Bible Study

At any rate, we are ready to begin the Bible study tonight, so if you will please bow your heads. I'll ask God's blessing and we'll get started. Great God in heaven, Father, we bow before Your presence and are grateful to You for our calling, for Your blessing upon us, Father, that we have and we hold dear in our lives. As we begin the study tonight, we ask that Your Spirit would be here to guide what is spoken and the understanding that we walk away with tonight as we go into a very dense and important part of the Bible, the examples of faith that the book of Hebrews brings out to us. And, Father, help us all to think about faith. Help us all to think about how we walk before You and what we believe about You, Your promises, and Your hand in our lives. We commit this study into Your hands and we ask for Your blessing and do so in Christ's holy name. Amen. I appreciate Mr. Myers letting me go back into this topic and hopefully finish it up, or at least get it very close to being finished tonight. We started it on the last Bible study in August that we had just prior to the Feast of Tabernacles and only covered about 10 or 11 verses. So we will pick up from that point here tonight in Hebrews 11 and try to move it just a little bit further along. Just a little bit of a recap I want to mention as we get started here that I mentioned last time. We framed this study going ahead to chapter 12 and verse 1. And you might look at that again because our chapter breaks sometimes in the Bible try to truncate a thought. And this thought I think really finishes off chapter 11. Paul writes, Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight in the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. And that is critical, I think, to understanding. So if I could kind of draw a little bit of a cloud over here. However, this is meant and is at least the examples that these men and women that Paul talks about in Hebrews 11 are doing. They are a witness to us of faith and they are an example to us. In chapter 11 and verse 1, the framework for this faith is described again where it says, Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

So there is a substance to this faith and there is evidence.

These are the foundational concepts upon which Paul begins to build his explanation about faith, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And as we go through the book and the stories of the individuals here, obviously there are many things that are not seen upon which men and women have to act. And that is a big part of faith. We don't always see every consequence of every action that we are asked to take through obedience or even that we might take in disobedience, which is kind of the anti-faith. But we don't always see those consequences because of our inability at times to think beyond where we are in a moment. And that is, I think, undergirding this whole discussion because there is evidence, Paul says, of these things that are not always seen. And at least in the stories of Hebrews 11, there is the evidence of lives that are lived. Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, and all the others is the evidence that Paul gives us of people who acted as God instructed and created a substance upon which our hope is based. As we look at their lives, go back over their lives, and dig deeper and deeper and deeper. One thing we never want to take for granted, especially in a study like this with characters that are so familiar to us, is that we think we know everything there is to know about these individuals.

We've heard about Abraham, probably umpteen stories, sermons, read through those portions of Genesis as all the others. And perhaps we think that we have a firm grasp, and to one degree or the other we do. But I don't think we ever fully mind the depths of all their examples in a lifetime of a calling or of study and faith in regard to these individuals. I just don't. Those who get a chance to, in the ministry, teach through sermons, an instructor at ABC that may go over this material year after year after year, there's always something new to learn. And so, going back through this for all of us is very helpful and very instructive as we begin to construct this framework of faith that is here in front of us. We covered down through verse 10 last time as we began to talk about Abraham. So I'm not going to review any of these previous stories, but I do want to pick up with verse 11. And it's an appropriate place to pick up because it's the first woman in the story, if you look where it begins to talk about Sarah. By faith, Sarah. So the wife of Abraham, this fascinating lady that appears in the story along with the father of the faithful in the book of Genesis, is presented to us here. And let's just go ahead and look at it. It says, by faith, Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age because she judged him, meaning God, faithful, who had promised. Now, you remember the story of Sarah, how that Abraham was visited by some angels and was told that in his old age, and he was about 100. And so that means that Sarah was close. I was ferreting through the Scriptures there, does it really tell Sarah's age? And I couldn't find a reference to exactly what her age was, but you can pretty well imagine she was past the age of childbearing. Whatever that was at that particular time, it doesn't tell us. It could be that it was a little bit older than, let's say, a woman's early 40s today. So she was well past that age. And the Bible, Paul here being a discrete individual, decided not to reveal the woman's age to us here, but we can assume from the fact that she was beyond childbirth that she was up in years. And you know the story? She laughed. When Abraham trotted back up to the tent, and she was sitting back there, and she says, and he says, Honey, we're going to have another kid.

She laughed. Now, I know a lot of women who wouldn't laugh at that point in life. They would have said a few other choice words to the husband and or instructed him exactly what was not going to happen there. And that would have been it. But it says that she laughed out of disbelief, out of the incredulity that something like that could even happen, as she said, on past the age of bearing a child.

