Living by Faith: Being Conquered by Faith

In the last blog in this series, we began to look at Hebrews 11:33-38 and we noted that while the essence of faith is the same for all believers (trusting in the faithfulness of God), the outcomes of faith vary from one person to another according to the will of God. We then considered the lives of those who conquered various things by faith in God—not by their own strength, wisdom, or resources but by placing all of their trust in God. In this post we will now consider those who were conquered by faith, that is, who were plunged into the depths of great suffering specifically because they trusted in the Lord and followed his words no matter what the cost or consequence.

In the middle of Hebrews 11:35, the author transitions from telling us about triumphs to telling us about tragedies. In the ESV this transition is marked by the word “some” but in the Greek text the words are slightly stronger and probably should be translated “but others.” So, on the one hand, some people conquered by faith to the glory of God, but others—the author wants us to hear his transition loud and clear—but others were conquered by faith to the glory of Christ.

These people also received and believed in the promises of God but instead of gaining victories they were tortured. For example, at one point in his life the prophet Jeremiah was bound and beaten by the religious and political powers of his day, and yet he refused to recant what the Lord had sent him to say because his hope was in God. He was sure of what he hoped for because he hoped for what is sure, no matter the cost or consequence. His desire was not for the pleasures of this world but for the treasures of God, and therefore he rejected the easy way and embraced the way of the Lord. Jeremiah was tortured by faith to the glory of God. He was not lacking faith, quite the contrary, he was full of faith in the faithfulness of God and this is what enabled him to endure.

Like Jeremiah, some lived by faith and endured mocking and flogging and chains and imprisonment. By faith some had rocks and stones thrown at them to the point of death. By faith some were actually sawn in two. By faith some did not escape from the edge of the sword but rather were killed by the edge of the sword. Beloved, these people these people were conquered by faith to the glory of God. Their faith did not falter, their lives were not failures, rather, they trusted in the Lord all the way to the point of death and one day they will surely wear the crown of life to the glory of Christ.

Still others were not killed by the saw or the sword but by faith they were forced to live in very difficult circumstances. By faith they dressed in the skins of sheep and goats rather than normal clothing because they had been marginalized and had no other choice. By faith they lived without money or earthly possessions. By faith they were destitute and afflicted and mistreated by the powers and peoples of the world. By faith they had no homes of their own but were forced to wander about in the deserts and mountains. By faith they dwelt in caves and even holes in the ground, which is the more literal translation of the end of verse 38. Yes, the author of Hebrews tells us that some people burrowed into the earth like animals and remained there for a time because that’s the price they had to pay for walking by faith in the faithfulness of God.

Beloved, the world counts these people as losers and failures, but in truth they lived by faith and they are commendable in God’s sight. They trusted in the presence and promises of God to the point where they had nothing left but their joy in him. The world despised and rejected them, but the Lord bears another testimony about them. In essence, the Lord says in verse 38, “This world is not even worthy to be in the presence of these precious people. They trusted in me, they believed my words, they hoped in my promises, they chose the treasures of my Kingdom over the pleasures of this world, and therefore they were willing to suffer anything that they might gain me and exalt me in the sight of others. The world despises and rejects them but I, the Lord, will greatly exalt them to the glory of Christ because they loved and trusted me above all things.” 

Living by Faith: Conquering by Faith

In the last post in this series, I said that the end of Hebrews 11 teaches us that while the heart of our faith is the same (trusting in the faithfulness of God), the outcome of our faith is not the same. Indeed, when we carefully consider verses 33-38, we see that some conquered by faith in God and others were conquered by faith in God. That is, while each group of people listened to the Lord, followed in his ways , and bore his fruit, the specifics of their lives with God were at times polar opposite.

So, if you’ll look at verses 33-35 you’ll see that, on the one hand, certain people of faith trusted in the Lord and conquered kingdoms. By faith they established and enforced God’s system of justice in the lands they conquered, and that wasn’t such an easy thing to do. By faith they obtained certain promises that God had made to them along the way. By faith they shut the mouths of lions, not by their own prowess but by the grace and strength of the Lord. By faith they surrendered themselves to the fires of persecution and overcame those fires by the miraculous power of God. By faith they escaped the edge of the sword when at times they were vastly outnumbered by their enemies and had no earthly hope. They really should have died but God was for them and no one could stand against them. By faith they were made strong when every bone in their body felt so incredibly weak. By faith they became mighty in war. By faith they put foreign armies to flight, not by their strength or strategies but by the power and presence of God.

All of these people looked to the Lord and listened to him and trusted in him and obeyed his commands and believed his promises, and God won the victory for them. As King David wrote, “Some trust in chariots and some trust in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God” (Psalm 20:7). King David was a king; he had chariots and horses and all the accoutrements of war at his fingertips, and yet he knew that his hope was in the Lord and not in these things. This is why he wrote again, “With God we shall do valiantly, it is he who will tread down our foes” (Psalm 60:12, emphasis mine). King David knew as well as anyone has ever known that it is the power and presence of God rather than the techniques of war that conquer the day. As the prophet Zechariah later wrote, “This is the word of the Lord...Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6). Indeed, Beloved, some conquered by faith to the glory of God. They did it by trusting in God’s specific words, and along the way they found him to be faithful.

In fact, the author tells us that even before Jesus Christ walked this earth and lived and died and rose again, some of the women of old received back their dead by resurrection. For example, once there was a widow who had a child by way of a miracle. When that child had grown up, he was out working in the field one day and became sick. His sickness was strange, no one really knew what was going on, so they sent him home and there he died. In her grief, his mother cried out to God and then did the only thing she could think to do, namely, she called for the prophet Elijah to come and pray for him.

When Elijah arrived, he spent some time with the Lord and then prayed for the child in a most unusual way. The text is so graphic. It says that he laid his body upon the child’s body, and his eyes upon the child’s eyes, and his lips upon the child’s lips, and his hands upon the child’s hands. When he had finished praying, he arose and walked about the house, returning a second time to pray over the child in the exact same way. As he prayed the second time, the child’s body began to warm and he suddenly sneezed not once but seven times; oh how glorious those sneezes must have been! Beloved, every person in and around that house knew that the child had been dead. He wasn’t simply passed out or otherwise comatose: he was dead. And by faith, by the grace and power of God Almighty, that child rose up and came back to life, glory be to God!

This is such a powerful story, but we must understand that Elijah didn’t create this technique on his own or learn it at a prayer seminar. Instead, we read in 2 Kings 4 that Elijah did what he did because first he prayed and then he obeyed. Now there’s a principle we can live by—Elijah first prayed and then he obeyed. Elijah sought the Lord and asked what he should do, and in his good time the Lord instructed him to lay his body on the child’s body and witness the power of God.

