaan.

Let this again be a reminder to us that true faith in God is evidenced by our obedience to Him. Again, our obedience does not earn or merit our salvation in any way, but our salvation will always produce obedience in us. Simply believing in God’s existence is not sufficient. As James 2:19 powerfully states, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe–and shudder!”

Verse 9: By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.

Here the author notes that Abraham did not merely embark upon a long journey of faith in obedience to God, he also lived the rest of his life (as did his son, Isaac, and grandson, Jacob) without ever actually possessing the land that God promised to him. Indeed, the only plot of land that the patriarchs actually owned was a field with a cave in Machpelah that Abraham bought as a burial ground for Sarah after she died. Other than that, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all lived in tents, sojourners and foreigners in the very land that God promised to give to their descendants. Again, this is the very definition of faith. They lived their entire lives trusting in a promise that they never got to see fulfilled. All around the patriarchs were mighty cities with walls and fortifications to ensure their protection, even Lot (Abraham’s nephew) was pulled into the security and comforts of the cities. Yet these men of God chose to dwell in tents, ever wandering through the Promised Land that was not yet theirs.

Verse 10 explains how they lived this life of faith: For he was looking forward to a city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

One glance at any of the Canaanite cities might have left one admiring how established they were, especially if compared to the tents of Abraham. However, by faith, Abraham looked beyond his present day and beyond what his physical eyes could see. Regardless of how steadfast they appeared to be, in reality, they were fleeting vapors that, if fortunate, may still have some ruins to be seen today. By faith, Abraham saw through the earthly display of permanence and set his gaze upon the City of God with eternal and everlasting foundations. He set his sights upon the eternal reality rather than upon the earthly shadows.

Verse 11: By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.

In reading the account of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 12-21, the promise of a child to the barren couple is the central tension. God’s promise to make Abraham into a great nation in Genesis 12:2 is the first implication that God was going to give the patriarch a son. But whenever Abraham arrived at Canaan, God made it explicit, saying in 12:7, “To your offspring I will give this land.” When God fulfilled His promise, Abraham was one hundred years old, and Sarah was ninety. Thus, the words of Genesis 21:1–2 are nothing less than miraculous:

The LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him.

Many have wondered, however, how Sarah can be lauded for her faith whenever she laughed in Genesis 18 upon hearing God’s word that she would bear a child within a year. In answer to that objection, we would first do well to remember that the Bible is quite unique in not glossing over its heroes’ faults. If we are going to speak of Sarah’s unbelieving laughter, we must also speak of her and Abraham’s plot to take God’s promise into their own hands by having Abraham impregnate Sarah maidservant, Hagar.

No, in speaking of the faith of Abraham and Sarah, the author of Hebrews is not presenting them as perfect nor as having perfect faith, and that should be of great comfort to us. Moments of doubt and unbelief are natural in our pilgrimage through this world by faith rather than by sight, but by the grace of God they do not have to mar the entirety of our journey toward the Celestial City. Indeed, although Sarah’s first laughed in unbelief at hearing of her future conception, God had already announced that Abraham’s son would be called Isaac or Laughter. God knew the momentary unbelief of Sarah, and he turned her doubt into joy.

Verse 12: Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.

Just as God only granted Abraham the ownership of a single parcel of land in Canaan as a guarantee of the promise’s future fulfillment to his children, so God also did with the birth of Isaac. God promised to make Abraham into a great nation, yet Isaac was the singular child that God gave to Abraham through Sarah, the sole seed of an entire people yet to come. Yet from that seed and from an insignificant nomad like Abraham, God has indeed produced a great nation with innumerable descendants, for we who belong to the kingdom of heaven are children of Abraham. How marvelous is it that God takes the weak and foolish things of this world and makes them mightier than kings! Indeed, how many kings through history lived their lives in rich and comfortable palaces, thinking themselves to be gods, only to have their kingdoms, names, and memories blotted out from the earth? Yet we who are Abraham’s children continue to rejoice in our ancestor’s faith.