Now, the way it's written here in the New King James, it gives it a little ambiguity. But other translations, especially the NIV, I think, clears this up that Sarah didn't only by herself conceive. She did have to have Abraham as part of the process there to conceive the seed. And together, as I think a better translation would put this, Sarah herself received the power to do this. And so she became pregnant again. Of course, not before she and Abraham tried to work this out by her giving to Abraham Hagar to bear a son, which happened and that story there.

But that's not what's focused on here in Hebrews 11. Paul just focuses upon the righteous good parts of the stories of everyone. And that, in a sense, in the final distillation is what is important. And you might remember there's a verse a little bit further ahead. I believe it's verse 34 here in chapter 11, as it summarizes a number of other cases. And Paul says that regarding all these examples, out of weakness were made strong.

Out of weakness were made strong. The Bible never shirks in showing the weaknesses of most all of the heroes of the Bible, men and women. And so in this case, Sarah, she had a weakness. She didn't believe initially and circumstances showed that. But ultimately, she did come to believe and she was made strong. And that lesson, as we look at whether it's Abraham or Noah or Moses or any other example, should be one of encouragement. Because all of us are weak. None of us are born with faith. We don't begin our Christian journey with faith, strong faith, other than perhaps an initial seed of it that is there.

Faith is something that is built through a process of time. And indeed, out of our weakness, out of our mistakes, out of our stumbles, we are made strong. And that is, at the end of the story, what's most important. God forgives the weaknesses once we repent. God gives us the strength to overcome our weaknesses as we seek that, if it's wisdom.

And we ask Him for wisdom if it is a courage. To whatever it is that we need to deal with in our life, God gives that to us. And when He does, we are made stronger as a result.

Sarah was made strong enough to ultimately conceive a child and to bear Isaac, who was to be the child of promise. And in the story that flows from Abraham and Sarah, it is Isaac that is the child of promise. Abraham and Sarah had other children. Abraham had at least one other there by Hagar. But it was Isaac by whom God was going to pass on the promise that began with Abraham. And that is critical here as we look at that. So she really received the strength to lay down a foundation of descendants. And that is what is important, I think, about all of this with Sarah and her story as a woman and why she stands very, very tall in the Bible for women to look at and to have an example modeled after her.

It is in her supportive role to her husband in many ways, in spite of his weaknesses and hers. They forged a union and a marriage that endured for a long period of time and out of which came Isaac, ultimately Jacob and his children, especially the 12 sons of whom the nation of Israel was come. Sarah gave rise to a posterity of the immense magnitude through Isaac, the child of promise.

What started there not only were the physical promises, but ultimately even the spiritual promises that were fulfilled through Jesus Christ. It was an awesome start. And every one of these examples then are people who are looking toward that future that was ahead of them. Because in verse 12, it says, "'Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, they were both in that, were born as many the stars of the sky, and multitude innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore." And so those promises that were given to Abraham were fulfilled ultimately in that multiple times through the generations that they even saw or that came from them through Isaac and Jacob, but then ultimately through the Israelites that grew into a large nation.

And then as we know from the subsequent history of those promises and the tribes that ultimately that fulfillment to this part of the stars, like the sky and multitude, innumerable as the sand stretches on into our day to day. And quite frankly, we'll stretch even further and grow even more to fulfill what verse 12 tells us through the long period in the millennium after the return of Christ and into the great white throne judgment period as more and more individuals are ultimately added to the family of God. And all of that began with what started in Genesis 12 with the promise to Abraham and Abraham acting upon that.

This is the beginning of a story of a family that bears very heavily throughout the rest of the Bible and is the backbone upon which God began to work out His ultimate purpose of not only bringing many sons to glory, but doing that through a family structure.