Now, it was great news that this child was raised from death to life and for this we should still give glory to God. However, I believe that the Lord was up to greater things than this. In fact, I think that this story might be the most graphic prophecy of resurrection in the entire Old Testament. One day, in the far distant future, the Lord Jesus Christ would come to this earth and live and die and be raised again from death, and then he would ascend to the right hand of the Father where he would become the resurrection and the life for all who believe in him.

Like Elijah, Jesus would place his body on their bodies, and his eyes on their eyes, and his lips on their lips, and his hands on their hands, and his mind on their minds, and his heart on their hearts, and his soul on their souls. Indeed, Jesus would wrap his being around their being and become their resurrection. He would become their life. Jesus does not give resurrection to those who believe in him, rather, he is resurrection for those who believe in him. Jesus does not give life to those who believe in him, rather, he is life for those who believe in him.

Elijah may or may not have been aware of the greater things God was doing in and through him as he prayed for that child, but one way or the other he did what he did by faith and God gained much glory for himself. Elijah prayed and then obeyed. He sought instruction from the Lord, he believed the specific words of the Lord, and he acted accordingly. Some received their children back from death by faith to the glory of God. Beloved, all of the great victories of verses 33-35 came to pass by faith, not by the wisdom or might or prowess of men and women. These things came to pass as real people like you and me put their hope in the words of God and found him to be faithful. Some conquered by faith to the glory of Christ but others had a different experience. More on that next week!

Living by Faith: The Varied Outcomes of Faith

From Hebrews 11:3-31, the author has drawn our attention to creation, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, and Rahab. And though he could continue drawing our attention to one biblical figure after another, he’s dealing with certain constraints and so he simply writes this in verse 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...”

Why the author mentions these specific people, I’m not really sure and I’m not sure it really matters. Rather, I think his desire is simply to say this, and please allow me to embellish. “Beloved, I could go on and bring to your attention many people who trusted in the faithfulness of God and found him to be faithful. By the grace of God, these people received and believed the commandments and promises of the Lord, and they discovered along the way that he does everything he says he’s going to do. They were not superheroes, rather, they were men and women just like you and me, and the thing that sets them apart is their faith in the faithfulness of God. It’s not so much that they were great but that they trusted in a God who is great. Indeed, these people are commended by God himself because they trusted in God and nothing else.”

Now, as we carefully consider the lives of the people that the author goes on to describe beginning in verse 33, we discover something strange and glorious: the outcome of their faith on this earth, the practical results of their way of life, were not always the same. In fact, they were radically different. Some of these people achieved great things and won great victories by faith to the glory of Christ. Others of them suffered great things and lost great battles by faith to the glory of Christ. Some of them conquered by faith, and some of them were conquered by faith. But all of them brought glory to God because all of them listened to the Lord and did what he commanded them to do, by his grace and power, even though they didn’t experience the same earthly results. They were successful in this life because they trusted in the Lord no matter what the cost or consequence, not because things always went well for them.

In the next two posts in this series, I’ll say a few things about both groups of people, but for now I want to encourage you to seriously contemplate this before the Lord: living by faith will not produce the same outcome for every person because God’s will is not the same for every person. Indeed, the heart of living by faith is loving the Lord, listening to his words and will, and then following in his ways whether in victory or defeat, triumph or tragedy, celebration or mourning.

Living by Faith: The Faith of Rahab

Over the last three posts in this series, I’ve summarized Moses’ and Joshua's lives of faith as described in Hebrews 11:23-30 in the form of a “first-person narrative,” that is, I’ve essentially spoken as though I was Moses. Along the way, I’ve taken some creative and interpretive license, but this was not an attempt to add to the words of the Bible, rather, it was an attempt to help us better hear, understand, and believe the Bible. Today I will continue this form of narration by creatively summarizing a crucial moment in Rahab's live of faith as described in Hebrews 11:31, “By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies."

When Joshua finished speaking, he joyfully took his seat and invited his friend Rahab to rise and speak. “Hello, everyone, as Joshua said, my name is Rahab and I just want to speak a few words. When Israel crossed the Jordan by the power of God and under the leadership of Joshua, I heard about what the Lord was about to do in our land and my heart feared him. But it was a strange fear. I did feel in danger and I didn’t want to die, but I also felt in awe of this God who had moved in Egypt and then on the eastern side of Jordan and now in our very midst. Though I find it hard to explain, I can only say that I wanted to know him. Praise be to his name, the Lord saw my heart and he was so kind to me. I don’t mind telling you that at the time I was a prostitute who sold my body for money. I was an object to men and a wretch to myself, but in his loving-kindness the Lord sent his servants to me, I was kind to them, and they spared me.

“Believe it or not, the Lord made me to be the great-great-grandmother of David the King of Israel! Can you believe that? The Lord made me—Rahab the prostitute—to be Rahab the distant grandmother of the Lord Jesus Christ, and this because I simply listened to his speech through his servants, did exactly what I was told to do by faith, and then sat back and watched the Lord move in grace and power. 

"O Beloved, the time will come when I will tell you many more stories, but just before you re-engage in your own battle of faith, I want to say that our God is great and gracious, and that all of his promises are true. All that the Lord says he will surely do, so listen to him, believe him, cling to his words, and live by faith. If you will look to him, he will show himself faithful to you, and one day you will join us, the mighty throng who lives to give glory to him who is steadfast in love and faithful to all his words. Thank you, and glory be to God!”

Living by Faith: The Faith of Joshua

Over the last two Wednesdays I’ve summarized Moses’ life of faith as described in Hebrews 11:23-29 in the form of a “first-person narrative,” that is, I’ve essentially spoken as though I was Moses. Along the way, I’ve taken some creative and interpretive license, but this was not an attempt to add to the words of the Bible, rather, it was an attempt to help us better hear, understand, and believe the Bible. Today I will continue this form of narration by creatively summarizing a crucial moment in Joshua’s life of as described in Hebrews 11:30, “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days.”

Imagine Joshua rising from among the great cloud of witnesses in heaven and saying, “Greetings in the name of Jesus, everyone! I find it hard to believe that, in his faithfulness, the Lord gave me the name he would one day give to the Messiah, my own Lord and Savior. Believe me, this was an act of pure grace because I’m just a man and, like John the Baptist, I’m not even worthy to untie Jesus’ sandals much less be a sort of living prophecy of him. But God is just that gracious and for this I praise him.

“Since the time is short, I want to tell you just one quick story about the faithfulness of God. Right after Moses died, we wondered what would become of us and the promises of God, but the Lord was so faithful and he brought us into the land that he had promised by his own power and wisdom. He then confirmed his covenant with us by gathering us together and essentially saying, ‘Listen, Moses has died but I have not. Moses did not endure forever but I live forever. My name is “I Am” and I Am with you, my precious people of promise.’ With that the Lord sent us to conquer a city named Jericho. You’ve probably read the story so you know that Jericho was the first city we conquered on the western side of the Jordan, and that God did it in a most amazing way.