A BETTER COUNTRY // VERSES 13-16

Verses 13–14: These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

Just as the author has been frequently inserting explanations and exhortations into his retelling of the lives of the Old Testament saints (i.e., vv. 6, 10, 12), verses 13-16 are an extended explanation of how exactly these saints lived by faith. The phrase these all died in faith applies most pointedly to Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob; however, I believe we should also view it as referring to the entirety of those being referenced in chapter 11. Of course, Enoch and Elijah are the only two very exceptional exceptions, but other than them, every single Old Testament saint did indeed die without having received the things promised. Yes, under Joshua, the Israelites took possession of the land of Canaan. Yes, David established Jerusalem as the city of God’s people. Yes, Solomon built the temple within Jerusalem’s walls. Yet like Abraham holding Isaac in his arms or purchasing the cave in Machpelah, they were only types and shadows of the fullness of God’s promises for His people. Even under the kingdom of Israel, God’s people were still strangers and exiles on the earth, belonging to a far greater kingdom than Israel could ever become.

But while that is true of everyone in the Old Testament who lived by faith, the author inserts this point within his recounting of Abraham and the other patriarchs because Abraham’s life visibly displayed that spiritual reality. His life was as close to real world Pilgrim’s Progress as anyone has ever lived. Indeed, his refusal to settle down in one of the Canaanite cities was a public testimony or, as the writer says, made it clear that he was seeking a homeland. In fact, having acknowledged is a variation of the same word that the author has been using for confession throughout the sermon-letter. Thus, Abraham’s acknowledgment or confession that he was a pilgrim who belonged to a greater country is like our confession of Christ’s lordship and declaration of our heavenly citizenship.

Of course, we do not need to live in monasteries and communes in order to reject the kingdoms of this world and declare our heavenly citizenship. Daniel is example of Abraham’s pilgrim faith within an earthly city. Although Daniel lived in Babylon, served the Babylonian king, and even became a high official under both Babylonian and Persian rule, he prayed three times every day with his face toward Jerusalem. He did what God commanded of the exiles in Jeremiah 29. He sought the good of his earthly city and of his earthly king, yet Daniel never became Babylonian. He was a picture of being in the world but not of the world.  

Also, regarding the word homeland, Robert Paul Martin writes:

Using patris in the evocative sense of “home,” the writer points us to the heart of our promised inheritance. All men are seeking “home” and the “rest” which they hope to find there. Most seek it in this world, and though they never find what answers to the deepest need of their restless souls, they look no higher than this world for “home.” This world is their city and country, their fatherland and home. With believers it is not so. All who went before and all who have come after confess with David, “We are aliens and pilgrims before You, as were all our fathers; our days on earth are as a shadow, and without hope” (1 Chron. 29:15; cf. Pss. 39:12; 119:19). Those who live this pilgrim way “declare plainly that they seek a homeland” (Heb. 11:14). The heavenly country we seek, however, is different in kind from the homeland of our birth, else we should be satisfied with this world and return to it (Heb. 11:15). But we wander the earth with our eyes raised to another world and our desire for home set on a “better” land (Heb. 11:16).[1]

Of that better land, verse 16 says, But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Of course, I think that Lewis captures the desire for that heavenly homeland:

In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it use it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter… The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them, and you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth.[2]

Too often we speak of heaven’s glories, of mansions of rest and streets of gold, only as comforting thoughts of what awaits us after death. Of course, such thoughts ought to be comforting to us; however, we should also desire the City of God, that heavenly country, with a homesick longing. That very kind of longing, which nothing on earth can satisfy, is indeed the antidote to worldliness. It is much easier to hold our earthly possessions with an open hand whenever we live with a constant knowledge that we are foreigners here and have a hunger for our homeland.

Consider also the great comfort that this verse must have been to the original readers of Hebrews as they prepared to endure the raging fires of Rome, while also feeling disconnected from their Hebrew ancestors. He assures them that Christ has not severed their connection with the Old Testament saints; instead, they all looked forward to Jesus by faith. Also, just as those saints of old always lived triumphant lives of faith in the midst of great earthly powers, so too would Christ’s church outlast Rome, although that would have sounded absolutely absurd.