And that's what should be remembered as we run through this. God's doing it through the story of a family. They're individuals of great stature. And if you look at Abraham and Sarah as parents who had to have faith, not only in what they did in the moment at the time, conceiving Isaac, raising Isaac, but also on beyond that, because as they no doubt thought about the statement of promise that God made to them about their progeny, their descendants, what kind of conversations must they have had to begin to think about their family and what would flow from their family? What mother and father does not sit down at some point and looking at their child or their children and ask such questions as well? What will become of him or her? What will become of our family? What will they be? How will they grow? Will they be successful? Will they be happy? Well-adjusted? Will they be faithful? Will they remain in the faith? We ask those questions, and I think that Abraham and Sarah asked those questions as well over Isaac. We watched him to grow and to wonder exactly what these promises would be there. Sarah's faith began in that moment when it was announced to her that she would bear a child, and that's when her parenting began. It began with a laugh. It began with a laugh. And as a wise old member that I used to have in my congregation told me once, you never stop being a parent. You never stop. It continues on. And children are the source of your greatest blessings and happiness and joy in life. And on the other hand, as Tevye said, they are also the source of the greatest sorrow and frustration and agony and pain. They're both. You can't have one without the other sometimes. You can have one in one and all in another. You can have it mixed. It's what it is. It's a journey. It's a trip. And it began here for Abraham and Sarah. Now let's move on to verse 13 because he begins to take a different tack here. He kind of has a pause. In referring back to all those in the previous 12 verses, Paul says, these all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them. They saw them afar off. These promises are always something that's in the future. They are the evidence. They are the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. There is this continual hope for a promise that is far off. But they embrace them and they confess that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

This concept of being a stranger and a pilgrim is a fascinating study all by itself in Scripture to be a pilgrim. A pilgrim is a unique individual.

When we think of a pilgrim, we usually think of Thanksgiving, turkeys and these people in black and white up in Massachusetts, having turkey dinner with the Indians, right? Pilgrims. Well, they were pilgrims. But the real story behind those pilgrims is a lot more than just the stereotype that we have at Thanksgiving. They were men and women who had left their homeland in England. They had gone to Holland and they had got on the Mayflower and they came to America. It was an arduous journey. They were seeking religious freedom. They were seeking the ability to worship God according to their conscience. It's a remarkable story that is always good to go back over, especially at Thanksgiving time, to get the real story of Thanksgiving. But the concept of a pilgrim from the Scriptures here, as it is described, is people who are always on the move. If you read on in verse 14, it says, For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland, and truly, if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had the opportunity to return. Pilgrims that left Holland on the Mayflower had no intention of ever turning that ship around and going back. They were going out across the Atlantic in a westerly direction and their goal was the New World. They got here. It was hard getting here. It was hard staying here. But there was no intention in their minds of ever turning back. Any of these individuals here, Noah, Abraham, and the others had no intention of going home. Abraham had left his home in Mesopotamia to go where God had told him to go. He had no intention of returning. But now He said they desire a better that is a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them. These pilgrims are going on always to a city. And this city is a concept in Hebrews that is brought out again in chapter 12. It is a city that even is not revealed in these pages. We have to go all the way really to the end of the book in Revelation, chapter 21, to get the full meaning and understanding of what this city is.

It's interesting to note something about a city as it is used here toward which individuals are moving. The ultimate city is a heavenly city, heavenly Jerusalem. It's eternal life. It's the kingdom of God. It is the spiritual family of God that ultimately God is going to bring together. It is embodied in the concept of a city. Ultimately, Revelation 21, the heavenly city that will come down here. But at that point in time, that is a spiritual reality. It's not a literal physical city. It is a spiritual reality at that point in the story that comes. And those who will be a part of that and enter into it and all through the meaning that is brought out there are going to be the family of God, spirit beings by that point who have made it to that point in obedience to God and in faith. And that's when these individuals who have confessed to be strangers in pilgrims and all between then and now and us and between us and the reality will be a part of.

A city in the ancient world was a civilized place of culture, such as it was. Anyone who did not live in a city was considered uncultured, uncivilized. In the Middle Ages, those who didn't live in cities were called pagans, not just because of maybe what they believed, but because they lived outside the city. That's what it meant. It's a little different term than the way that we use the term today. These individuals were moving toward a city that God had promised, and that city, the builder and maker says, is God. It is describing a spiritual journey of a group of people who always consider themselves strangers. The word, pilgrim, or stranger here, is xenos. You ever heard the word xenophobia, which is the fear of strangers or people who are not like us? About 36 years ago, my wife and I moved to Eastern Kentucky. We were xenos in Eastern Kentucky. Patsy is laughing here. She knows what I'm talking about. We were strangers because we weren't from Eastern Kentucky. If you know anything about Eastern Kentucky, Appalachia, that whole area, it's very clannish. It is very tight-knit families. And strangers are strangers. For two years, we were strangers, totally and completely.