“You see, one day as I was praying, God told me to gather the Ark of the Covenant and the worship team, if you will, and send them out in front of the warriors of Israel. He told me to have them march once around the city for six days and then to march seven times around the city on the seventh day. When we completed that seventh round on the seventh day, we were to shout with all of our might, after which God would give us the city. Now, again, I know that many of you have heard this story so you know where this is going, but you have to understand that though God had told me what he planned to do, we didn’t know if the plan was going to work so we had to march by faith. We had to trust in the words of God. We had to believe in things that we could not see with our eyes.

“I don’t know of any military strategist who would recommend this technique: hey, just worship your way around the city and then after a while shout! But that’s what we did, at the command of God and not the fantasy of a man, and Beloved, God did exactly what he told us he was going to do. The walls of Jericho came tumbling down, in fact, they fell outward, and God gave us that city. It was the first taste of many victories he would give us by faith and for the glory of his name, and what I want you to know is that this transpired as we put our faith in the faithfulness of God. God spoke, we clung to his words, and he showed himself to be faithful. And he’ll be faithful to you, too, if only you will listen, believe, and cling to him. This is my testimony to you and I trust that God will work in your lives as you contemplate the little I’ve shared.”

Living by Faith. The Faith of Moses, Part 2

Last week I began to summarize Moses’ life of faith in the form of a “first-person narrative,” that is, I essentially spoke as though I was Moses. Along the way, I took some creative and interpretive license, but this was not an attempt to add to the words of the Bible, rather, it was an attempt to help us better hear, understand, and believe the Bible. Today I will continue this narrative by creatively summarizing several episodes in the life of Moses raised in Hebrews 11:23-29.

“God has been faithful to me, and while I have so much to say about this, let me just tell you a few quick stories and testify to his steadfast love in my life. In the days when my mother became pregnant with me, Pharaoh was the king of Egypt and the most powerful man on the face of the earth. For a number of reasons, he became very angry with the Hebrew people and therefore issued a decree that all male, Hebrew babies, when born, should be killed. This decree was a real tragedy but some of the midwives in Egypt refused to obey this order and for that God showed them favor. These courageous women literally took their lives into their hands to save the lives of others but God was faithful to them because God is faithful! However, when Pharaoh found out what they were doing he was very upset and commanded every person in the country to participate in murdering all male, Hebrew babies. Believe it or not, he commanded that they be cast into the Nile River and drowned. The situation was horrible.

“Thanks be to God, my parents feared God more than the king and they hid me for three months at the risk of their lives. These precious saints looked back in time and remembered God’s faithfulness to Abraham and Sarah and so many others, and they chose to trust that God would be faithful to them. Thus, they hid me by faith, but eventually the day came when they couldn’t do so anymore and therefore they fashioned a little basket, made sure it wouldn’t sink, and in accordance with the king’s command—sort of—they set me adrift on the Nile River. While my big sister stood there and watched me float downstream, praying and trusting in God, she saw one of Pharaoh’s daughters come down by the river and take me out of the river. As she watched and wondered what would become of me, she was surprised to see that instead of killing me, Pharaoh’s daughter actually brought me into the king’s palace!

“Beloved, this doesn’t happen to everyone, but please let me tell you what the Lord did for me by the faith of my parents: he saved me from infanticide and made me part of the most powerful family on the face of the earth! Can you believe that? I was a slave boy but I grew up like the son of a king. What’s more, they decided to name me Moses which means ‘Draws Out’ because I had been drawn out of the Nile. Little did they know that God would one day use me to draw out his people from Egypt and from under their great power! The point I really want to make here is that God is faithful to those who trust him and fear him alone, and that’s exactly what my parents did.

“Some years later, when I had grown up, I had a very serious decision to make. You’ve read about this in Exodus and Hebrews, and while you can understand the words that are there, you can’t imagine the pressure I felt in those days. For all practical purposes, I was the grandson of the most powerful man on the face of the earth and day by day I could stand and look at the treasuries of Egypt, knowing that I had access to them all. The vast wealth of Egypt was mine. If I wanted money, it was mine. If I wanted precious metals and jewels, they were mine. If I wanted the best food and drink the world, it was mine. If I wanted the best live music in the world, it was mine. If I wanted beautiful women, they were mine. If I wanted power and prestige, it was mine. Anything and everything I wanted was mine because the treasuries of Egypt were mine.

“However, the man and woman who brought me into this world had told me who I really was. They told me that I was a Hebrew and not an Egyptian; that I was a descendant of Abraham and not of Pharaoh; that I was a child of faith and not of power. As I pondered these things the Spirit of Christ began to stir in me. I wouldn’t have put it this way at the time, but that’s exactly what was happening; the very Spirit of Christ was stirring in me and laying a choice before me. He said, ‘Moses, you can either identify yourself with Pharaoh and enjoy all the treasuries of Egypt and the fleeting pleasures of sin, or you can identify yourself with the Hebrews, your own slave people, and choose to be mistreated along with them.’ Beloved, I’m here to tell you that by the Spirit of Christ, I chose the second option. I chose to suffer with him for a short time rather than to reject him for eternity in favor of the fleeting pleasures of this life. This was a very hard decision but I made it by faith in the God who is faithful. He spoke, I believed his words, and he fulfilled every word that came out of his mouth.

“Now, please understand, I suffered for this decision. I ended up being expelled from the land of Egypt for standing with my people and I lived out in the desert for some forty years among a people who were strangers to me. But I must say that God was faithful to me there as well, for those people became my family and they provided for all my needs and along the way God used them and various circumstances to shape my character so that I could come into the fullness of my name, ‘Draws Out.’ When the time was right and I was in my middle-age, God appeared to me and called me to go back to Egypt, but this time, he said, I was not to rejoin Pharaoh’s family, rather, I was to challenge Pharaoh. Can you imagine receiving a call like this? God asked me to get in the face of the most powerful man on earth and tell him to let the Hebrew people go from Egypt, to let them be released from under his great power.

“I’m not going to lie and tell you that I wasn’t profoundly scared of this calling at times. God had made me to be a man of faith but this calling was hard for me and I struggled with him. You can read about some of my struggles in the books I wrote, but you just can’t imagine the intensity of the feelings I felt. At times, I was so afraid that I couldn’t even speak and I would say to the Lord, ‘There’s no way I can do what you’ve called me to do when all I can do is babble.’ But at the end of the day, the Spirit of Jesus continued stirring in me and I chose to fear the Lord more than I feared the king or the people or my own inadequacies. I didn’t make this choice because I was some great or courageous man; I made this choice because Jesus himself showed me that it’s better to fear the Lord than to fear any other. He showed me that it’s better to trust in the Lord than to be paralyzed by self-doubt. And I will tell you the way I endured so many trials in my life and ministry: I sought the face of God every day and by his grace he gave me eyes to see what can’t be seen. He gave me eyes to see him who is invisible.