FUTURE BLESSINGS // VERSES 17-22

In verses 8-12, the author told us of Abraham’s faithful obedience to go where God would later show him, his living by faith as a sojourner in the land that would belong to his descendants but never him, and Sarah’s faith to conceive Abraham’s son through whom Abraham’s great nation of descendants would come. As with last week, that too is a pattern that we should consider. Faith to obey God’s command, even without clarity about the outcome. Faith to live among but apart from the world around us. Faith to receive the seed of God’s promise now with the vision of the great harvest to come. After expounding on that vision of future blessing, of a better country to come in verses 13-16, the author now gives us a series of examples of how each generation of the patriarchs lived in the assurance of things hoped for:

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. By faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones.

Abraham’s faith in sacrificing Isaac is, of course, one of the most monumental moments in the entire Bible, so it rightly takes up half of this paragraph. Yet though Abraham’s faith was uniquely tested, it is the same sort of faith that Isaac displayed as he blessed Jacob and Esau. And that Jacob displayed whenever he blessed each of Joseph’s sons. And that Joseph displayed whenever he commanded the Israelites to bury his bones in Canaan once the LORD brought them out of Egypt again four hundred years later. None of the patriarchs saw the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham, yet they each died confessing their faith in God’s Word to the coming generation.

Of course, Abraham’s willingness to offer up Isaac is so powerful because it shows that even death did not hinder the patriarch’s faith. Tragically, history has known no shortage of parents who have sacrificed their children to gods that are not gods. Thus, Abraham’s willingness to do so was no doubt difficult but not unheard of. But that was not the extent of Abraham’s faith. As the author of Hebrews makes clear here, Abraham always believed that he would return home with Isaac. God had miraculously given him Isaac and promised a line of descendants through Isaac, so Abraham believed that since God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac, God would also resurrect Isaac afterward. He walked in the tension of believing that God would be faithfulness to give him descendants through Isaac and obeying God’s command to sacrifice Isaac.

Like Abraham, true faith is never going to be free of such tensions, and I would argue that a great number of false teachings derive from attempts to “iron out” the tensions of belief. Yet any attempt to iron out all tensions in Scripture inevitably leads to us ironing out certain portions of Scripture. We thank God that our faith is a rational faith, yet it is, nevertheless, still a faith. We cannot rationalize the Trinity; rather, the world is rationalized through it. Neither can we logically explain the hypostatic union of Christ. Likewise, our own desire for the City of God requires us living in such a tension.

Like the patriarchs, our faith is one that transcends death, for it is rooted in God’s own Son who was offered as a sacrifice for our sins and yet lives again. They died without receiving what was promised to them, but in Christ we have received those promises. Through the new and better covenant that Christ inaugurated with His own blood, we “have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (12:22). Indeed, we have received God’s unshakeable kingdom (12:28), the better country that the patriarchs longed to receive. Yet 13:14 is also true: “For here we have not lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.”

Also like the patriarchs, our faith is already and not yet. Abraham already lived in Canaan but did not yet possess it. Likewise, the kingdom of God has already come, and in Christ we are its citizens. However, it also has not yet come in all of its fullness. Although Christ rules over all creation from the right hand of the Father, His enemies are still being placed under His feet. The day will come when His invisible kingdom will be made visible, when the City of God in all of its beauty will be brought forevermore to earth. On that day, all of heaven will cry out, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15).

As we come to our King’s Table, we find before us a beautiful picture of our already-but-not-yet faith. As we eat of the bread and drink of the cup, we remember Jesus’ sacrifice once for all the sins of all His people. The unknown redemption that the patriarchs looked forward to is known to us and evidenced by an empty tomb. What they died without receiving, we have now received in Christ. Yet this bite and sip are only earthly tastes of the feast that will be ours at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. As we taste and see the goodness of our God through this bread and cup, let us rejoice that we are sojourners and exiles on earth, for in so doing we confess that we are seeking the better country to come.

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[1] Robert Paul Martin, Hebrews, 588.

[2] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, 29-31.