Even in that part of the country, if you live outside the next county, you're a stranger. You're different. We felt that more than any place we ever lived. But as it is used here, a pilgrim and a stranger is someone who is, in a sense, always on the move toward this ultimate destination, never having arrived. And that is what a pilgrim is. It's someone who has never arrived. You and I are spiritual pilgrims, moving toward that city, moving toward God's kingdom, God's family. We haven't arrived yet. We keep putting one step in front of the other. And the only thing those steps back here represent are where we last were. And we are pointed always forward, always moving toward that city. Each year, each season of our life, never having arrived. That's why they died in faith, verse 13, not having received the promises, but they died in faith. And that is waiting for them. God has called their God and He has prepared a city for them. Now, let's go on to verse 17. Paul goes back to Abraham here. He said again, by faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises, offered up his only begotten son. So now he goes back where he had gone back, initially introduced Abraham as the man who obeyed and went out to where he was called to go out, back in verse 8, to a place where he would receive as an inheritance. Now he goes back and he goes, zeroes in on that singular story of the sacrifice of Isaac, the son of promise that he was given, who when he was tested, and he was tested, he offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son. You know, the greatest sacrifice that we could make is to give up something in that which is dearest to us and to put God first.

Jesus said, when asked about the commandments and the law, He said, there are two great commandments, to love God with all of your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself, to love God with all of your heart. Abraham was tested on whether or not he loved God with all of his heart. He was tested on that first great commandment there by God asking him to go and offer Isaac to give up those things that are dear to us. It's the greatest test that any of us could go through. And at this point, Abraham had to obey and he had to act solely on faith. All right? In this particular instance, he didn't see. He had no evidence and there was not much substance there. The son of his hope was Isaac. And he didn't have much evidence. And he was asked to go and to sacrifice Isaac and to give him up. What would we do? This is the one story in the Bible that causes a lot of people to stumble. That a God who would ask his faithful servant to sacrifice his son, so barbaric, why a modern mind just throws up their hands, walks away from that, says, I don't want anything to do with that God. I don't want to have anything to do with His book. I want nothing to do with any form of worship of a God like that in our modern mind. Abraham was not a modern mind. To us, he was ancient, although again, Abraham didn't get up every morning and say, it's good to be living in the ancient world. Glad to be here in 1900 B.C., whatever the year was. He didn't think that way. To him, his world was as modern as we think ours is today. And to be asked to do something like that, we have to understand, was not something far beyond the mind of a person in that period. He had walked away from that type of religion. But where he was raised, that was done as a part of religion on a regular basis. So it was not a foreign idea, but it was still hurt. It still pained him because he had come to see in his mind a different God than the ones that his fathers worshiped. But he was now being asked to do something and to give up Isaac in this case. And so, as it says, and as we know of the story, he moved in that direction. He said, of whom it was said in verse 18, and Isaac your seed shall be called, concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense. When you go back and you read the story, as I know many of you are already aware, back in Genesis 22, verse 5, when Abraham went to the location, that hill, and it was, it could be called a mountain, but if it's the site there that is now within Jerusalem under the Dome of the Rock, where the temple once stood, if that's where it was, which seems to be a reasonable conclusion, it was a steep hike from that probably the bottom of the valley up to the top of that rock to offer the sacrifice. But he said at that point that he said, me and my son, we will come back to you in verse 5 of Genesis 22.

Somehow, Abraham knew in his mind that he would come back with Isaac, whether or not it was as a resurrected body after he had killed him, or just to come back. He had faith that God was going to fulfill His promise through this one son, and he knew that it would be done. He didn't know how. So he had to act on faith. He had to obey, but he didn't have always the understanding. Faith, there are three elements that work in these stories. Faith, obedience, and understanding.

Faith is an action. Faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Sometimes that faith is acted upon, and obedience takes place with understanding. Sometimes there is no understanding until one acts on obedience, and understanding comes later because of obedience and what we learn. In many aspects of our walk with God and learning faith, we see that God says to do it, for instance, the Sabbath. We don't know how it's going to work out.

We don't know exactly even why until we begin to keep the Sabbath and see why it is to be a day of rest. And then how that God can fight whatever battles need to be fought for us. We sometimes have to act on a faith that doesn't have complete understanding, but we have to exercise faith and obedience. Two steps to get to the third. This is a case where Abraham had to exercise two steps to get to the third, where it seems he understood somehow it was going to happen, but you have to understand. As I think we do about this man, the agony that he had carrying his son up the hill and tying him down and even raising his hand with the instrument of death in his hand, and then finding it to be stopped. This understanding he didn't have at that juncture, but by acting on it and obeying, he came to understand. Faith ultimately did have its perfect work. This begins a compelling story. Then as Isaac is spared, as the son of promise, and Abraham knows that he's going to live, and who knows what relief Sarah must have had. As these two came back into the tent, into their camp later that day, and Isaac was still alive. Only a mother could fully appreciate what feeling must have been in Sarah's mind when she saw Isaac come back.