“Except for that one brief moment on the mountain, I never again saw the Lord in a literal way. I saw him do many things and perform many great signs, yes, but like you I had to live by faith. I had to trust the Lord for things I could not see with my eyes or touch with my hands. But all along the way the Lord was with me, and this is what sustained me. Please hear me, Beloved, it wasn’t courage that led me on. It wasn’t social or religious pressure or support. I was in a relationship with God and he helped me to believe in him and in his words, and over time he showed me that he is faithful, always faithful.

“So if I can jump ahead in the story, I’m now in the land of Egypt and confronting Pharaoh by faith in God on a regular basis, and one day the Lord instructed me to do a crazy thing and I just did it by faith. I didn’t understand what he was up to but by this time I trusted him, and so I obeyed by faith. The Lord had recently struck Egypt nine times with powerful signs that were designed to challenge Egypt’s so-called gods and loosen Pharaoh’s grip on God’s people. And now the Lord told me that he would strike Egypt one more time, and that just before we left the land I was to command everyone to slaughter a lamb at twilight and then to sprinkle some of the blood on the doorposts of their homes.

“Reason being, the Lord was going to strike Pharaoh and crush his pride by taking the lives of every firstborn male in Egypt, human and non-human alike. Are you hearing what the Lord was doing? Pharaoh once commanded that the Lord’s male babies should be killed and now the Lord is commanding that all of Pharaoh’s firstborn should be killed, from the least of them to the greatest. The blood that was to be placed on the doorposts was to be a sign to the angel of the Lord that he should pass over every home where it was found and not touch the firstborn males who lived there. So again, this command was strange to me just like the command to build a boat was strange to Noah, but I trusted the Lord and later understood what he was up to.

“Now, most of you know this story so you know how it ends, but you have to understand, we didn’t know how it was going to end. So we had to kill the lamb and sprinkle the blood and trust that what God said was true. And it was true, God did everything just as he said he would do. Though it was unknown to me at the time, God also used this circumstance to prophesy of the coming of Jesus Christ because now, for those of you who are down there on that battlefield and are covered by the blood of the true Lamb of God, you will not be destroyed by the wrath of God when it comes to vindicate God’s holy name and punish all who have refused to believe in him. Isn’t it amazing just how faithful the Lord is to his people? He speaks, we obey, we come to understand some of the things he was doing, but later we’re surprised by the fullness of what he was doing.

“After we left Egypt the Lord did so many things and I have so many stories to tell, but let me just tell you one. Shortly after leaving that land with about one-and-one-half million Hebrews, we found ourselves caught between a rock and a hard-place. Pharaoh had let us go but then he changed his mind and sent his army after us which just happened to be the most powerful army on the face of the earth! We had no chance against them, at least not on our own, because we were just a little slave people who had no weapons and no training and no experience in war. To make matters worse, we had traveled for quite a while and we were located on the shores of the Red Sea with mountains all around us. The only path out of where we were was the path on which Pharaoh’s army was marching toward us—not good! And again, I know that most of you have read the story but you can’t imagine the terror we felt at that time. We didn’t know the end of the story, and from a human perspective there seemed to be no hope for us.

“But then God commanded me to do another very strange thing. He said, ‘Moses, go up to the sea and hold out the staff that I gave to you, and as you do I’m going to drive back the sea. Just trust me.’ I will say that it felt a little strange to do what God commanded me to do. I will say that it didn’t exactly please the other leaders of Israel to do what God commanded me to do. But in faith I stood on the shore and lifted up that stick and, what do you know, God did exactly what he said he would do! Over the course of that night, God used the wind to blow back the waters of the Sea so that all of his people eventually passed through on dry ground, and this not because we were brave or smart but because we simply believed the words of God and lived by faith in what he said.

“When the Egyptian army tried to follow us to the other side, not by faith but in arrogance, God poured his wrath upon them and drown them in the sea. We saw this with our own eyes and we didn’t rejoice in their death but we did rejoice in the power and faithfulness of God. I actually wrote a song about this day that you can see in the book of Exodus because the mighty acts of God always give rise to the praises of God, and we simply had to praise him for what he had done.

“Beloved, I wish I had more time to exalt the faithfulness of God before you today but that’s all the time I have. When you come here to be with us we’ll have forever, and then I’ll tell you everything. But for now please hear me say this—oh please hear me say this! God is faithful and you can trust him. You can trust his heart and you can trust all his words. Sometimes the things he speaks to you and demands of you will seem strange and backwards, but I urge you to trust him because he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s building a story in your lives that will glorify his great name and magnify your joy in him forever! So again, I urge you, trust in the faithfulness of God by clinging to the words of God.”

Living by Faith: The Faith of Moses, Part 1

Having helped us contemplate the faith of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the author of Hebrews now turns our attention to Moses, Joshua, and Rahab and gives a fair amount of textual space to their journeys. Over the next several blogs, I’m going to write in the mode of “first-person narrative” and essentially speak as though I am Moses, Joshua, and Rahab. Along the way, I will take some creative and interpretive license, but please know that this is not an attempt to add to the words of the Bible, rather, it’s an attempt to help us better hear, understand, and believe the Bible.

As for Moses, as great as he was, he was just a man, and when he rises amidst the great cloud of witnesses to testify to the faithfulness of God, he might say something like this. “Hello, everyone, my name is Moses and I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you and make his glorious face to shine upon you. It’s an honor for me to stand and say a word or two about the faithfulness of God because he has been very good to me for a very long time. From before I was born to the days of my youth, to the crossing of the Red Sea, to the top of Mount Sinai, to the borders of the Promised Land, to the top of the mountain of transfiguration where I stood in glory with Elijah and Jesus himself, all the way to this present moment: God has been faithful to me and I want to testify to this fact.

“Let me start by telling you about the day that the Lord called me up onto Mount Sinai for the third time. While I eagerly ascended its slopes that day, I must say that it was actually a low point in my life. Israel, after being delivered from Egypt by the grace and power of the Lord, had just sinned a horrible sin against him by worshiping a false idol and calling it by his name. Perhaps that doesn’t seem like such a big deal to you, but what if your spouse had sexual relations with another person and tried to comfort you by saying that they had called that person by your name? How would that make you feel? The sin of Israel was outrageous, Beloved, and in his just wrath, God punished the people for their sin, after which he showed tremendous restraint and poured out unspeakable grace upon them as well. But God’s grace aside, I was grieving over what had transpired.