We might also try to imagine exactly what conversations they may have had before Abraham and Isaac did leave. There are struggles at times that go on to get to faith that are pretty hard and agonizing, painful, and sometimes just downright lonely.

But we have to do that. Now, what begins then with verse 20? He moves quickly off of this to Isaac, and he mentions by faith, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. Now, there's a story told essentially in one verse of Jacob and Esau. Missing is the deception of Jacob. Notice that Jacob is put first, then Esau. Missing as well is Esau selling his birthright and how it got to be where Jacob was first in line here. He did give blessings to both, as you know the story, but Jacob got the unique blessing that came from Abraham through Isaac. He got the promise that had been given to Abraham of a seed and of spiritual and physical blessings from that point. He got that.

But what you begin to see here with Isaac blessing Jacob and Esau is a path to the future. All right? Isaac lays his hands on his sons and his blindness, and he blesses them.

And the blessing has to do with things in the future.

That again, keep in mind, is how this story begins to move because in verse 21 it says, by faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff. So you have Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the three patriarchs of Israel blessing their children. And Jacob goes on to bless his 12 children as they gather around him. But we know that Jacob actually passed on the one blessing to Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. Jacob's name was put upon those two sons. And so they received a unique blessing that Genesis tells us about. But what I want us to think about and just to consider for a moment is this. In these three examples, Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, there is the example of a father blessing his children and passing on what he has most precious in his life. What are passed on are spiritual blessings. It's not sheep and cows and camels and donkeys and whatever these men had, which they had in abundance. It certainly was not land because they were not big landowners. They were kind of what we might call today sharecroppers, tenants. Remember, Abraham had to buy a burial place for his wife, Sarah. He didn't have a plot of land to plant her when she died. And Jacob wound up going down to Egypt ultimately. So what they passed on were the spiritual blessings. And the blessing went on to children and to grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren as it was passed on here. And Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived their lives in the moment in that they made certain decisions that did impact their immediate generation. Abraham sent his servant off to find a wife for Isaac, Rebekah. Jacob and Esau squabbled and Jacob, by deception, got the birthright. Then he had to flee. And then he got mixed up with his uncle Laban and the story of Leah and Rachel, and then his own sons causing him certain level of grief. All along the road here, there were people living in decisions that were being made in the moment that did impact them then and there, caused a great deal of grief. You can only imagine what Jacob agonized over with some of the actions of his sons like Simeon and Levi, Judah, and what they did as the story gives us there. But when it came down to the most important decisions in their life, they passed on a blessing. And it says by faith, they did this.

Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph. And he worshiped leaning on the staff, which really is a phrase meaning that he was in a worshipable, reverent position when he did that as he passed on that blessing. But he passed on this blessing in doing so. And he was thinking about these decisions that were going to be impacting their progeny. These high lofty spiritual blessings were passed on. There's something about a laying on of hands. We had the ceremony of the blessing of the children in the congregations this past Sabbath, according to our custom. And we ask a blessing upon our children, a spiritual blessing from God by the example that Christ gave. And in times and in ways, a father and a mother may do that with their own children in their life. I think that to a large degree, the way a husband and wife live their lives, godly examples to their children, they are passing on a blessing. And sometimes even that might be passed on by teaching. And the laying on of hands symbolizes a whole lifetime of instruction and example and teaching that is given to our children, to our grandchildren.

And these individuals had to look off into the future to be able to do that. That, I think, is the key. That is what is set up in the story of Hebrews 11. People looking into the future, grasping and seizing the concept of a city whose builder and maker is God. A city, a promise within that city that they all died not having received. And the idea of the kingdom of God and the ultimate spiritual blessing. That's what you and I have believed. And we live our lives with the evidence and the substance guiding us along the way. Having been passed on to us by physical parents in the church, spiritual parents, even without that, the whole congregation. And good examples of people in the congregation who help those who are spiritual orphans, if you will, that may come into the congregation all by themselves and mentored through examples and lives. They pass on that blessing too. And it is an endeavor that everyone has a part in. And so when we look at this, we're seeing individuals, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who when it came down to the most important decisions in their life, they did live beyond the moment.