“However, one day the Lord instructed me to go up onto the mountain because I had asked him if I could see his glory. I had been with the Lord so many times and he had graciously revealed his heart and hand to me in so many ways. You’ve probably read in the Bible that I had the privilege of having a sort of face-to-face relationship with the Lord, and I felt that. I was very grateful for that. But I still had this longing in my heart for something more. I wanted to see him in a more tangible way. I wanted to be able to touch him, even if I didn’t literally touch him. I wanted to behold the God I loved so much, and who had been so faithful to me. What I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t curiosity that motivated me to ask him for this, it was love. And so I said, ‘O Lord, will you please show me your glory?’ And praise be to his holy name, he said, ‘Yes.’ Well, he said, ‘Yes, but I’m only going to show you my back side,’ which I know sounds strange but which I’ll explain in a few moments.

“So there I was up on the mountain, waiting for the Lord to answer my prayer. My heart was beating fast and my breath was a little hurried. I was scared and excited, kind of like the feeling you have when you know you’re about to meet someone very great. And then it happened. I wrote about this in Exodus 34:5-7. The Lord descended upon me in the form of a cloud as he had before and I knew that the cloud was his glory but this time it felt different.

"Lo and behold, as I strained my eyes to see what the Lord might reveal, I noticed that he was actually standing there with me in that sacred place. How can I possibly explain what I felt in that moment? God Almighty who had done such great and marvelous things in my sight was standing with me on the mountain although I could only see his back. At the time I didn’t understand, but later I came to see that I was beholding Jesus in part. I was looking at his form but I wasn’t allowed to see his face, and yet, what I saw took my breath away. I could never explain the feeling I had in that moment, however, I can say that when you finally see your great and gracious Savior face to face, you’ll understand. Believe me, you’ll understand!

“While I stood there gazing on his form, the Lord took me by surprise and spoke in audible words. I had expected to see his glory because he told me that he was going to show me that in part, but I was surprised to hear his voice. Over time, my life came to be shaped by these words, and indeed, the rest of God’s activity in history and all of his revelations in the Bible were shaped by these words.

“As the Lord passed by me, he proclaimed his name and said, ‘The Lord, the Lord [‘Yahweh, Yahweh’ or ‘I Am, I Am’], a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:6-7).

“Oh there are so many things I could say about what God said to me on that day but let me mention just a couple of them. God’s name means, “I Am.” He is God and there is no other. He created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, and he is in perfect control over them forever and ever. It is this God, the only God, who said that he is gracious, merciful, and slow to anger. Oh, of all the things he could have said to me on that particular day, blessed be his holy name! It is this God who said that he is steadfast in love which means that he keeps his covenants. It means that when he makes a promise, he fulfills it no matter what. So when he adds another word and says ‘I am abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,’ he saying that he’s faithful to keep his promises.

“The faithfulness of God is not an abstract attribute of God, rather, it means that when he says something he fulfills it. It means that he does everything he says he will do. And I’m here to testify today that you can take this to the bank: God is indeed steadfast in love and faithful to all his words. I have seen this with my own eyes, over many years of time, and you will see it too if you simply put your trust in him and cling to what he has said.

“You must remember that God spoke these history-shaping words just after the precious people he had redeemed and delivered from Egypt turned their backs on him and committed adultery against him. The people were neither steadfast in love nor faithful. Rather, they worshiped a false god of their own making and called it by the name ‘Yahweh.’ O Beloved, this was an evil act, it was horrid, it was unthinkable, and the Lord was right to pour out a small measure of his anger upon them. But then he forgave them and he called me up on to the mountain and he showed me his glory in some measure and he said, ‘Moses, my precious servant, this is who I am: I am steadfast in love and I am faithful. I am not like the people. I am holy, holy, holy and my word is a solid rock upon which you can build your life because I am a solid rock on which you can build your life. I will never break my covenant because I the Lord am faithful.’ 

“How can I explain what I felt in that moment? I bowed my face to the ground and worshiped our God. I say, I worshiped our God from the depths of my heart. I respected him so profoundly. I admired him. I loved him with a love I had never felt before. I was in awe of him. We did speak about some other things that day but I’ll have to leave that for another time. For now, I want you to know that up on that mountain I savored his words and I thought back on my life and I realized that what he said to me was true for me: God had been faithful to me and he’ll be faithful to you." 

Living by Faith: The Faith of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph

Having led us to briefly contemplate the faith of Abraham and Sarah, the author of Hebrews leads us to consider the next three generations after them in as many verses. And of all the things he could have highlighted in the lives of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, he chose to take us to their moments of death and point out that when they were about to lose their grip on earthly life, they still hoped in God because they were living by faith. Therefore, the blessings and prophecies they spoke were not words of the flesh but the very words of God pouring through them for the glory of his name and the blessing of the nations.

In the interest of time, I’m going to leave you to meditate on Isaac and Jacob on your own, and draw your attention to Joseph who, on his deathbed, prophesied about the Exodus and gave instructions concerning his bones (Hebrews 13:20-22). Now, that might seem like a strange or random thing for the author to focus on here, so let’s look at Genesis 50:22-26 and see exactly what Joseph said to his family and why.

Moses writes, “So Joseph remained in Egypt, he and his father’s house. Joseph lived 110 years. And Joseph saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation. The children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were counted as Joseph’s own. And Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land [and how does Joseph know this?] to the land that he swore [or promised] to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.’ Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, ‘God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.’ So Joseph died, being 110 years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt” (emphasis mine).

Beloved, do you see what’s going on here? Joseph knew and understood and believed the specific words of the oath or the promise God had spoken to his forefathers, and he was speaking on the basis of faith in that promise. He was not concocting his last words. He was not simply trying to be hopeful and positive with his family in his final moments. Rather, Joseph was looking back three generations and expressing simple faith in the faithfulness of God. He was clinging to God’s words because he was clinging to God. He was hoping in the specific and ancient speech of God and, more than that, he was preaching faith to the next several generations. He was spending all the strength he had left to persuade his loved ones to put their faith in God and his promises, even as his forefathers had done. This is what it looks like to live by faith.

And having believed to the very end, Joseph now rises up with Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Jacob and all of creation, and he stretches out his arms and lifts up his voice and pleads with us, “Hope in God, believe in God, trust in his promises, rest in his words. You will find that God is faithful to the end, and like me you will die in joy and hope unless Christ first returns.” Beloved, Joseph’s faith is not about Joseph, rather, it’s about the faithfulness of God, and I pray that we will have ears to hear and hearts to receive his testimony to us today. 