Even though they had lived in the moment, sometimes imperfectly, at the end of their story, as Paul recounts it, they lived beyond the moment. We call that in-house here in the United Church of God, living beyond today. And that one is able to see beyond the future and see how actions done today impact to the positive our life in the future, and even future generations. It's a powerful story within just these two verses with all the stories that are behind them. In verse 22, it says, by faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and he gave instructions concerning his bones. One verse and that great story of Joseph. We don't even get the amazing Technicolor dreamcoat here in this reference.

You know, it's interesting what is said. He made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, which he foresaw according to the promise. And when he died, and he gave instructions concerning his bones. It's interesting. Here was the second in command of Egypt, Joseph, having done what he did to not only spare Egypt, but his own family by the divine wisdom he was given to interpret the dreams and then the managerial skill to manage the entire economy of Egypt to spare it as well as his own family. And what we're told is he wanted his bones taken out, which when you read the story in Exodus of the Israelites, they carried his bones out, and they carried them back to the land. And there they were buried with his fathers. Now, you know, just on a strictly human level, there's a homing device that's built into most of us as human beings that we ultimately do want to go home, don't we?

And if we can't go home to live there, maybe sometimes, you know, we've got a plot of land back there, a family cemetery or a family plot, and that's where we're going to go. That's where I'm going. I've got a plot next to my mom and dad. So my bones are going back to Missouri.

Whenever that time comes, they're not going to the promised land, but they're going... I've already given instruction concerning my bones, and that's about as morbid as we need to get here tonight, I guess. But again, that was an act of faith because of the promise that the land held and the promise that was given to his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather in that situation. Verse 23 picks up the story of Moses. Great story. Again, told in a thumbnail sketch, not all the details here, but what is pointed out here is interesting. By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his parents because they saw that he was a beautiful child, and they were not afraid of the king's command. Go back to Exodus. You remember that the Israelites had grown so large that Pharaoh felt threatened. And so he gave the command to kill the male Israelites, the firstborn, spare the women. The decree went out, and a great slaughter took place. Moses' parents saved him because he was a beautiful child, which means what it was, that he was a beautiful baby. Now, every baby is a beautiful baby, right? Especially if it's yours or your grandchild or whatever. But Moses was evidently an exceptionally beautiful child that drew the attention of his parents to him.

And as it triggered whatever other thoughts going on there, they said, this child is not going to die. This child, we will put our life on the line. So they had to act on faith when Moses was born. That is what talking about the parents' faith. They hid him, and they were not afraid of the king's command. Now, there must have been something in Moses' father and mother that was passed on through him in one sense genetically because they didn't raise him, and Pharaoh's daughter raised him. But ultimately, Moses had the same fearlessness about him too. Because it goes on. It says in verse 24, when he became of age, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ's greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he looked to the reward. And so as the story went along, and as we are told, Stephen says in Acts, when he's giving his story about the story of Israel, the deacon Stephen says that Moses was schooled in all of the wisdom of the Egyptians. And so having been raised in the court of the Pharaoh, by the daughter of the Pharaoh, royal daughter, he would have been exposed to everything that is there. A few years ago, we had the opportunity to go to Egypt on a tour after we had the Feast of Tabernacles in Jordan. And we spent about four days in Egypt. And we went down to, went up the Nile to the city of Karnak, where the kings lived during the Pharaohs, lived during this time. And the ruins of the Temple of Karnak are still there.

And I remember the tour guide telling us when we went through a portion of the Temple of Karnak, he pointed to a spot off on one side there that was kind of a raised platform that would have been in the original building, a large room. And he said, that's where the, that was where the School of Learning was held here in the court of the Pharaoh. And he said, because he knew we were Christian tourists, he said, that's where Moses would have been taught.