Living by Faith: The Mature Faith of Abraham

While the author of Hebrews has already said a few things about Abraham’s and Sarah’s life of faith in 11:8-12, he brings us closer to the heart of their journey beginning in verse 17. There he draws our attention to that time in Abraham’s life when he grew old and his trust in God had grown very strong. Just then, when Abraham was ready, God gave him what is in my mind the second hardest command in the history of the world, only paling in comparison to the command upon Jesus to willingly take up his cross and die to satisfy the wrath of God and provide the all-sufficient sacrifice for sins. Specifically, God commanded Abraham to take Isaac—his beloved son of promise for whom Sarah and he had waited for twenty-five years and then raised for another fifteen or twenty years—God commanded him to take Isaac and sacrifice him on an altar.

Beloved, this was an impossible command, but by this point in his life, Abraham had walked with God for a long time and he had many experiences with God that caused him to trust God very deeply. Therefore, when the impossible command came, Abraham didn’t even blink an eye. He asked no questions. He raised no objections. He did not hesitate. Rather, he simply and promptly obeyed the Lord.

Now, it does say in verse 19 that Abraham “considered” that God could raise his son from the dead and the Greek word here literally means “to calculate something.” So I do think Abraham spent some time processing what the Lord had commanded of him, but whatever the case may be, the fact of the matter is that we have no record of Abraham resisting God at this time of his life. We do have a record of his resistance at other times, and thus it seems to me that if Abraham had pushed back against God at this point, the Bible would tell us so. Since it doesn’t, we can assume he didn’t.

By this time in his life—he was about one-hundred-fifteen or one-hundred-twenty years old—Abraham knew that God was faithful. He knew that God could do anything. He knew that God would never violate his promises but would fulfill them all. Therefore, despite the difficulty of the command and the seeming impossibility of the situation, Abraham obeyed God and acted out on the world’s stage what is perhaps the most important prophecy of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the history of the world.

After leading him to the crest of a hill to which God directed him, and having affixed him to an altar on which he would soon take his life, Abraham began to follow through with God’s command but when he was only seconds away from doing so, the Lord intervened and provided a ram for the sacrifice and in this way Abraham essentially received his beloved son back from the dead. This experience led Abraham to name the hill where this had taken place, “Yahweh-Yireh” which means “The Lord will Provide,” and it was known by that name for more than twenty centuries, even to the time of Christ. When we look carefully at where Abraham was living and where he might have taken Isaac at that time, it’s most likely that this scene transpired in Jerusalem and, who knows, perhaps even on the very hill where Christ would later make the all-sufficient sacrifice, where God the Father would not pull back his hand but would fatally strike his beloved Son as the once-for-all sacrifice for sins.

Whatever the specifics of the place, the point of this story is clear: Abraham lived by faith in the promises of God to the point that he was willing to sacrifice his beloved son who, humanly speaking, was the path to those promises. And as he obeyed God, he found God to be faithful—all the way to death, he found God to be faithful. And now he rises up with Sarah, his bride, and Abel and Enoch and Noah and all creation, and pleads with us, “Trust in God and in his word, for he will surely do all that he has promised to do. God is faithful and you can put your hope in him!” This is the testimony of Abraham to us today, and Beloved, I pray that we’ll have ears to hear and hearts to receive it. I pray that we will put all our faith in the God who is forever faithful. 

Living by Faith: These All Died in Faith

Over the last several Wednesdays, we’ve been meditating on the faith of Abraham and Sarah via Hebrews 11:8-12. The author of Hebrews still has a little more to say about their faith, but first he pauses in verses 13-16 to tell us something very important, specifically, he wants us to know that Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob all died in faith even though they had not received everything God had promised to them by that time. They received enough to keep them going but they did not receive most of what God had promised them before they breathed their last. They believed in the words of God all their lives, and for several generations, but after all that time there was still not total fulfillment.

Yet, not one of them died in disappointment or bitterness or atheistic rebellion, rather, they died in faith. They died believing. They died with assurance. They died with conviction. They died with hope. They died with the sure knowledge that God would do all that he had promised to do, for they knew that he who promised is faithful.

Now, to keep it real, how did this work in their lives? Did they ever doubt? Yes. Did they ever fear? Yes. Did they ever become angry? Yes. Did they ever wonder if they misheard God and misunderstood his promises? Yes. Did they ever think that perhaps God had changed his mind? Yes.

However, time after time, no matter what the season or difficulty or doubt, these people of faith eventually went to God and spoke with him about whatever was on their hearts. For example, by my count, God appeared to Abraham on seven separate occasions to confirm his promises. And I’m not talking about Abraham’s daily communion with the Lord, rather, I’m talking about those times when Abraham cried out and said, “O Lord, I’m really struggling here: where are you? Is the deal still on? Are the things you promised still going to come to pass?” Every time Abraham called out to God in this way, God drew near to him and spoke to him in familiar words but with a freshness of presence that assured Abraham that his promises were still valid and would most certainly come to pass in his time and way. And day after day, season after season, Abraham and his family learned through communion with God that they could trust in his promises, and in this way, they persevered in faith.

Beloved, people who live by faith go through difficult times. We fear. We question God. We doubt his promises. We cry. We throw fits. We grumble and complain. We fall into sin. We distance ourselves from God. But the way faith grows in the midst of all these things is through a daily relationship with the God of the promises. Faith doesn’t grow by trying to conjure up faith, rather, it grows by spending time with the God who is faithful. Remember, faith is trusting in the faithfulness of God by clinging to his words in the power of the Holy Spirit. God himself is the fountain of our faith.

So, if like Abraham and Sarah, you’re going through a painful or difficult time in your life right now, the call upon you today is not to try harder and do better, rather, the call upon you today is to spend time with your Father and express the fullness of your heart to him and allow him to speak to you and minister to you. Faith is a relational thing, and the more Abraham and his family got to know God, the less they needed tangible evidence that his promises would come to pass. The more they got to know God, the more they trusted him and patiently waited on him, and the same will be true for us as well.

Now, the author tells us beginning in verse 13 that these heroes of the faith saw God’s promises from a distance and welcomed them, or embraced them, as future-oriented things. And how did they know that these promises were so far off in the future? Simple: they asked God and he told them what they needed to know in his own time and in his own way. He didn’t answer all of their questions, but he answered their most important ones. And this is why the family who set out to find a homeland was content to live as strangers and resident-aliens in the place that came to be known as the Promised Land. This is why they were willing to camp out for decades, indeed generations, when they were more than wealthy enough to build houses and cultural infrastructure. They knew by faith that their hope was not in this world but that they were waiting for a heavenly city. And by faith they were willing to wait to inherit that city, even if it meant that generation after generation first had to die.

Since they clung so tightly to the promises of God through all the storms of life, God is not ashamed to be called their God. God is not ashamed to rise up and testify on their behalf and commend them for their faith in the hearing of all creation. Quite the opposite. God has vindicated their faith by preparing for them a city. A city for which they waited all their lives and for many generations. A city that God promised to them and slowly but surely revealed to them. Indeed, God has prepared for them that heavenly city of which it is said in Revelation 21:3, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them [he will live with them], and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” They will live with one another as Father to children and children to Father. They will be a family forever and ever, to the glory of God and the joy of their souls.

This was Abraham’s hope and his family’s hope: that they would be with God and his people in that great city where the glory of God is the sun and the moon, where the heart of God is the temple of worship, where the presence of God is the joy of the people, where the praise of God is the city’s song, where the love of God is the life pulse of the city, where the justice of God characterizes their lives together, where the grace of God forever wipes away their tears and suffering and dying and sin and evil, and where the reign of God will endure forever without opposition or competition.

Beloved, I don’t know how much our Father revealed to these precious patriarchs and matriarchs about this city, but I am confident that they knew enough to know that their hope was not in this world but in heaven. And I am confident that they had confidence in this hope because they trusted God by clinging to his specific words in the power of the Holy Spirit.

This is what it looks like to live by faith. It’s not always easy but it’s very simple. Again, living by faith is trusting in God by clinging to his promises in the power of the Holy Spirit. May God our Father teach us the way of Abraham and Sarah! May God our Father teach us to set our hope on a greater city than any on this earth, so that our eyes will be fully fixed on him and we will therefore be useful to him and others in this world.

Living by Faith: The Fruit of Sarah’s Faith

In last Wednesday’s post, we pondered the faith of Sarah who believed in the words of God and obeyed the commands of God despite the occasional doubt and deep pain she experienced along the way. This week I’m eager to ponder with you the fruit that came about because of Abraham’s and Sarah’s faith, fruit for which God is ultimately responsible.

Because Sarah lived by faith in the promises of God, a son was born to her at the ripe old age of ninety. And sons were born to him. And sons were born to them. And the nation of Israel came into being. And the kings and priests and prophets of God arose. And in due time Jesus Christ was born in the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And in due time Jesus sent his followers into the world to preach the good news that whoever believes in Jesus will not perish but have everlasting life. And in due time Jesus will finish the work of building his church so that one day some people from every tribe, tongue, and nation who’ve clung to Christ by faith will gather around his throne as one body, one temple, one bride, one nation, and one people of God. And there the mighty throng will worship the Lord forever in fulfillment of the words of the Lord to Abraham and Sarah.

O Beloved, may we have eyes to see and ears to hear today! Because Abraham and Sarah believed that he who promised is faithful, because they clung to the specific words of God, many others have believed and clung to his words as well, including us. I say this not to give glory to Abraham and Sarah but to give glory to the God who is faithful to his word.

It was God who spoke the promises. It was God who reiterated the promises. It was God who sustained Abraham and Sarah through the excruciatingly long process of waiting on his promises to be fulfilled. It was God who caused the miracle of birth to happen for people who were well past the time. It was God who caused that family and their descendants to prosper. It was God who caused Jesus to come and lay down his life and take it up again so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. It is God who will bring about the fullness of his purposes and promises to Abraham and Sarah all the way to the day when Jesus Christ returns and all things come to their appointed end.

Beloved, the story of Abraham and Sarah is ultimately about God. It’s about a God who speaks and makes promises and fulfills his promises, and what we learn about faith as we look at this story is that faith is trusting in God by clinging to his specific words, to his specific promises. Faith is not the product of fantasy, feelings, or foolishness; it’s the fruit of a soul that by grace believes what God has said and therefore clings to him who is forever faithful.

Living by Faith: The Faith of Sarah

As it was with Abraham, so it was with his precious bride, Sarah. The author of Hebrews could have said so many things about her life of faith but he focuses our attention on the conception of Isaac which took place when Sarah was eighty-nine years old. “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised” (Hebrews 11:11). This is not a fable, it’s a true story, and it was just as impossible then as it is now for an eighty-nine-year-old woman to become pregnant. But that’s exactly what happened by the grace of God because Sarah believed in the specific words of God. Sarah believed that he who promised is faithful. 

Sarah clung to the things God said, along with her husband, for some twenty-four years. She believed and prayed and did what she could to apply her faith. Sometimes she and Abraham made big mistakes because they thought they had to help God fulfill his word, and while we shouldn’t commend them for this, we can at least admire the fact that they took the words of God seriously. By God’s grace, when the time was full, Sarah’s persistent faith in the speech of God caused her to be with child at the age of eighty-nine and to bear a son at the age of ninety. Sarah’s persistent faith in the words of God led her to taste the joy of God as he fulfilled his promises in his own time and way. 

Now, those of you who know Sarah’s story well might object and say that Sarah isn’t the most stunning example of faith in the Bible, for after all, when the Lord appeared and told her at the age of eighty-nine that she would have a child within one year, she laughed. And she didn’t laugh for joy, rather, she laughed because she doubted the words of the Lord. She laughed because she was afraid to believe. She laughed because she had been living with the deep pain of one who waited long on the promises of God. As Solomon later wrote in Proverbs 13:12, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” and indeed Sarah’s heart was very sick. So again, you might object and say that we really shouldn’t look to Sarah as a model of faith but I would say two things in return. 

On the one hand, we must understand that Sarah’s laughter came after twenty-four years of actively clinging to and waiting on the promises of God, and sometimes living by faith is very painful. Sometimes waiting on the Lord is just plain excruciating. We believe in the Lord and in his words, but then the things we’ve been hoping for don’t come to pass, and they don’t come to pass, and they don’t come to pass. Eventually we get so discouraged and filled with pain that every reiteration of the promise feels like a knife piercing into our hearts. This is where Sarah was in her life and I think we need to have compassion toward her. 

When God, for the seventh time, promised that she would soon be with child, Sarah’s heart cried out, “Stop it, God, please stop it! I know you mean well but your words are killing me! Your words are hurting me! Please stop it!” This is what Sarah was feeling when she laughed—it wasn’t that she didn’t believe God, it was just that she hurt so bad, and who can blame her? Would you believe God if he told you, after so many years of waiting, that you would have a child at eighty-nine years old? I think we need to have compassion and give Sarah some space to vent. God did. 

On the other hand, despite the pain of faith that was there in Sarah’s life, she did walk in obedience to the promises of God. I don’t want to be inappropriate here, but what I mean is that Sarah did what was necessary for a woman to become pregnant and she did it in faith. I don’t know what her attitude was at the time and I don’t think it’s all that important, rather, what’s important is that she believed in God and took action on the basis of his promises. Sometimes that’s what genuine faith looks like. It acts despite the intensity of the pain. Beloved, not many eighty-nine-year-old women go to bed with their ninety-nine-year-old spouses at all, much less think that they’re going to be able to have intimacy, much less think that they’re going to become pregnant. But that’s what Sarah and Abraham did by faith not fantasy, feelings, or foolishness. That’s what they did by believing against all odds that God would do exactly what he said he would do. 