And tour guides tell you a lot of things when you get to some of those places over there that they know you want to hear. But at least for a moment, at a place, you kind of had a visualization of something there that may well have been. Who knows? I had no doubt that what we were walking, the ruins among which we were walking, Moses had walked along in its glory and had seen it in his day. No question about that. But he did have that wisdom. He had that ability there that he had to walk away from. He chose to suffer affliction with the people of God rather than enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. Egypt is obviously in the Bible a type of sin and a system that is antagonistic toward God. And yet it was the dominant culture of the ancient world of that time, the dominant power and culture in every way. And it was a lot for Moses to have walked away from, whatever he was. I don't know that Cecil B. DeMille tells us he's got it all right. If he was next in line to be the Pharaoh, it could very well have been. It's an interesting story to try to unravel to get to the real story there of Moses and his relationship to Pharaoh's daughter and to the Pharaoh and what it was that he could have become. But whatever he walked away from, it was something of substance to take his part along with his families, his heritage and the Israelites and become the leader that he did. Verse 27 tells us, he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured his seeing him who is invisible. Now this is probably in verse 27 referring to him fleeing into Midian after he killed the Egyptian prior to coming back as the leader of the Israelites to bring them out in the Exodus. But he said he didn't fear the wrath of the king, which means that one of the commentaries I was reading I think put it in a way that was probably right. It's not that he feared what might happen from the king. He had had a certain stature and he had killed another Egyptian, but he chose to leave rather than stand and make his fight at that point in time. He chose to withdraw. And that takes wisdom. That takes a certain bearing. And I think it does take a certain humility, or at least a latent humility for what Moses did at that point in faith. He said, this is not my time. And he left and he went to Midian. His time later came after God had revealed Himself to him and he went back then with his brother Aaron and did what he did. And then ultimately, you remember the story in Numbers. It says that Moses was the meekest man above all the others on the earth, which is quite a statement for Moses to have written. And I happened to subscribe to the teaching and the belief that he did write that. But it took humility to write that he was the most humble.

Take that one through. If I would write that, I know what you would say. If you would write that, we know what we would say about you. Well, who does he or she think that they are? But that's another story for another time. He indeed was a humble man. And I think it began right here when he forsook Egypt after that episode. But then he saw him who is invisible.

You should catch that phrase. He saw him who was invisible. And that perhaps is a telling thing for Moses here in that he saw the invisible God, which is what his subsequent life was all about. He above all got to see the backside of God on Mount Sinai. But as God gave instructions about building the tabernacle, the tent in the wilderness, there was to be no idols whatsoever, no representation of God in that system. And there was not. He had seen the backside of God in whatever that told him. But what we're told about Moses is that he acted because he knew that the invisible God, he saw him who is invisible. We have to see him who is invisible as well to us. We don't carry around a representation of our God. Around our neck, hanging on a keychain, put on a wall. We do not subscribe to any form of idolatry like that because of what the Bible teaches against that. But we do see the invisible God. How do you see the invisible God? What do you see of the invisible God in your life? Think that one through and you begin to get inside the mind of Moses and to understand exactly what he was. It says, by faith he kept the Passover. He who had been spared as a firstborn son now had to, by faith, believe that Israel would be spared while the firstborn of the Egyptians was not. And what that night told him in faith as well, the sprinkling of blood lest he who destroyed the firstborn should touch them. By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land whereas the Egyptians attempting to do so were drowned.

I was telling the class today, our ABC class, we were talking about the Word of God and the truth of the Bible and being the Word of God as one of our fundamental beliefs. And I mentioned about Moses and the fact that he did write the five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, the first five, and the theories that he didn't do it, which are a major part of biblical criticism. Moses was a singular genius in history. In many ways, we talk about Einstein in our day. We talk about Leonardo da Vinci in the medieval world. We talk about other geniuses in Augustine or whatever. Moses stands head and shoulders above them all. In my estimation, by what he did, what he knew, what he accomplished, and the stature that he did have, he is the one who is, he does hold an Old Testament anti-type of Jesus Christ. And Abraham is Abraham. Noah is Noah. Moses had to have been a genius to do what he did. And I think he was amply prepared in his life to accomplish that. Well, things move off here. And going on in verse 30, he begins to switch again. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days. And then he mentions another woman, in this case, Rahab. By faith, the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe when she received the spies with peace. Remember the story when the spies went to Jericho to check things out? Rahab encountered them, and she promised to help them if they would spare her and her family. But she was a harlot. And the word harlot here means exactly what it says. You can't scrub this word out and clean it up with something else. She was what she was. And as one of my favorite movies says, she had to do what she had to do. Don't hold it against her.

Whatever she was going through in that life at that time, she lived on a city wall.

The account there in Joshua tells us that she lived on the city wall, which meant she probably lived within the city. The walls of the city in those days were huge. As wide or wider than this room, wide enough to within the walls have a well-spaced spacious house. And it was part of the city as well as the defense of the city. And so she lived there, and she was the one by the way by which they were able to come in. She saw and knew something about this people coming out of Egypt. Their reputation had advanced ahead of them, and she was going to cast in her lot with them and turn her back on her world, which again is a major step. This is a woman, a defenseless woman, but a woman who was surviving by her own wiles, both physical and I think mental and perhaps even spiritual, because she did see something about the Israel and their God and their way that she joined herself to them. And she does figure in the lineage of Jesus Christ, remember. So she stopped being a harlot. She did it then. She turned her life around. But to get her to that point, to come out of that lifestyle was a major step. But I think it demonstrates a certain character in spite of her profession that was there, that when it came time for her to say, enough is enough, I'm going this direction. She had the guts and the character to do it, which should tell us that anyone, no matter what the lifestyle might be, because when you talk about this type of a lifestyle, for whatever reason a person gets into it, whatever reason, to be able to make a choice to act on faith to come out of it takes character, no matter how bad the character was to begin with.