In the next post in this series I’m going to write about the fruit of Sarah’s faith, but for now I want to encourage you to join me in pondering her life with Abraham, the pain she experienced in waiting on God, and the faith she expressed by obeying God despite the pain. As we ponder these things, I pray that God will minister to our hearts and teach us what it means to live by faith in the faithfulness of God. 

Living by Faith: The Faith of Abraham

The author of Hebrews could have said so many things about Abraham and his life of faith, and therefore we need to understand that he focuses our attention on a few things because he wants us to see a pattern in his life that will teach us to live by faith. So first, in 11:8, he draws our attention to Abraham’s obedience. “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.” 

In Genesis 12:1-4, Moses writes, “Now the Lord said to Abram [notice that the words of God are in view here], ‘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.’ So [on the basis of the words of God] Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran” (emphasis mine). 

Notice, first of all, that the word of God spoken to Abraham is what caused him to leave everything familiar and go to a country he did not know. Indeed, Abraham didn’t even know the general location of that country. He didn’t even know what peoples lived there. He didn’t even know the general climate of the region. He didn’t know what natural resources were there. He knew nothing about that country. But he did know this: God had spoken and instructed him to pack up all of his possessions and gather everyone who was under his authority and walk with them for what ended up to be seven-hundred-fifty miles. Again, Abraham was willing to do this not because he had some flight of fantasy or because he was moved by some powerful emotion but simply because God had spoken very specific words to him and he believed those words. He believed the Lord. This is so important, Friends, because it teaches us that faith doesn’t spring out of nowhere but that faith emerges as we trust in the specific speech of God. Faith looks to God and clings to his words; this is how it operates. 

Now, when we think carefully about Genesis 12:1-4 we see that the Lord gave Abraham one command and several promises. The command is in verse 1 and it’s very simple: “Go!” Leave this place and go to some other place that I’ll identify later. The promises are found every time you read the words “I will,” and in the interest of time I won’t reiterate them for you. But please notice these promises because they become the content of faith for Abraham and his family after him for generations to come, in fact, down to our own day. God spoke, Abraham believed in the person and words of God, and by grace he lived his life accordingly. This is how faith operates. 

Turning our attention back to Hebrews 11, we see in verse 9 that in faith and obedience Abraham went out and took many with him. “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” (Hebrews 11:9). In other words, Abraham trusted in the words of God and lived his life accordingly. Once he arrived in the land of Canaan and the Lord told him to settle down there, he was so convinced by the truthfulness of the words of God that he was willing to live in tents from the age of seventy-five until the day of his death. Please let that sink in: we live in apartments and houses and relative luxury. Abraham and his family lived in tents for many decades because they believed the specific words of God spoken to him. 

Indeed, as the Bible says, Abraham essentially lived as a wanderer and resident-alien all the days of his life. He never had earthly roots in an earthly place like so many of us desire, and this was specifically because he believed in the promises of God and he “was looking forward [into the future, not to the present] for a city whose designer and builder was God” (11:10). The author doesn’t tell us what he means by this just yet, but he will soon enough.

For now, this is his point: Abraham heard, believed, and obeyed the words of God. This is what it means to live by faith and I pray that we’ll have ears to hear. I pray that we’ll seek God by his Word, listen and believe, and then follow in his ways by his power and grace. This is how faith operates.

Living by Faith: The Faith of Noah

In Hebrews 11:7, the author writes, “By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” God prophesied to Noah about things of which he had never heard, and what is more, things of which no one in existence had ever heard. God told Noah that a great judgment was to come upon the earth and that he should prepare an ark and get his family into that ark so that they might be saved from a great and mighty flood. Though everyone no doubt thought he was crazy, Noah most certainly was not crazy when he trusted God and did exactly what God instructed him to do. He was not crazy when he built that ark over so many years and prepared his family and warned the world of the judgment to come, even when they would not listen to his severe but loving prophecies. 

When the day came to board the ark, some of Noah’s family followed him while the world mocked him and eventually paid a great price for doing so. But as for Noah, he became an heir of that righteousness that comes, not by works, but by trusting in the will, words, and ways of God. Noah and his family were saved by faith because they believed that God was faithful and would bring about all he had prophesied and promised. And though they had to suffer for clinging to God by faith, it was worth it because every one of God’s words did indeed prove true. 

Therefore, Noah’s faith is not about Noah, it’s about God. He trusted in the faithfulness of God and found God to be faithful and now his life cries out to ours and says, “I bid you to trust in God as well, for he who promised is faithful. God is the hero of my life: trust in him, hope in him, cling to him.” This is the testimony of Noah to us today, and I pray that we’ll have ears to hear. I pray that we’ll believe in and live by the Word of God even when the world thinks our way of life is nonsense, even when the world shames us for believing, even when the world strikes out against us. In times like these, let us remember Noah and cling to our God and Father by believing in and living by his words!

Living by Faith: The Faith of Enoch

In Hebrews 11:5-6, the author writes, “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” The Bible doesn’t tell us much about Enoch but what it tells us is enough. Enoch walked with God and then he was no more because God took him up. He didn’t die like most of us, rather, God just took him home. 

My first pastor, Jim Wilson, used to say that God and Enoch were very close and one day, while they were out for a walk, the Lord put his arm around Enoch’s shoulder and said, “Son, we’re closer to my place than yours, so let’s just go home.” Whether or not it happened this way, the point is that Enoch was spared the pain and suffering of death by faith. By walking with God and trusting him day by day. 

Indeed, the thing to notice here about Enoch is that he was commended as being pleasing to God before he was taken up. Being taken up to God was but a fruit of something that already existed in his life, and in verse 6 we find out what that something was: his faith. It was deep and enduring trust in the faithfulness of God. And without faith it is absolutely impossible to please God because the person who bothers to draw near to him has to believe some very basic things about him, namely, that he exists and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. And the point is clear: this kind of faith marked Enoch’s life, and he’s not any different from us. He was just a man; he wasn’t a superhero. What makes him remarkable is his faith in the remarkable God. 

For this reason, Enoch’s faith is not about Enoch, it’s about God. He trusted in the faithfulness of God and found God to be faithful, and now his life cries out to ours and says, “I bid you to trust in God as well, for he who promised is faithful. God is the hero of my life: trust in him, hope in him, cling to him.” This is the testimony of Enoch to us today, and I pray that we’ll have ears to hear it. I pray that we’ll join him the joy and privilege of walking, talking, and trusting in God each day.