And again, remember, out of weakness was made strong. Verse 34, and she was made strong. And she did what she did, and she became a part of the lineage of Jesus Christ. Major lesson there for us all. And then he begins to move on in a more generalized direction. He says, What more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell, of Gideon, and Berwick, and Samson, and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets. So in one verse, he passes over whole books of the Old Testament, such as with David and Samuel, that tell their story and their exploits. And it's the beginning of a summing up that Paul is going through. Who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, and stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword. Out of weakness were made strong, and became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens, and women received their dead, raised to life again. Several examples during the time of Elijah, and during the time of Christ, and the Acts of the Apostles, where women and others received their dead, raised to life. The Sisters of Lazarus, during the time of Christ, are an example there. Those are acts and works of faith. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. All of these who worked righteousness, were tortured, died not having received the promises.

They did not accept deliverance from whatever their life was, whatever the temptation may have been. They didn't take the easy way out. They chose to stay with God. We would say that today one chooses to stay with obedience to God, to stay in the church, to stay faithful to a calling, to continue to come to church, to be keeping the Sabbath, to obeying God, to even fellowshiping and being a part of the people of God, and not take an avenue and a pathway in a different direction. They did not accept deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. When you understand the full ramifications of what Revelation calls the first resurrection, that resurrection that is at the time of the seventh trump and the return of Jesus Christ, that is a better resurrection. It's the only resurrection to a spiritual, eternal life. Those in the second resurrection are to a physical life with a hope of eternal life. First resurrection is the only one to eternal life, to a spirit life. It is a better resurrection. It is a better resurrection for what Christ then will use those to do to live and reign with Him for a thousand years in that time called the millennium. And though they didn't probably call it the millennium, and maybe they didn't even go to the Feast of Tabernacles with the full understanding that we go today. They kept those feasts in a different way in their day with a different understanding, I should say. Not a fullness, I think, that we have. But that is counted to them.

Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, sawn in two. There's a tradition that Isaiah the prophet was sawn in two as a way by which he died. They wondered about in sheepskins and goatskins being destitute, afflicted, and tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth. Pretty bleak picture that Paul paints with a broad brush here at this point in the story to give us something to hold on to. As bleak as it might sound, because all of these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, the story of their life, the evidence of things not seen, and the substance of their story that we go back through, and many more that could have been told as Paul is saying here, they did not receive the promise in their lifetime. They saw it afar off, and they embraced it, and they believed it. He said, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.

Together, at the sounding of the seventh trump, as Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians, the living will not precede the dead, but together will ultimately join Christ in the air.

At that time of the resurrection, and in a moment, and in the twinkling of an eye, be changed.

Together, that perfection will take place. And so Paul gives us a cloud of witnesses right here.

And all these stories in chapter 11 to help us build hope. It's a continuing story that is a long story. It is not just the story of Israel and for Israel. It is not just the story for the Jews. Someone sent me a link to a recent BBC series on the history of the Jews. I've been watching that started over the weekend. It's fascinating. It's told by a Jew from a Jewish point of view. It is very insular. It's very dramatic. It's very well done. But they have their story. They sometimes tell just their story. They don't tell the entire story. And they would exclude you and I as Gentiles from that story. But as Paul, who himself was a Jew, was caused in the book of Hebrews to show how and why we are all together as part of this. And that we have the same lineage going back to Jacob and to Isaac and to Abraham. And he is our father, too. Then we are part of that story. And it is a story of hope. It's a long story of hope that begins, in a sense, began with Abel here at the beginning of the chapter, when he is the first of these individuals to act in faith. Through Abraham, through Moses, down to David and Jephthah and all the other unnamed individuals to give us this cloud of witnesses and to give us a story of hope on which to move on. So this is the stage that is transitioned to for chapters 12 and 13 to finish out the book, which is a fantastic part of the Bible, which will be carried on as we continue these stories or the study in the book of Hebrews and finish it out.