The following message was preached at Hillcrest Baptist Church on 24 July 2016.
Background
of Hebrews
This morning I have been given the privilege of opening the
Scriptures with you to meditate together on the “Heroes of the Faith” series
that finds its roots in Hebrews 11. If
you will turn in your Bibles to that chapter, we want to zero in on verses 13-16. So we are together in Hebrews 11:13-16.
There are a
few things that we’re after in this passage.
First, I want to know about the book of Hebrews. Some background information will serve us
well. The author of Hebrews is likely
the Apostle Paul or potentially Apollos, a 1st Century Alexandrian
Jewish Christian (from Egypt, and so we might have an
African author in the Bible!) who we meet in Ephesus around the year 52 AD and
in Corinth around the year 55 AD.
Regardless of the author’s identity – and the book is inconclusive in
identifying him – we find that he is deeply concerned by a movement of Jews
whereby they are abandoning Christianity and reverting back to Judaism. Evidence suggests that the book was written
sometime between 65 AD and 70 AD, but almost certainly before the latter date
and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans. Jewish Christians in the decades following
the death and resurrection of Christ had faced severe persecution from their
unconverted countrymen. They had been
ostracized from the community, pushed to the margins of society, attacked
verbally for following a murdered radical.
But this persecution had never been a bloody one until, in 60 AD, the
Roman Emperor Nero began a full-scale assault on Christianity, labeling the
followers of a crucified criminal as radicals, rebels, and anti-Roman.
There were various reasons why Christianity was misunderstood
and it followers were viewed as a threat to Roman rule. But perhaps the most powerful reason is
spelled out in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans. Chapter 10:9 says, “If you confess with your
mouth ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the
dead, you will be saved” (NASB). The
confession “Jesus is Lord” stood in powerful opposition to the Roman practice
of Emperor Worship, by which loyal citizens were to declare “Caesar is
Lord.” Christians were quickly viewed as
politically subversive and a growing threat to the unity of the Empire. They
refused to bow down to the idols of the surrounding culture. The time is coming when we will be required
to bow down to the idols of our culture.
They might be idols of money, sexuality, rights, youth, and technology. But we must be very careful here that we
resist institutional idols while still loving various individuals. Standing up for our faith does not give us
license to hate or revile people of other beliefs or persuasions. Thus, again we must insist on standing up to
the institutional forms of idolatry while still graciously loving those so
enslaved by them.
I mention all those things for one simple reason. These Jews were abandoning Christianity and
reverting back to Judaism, in some cases, to save their own lives. In other cases, they were rejecting Christ
because it had become extremely uncomfortable to follow him. They no longer received welcome in the Jewish
sector and they clearly did not belong to Rome.
They were strangers everywhere.
And they wanted a sense of belonging; they wanted to avoid the
persecution that Christians were facing.
They were attempting to jump out of the flames, as it were, because the
heat was becoming too intense.
Some of us might say, “Well, we would have made the same
decision. After all, Judaism and
Christianity are essentially the same thing, right? We find the roots of our faith in ancient
Judaism and a common ancestry in our Father Abraham.” But the essential difference between Judaism
and Christianity is the coming of the Messiah.
In Judaism, the faithful are still waiting for the Davidic King to come
and reign in Jerusalem. In Christianity,
the Davidic King has come and reigns in the hearts of those who enthrone
him. Furthermore, Jesus said, “Whoever
denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven”
(Matthew 10:33, ESV). So the difference
is crucial. Eternity hangs in the
balance. Everything rides on this one
issue. So the author of Hebrews is
insistent, as powerful in his persuasion as possible, that these Jews not
abandon the faith, but persevere despite various afflictions. And his main argument centers on the
supremacy of Christ (over Moses, the angels, the Law at Mount Sinai, the
mysterious Melchizedek, the Israelite priesthood under Aaron, the sacrificial
system, emphasizing that the New Covenant over which Jesus presides as
infinitely superior to the Old Covenant).
So Hebrews is a 45-minute-long sermon that calls for the perseverance of
the saints on the ground of the supremacy of Jesus Christ.
Second, I want to know about faith. What is it?
How do we get it? How do we use
it? The author exalts the supremacy of
Christ throughout the book as the foundation for holding fast in the
faith. Faith is how one perseveres. Faith is how one overcomes the world. Faith is the means by which we honor Christ,
recognizing him as the author and perfecter of our faith, in standing firm –
not denying him in the midst of fiery persecution. Faith is the mechanism by which we deny the
pleasures of the world, embrace suffering for the sake of Christ, look ahead to
the promised reward, and endure until the end.
In Hebrews 11, we find the repeated emphasis, “By faith… Abraham; By
faith… Jacob; By faith… Moses; By faith, By faith, By faith.” The author’s repetition clues us in… he is
supremely interested in faith, more so than the individuals he mentions.
This is similar to my intent this morning. I am less interested in the individuals of
the faith and more interested in the faith of each individual (your faith; my
faith). It is infinitely important
because we are told “without faith it is impossible to please God” (11:6). By faith we please God; we are commended by
God; we are accepted. And if we cannot
please God, we are eternally banished from his presence. So the issue of faith is a matter of eternal LIFE
& DEATH.
And finally, I want to focus on the two words in this passage
that help us understand faith: “seek” and “desire.” We are primarily after the inward, invisible
aspects of faith this morning and not primarily the outward and visible signs
of faith. We are looking into the heart
of the faithful saint of every generation and not at the outworking of faith
among particular individuals.
As a side note, let me say that I agree whole-heartedly with
the title of this sermon series, “The Heroes of the Faith.” There are biblical role-models that help us
with motivational and inspirational examples of mountain-moving faith. But there is an inherent danger in labeling
these men and women “heroes.” We are
tempted to separate out some exceptional believers and elevate them
unnecessarily. Then we label all other
believers as “ordinary” and imply that we will never attain to that
“extra-ordinary” faith of these biblical heroes. We whisper in the recesses of our hearts
“that kind of faith is for them, but I will never be like Abraham or
Moses. They were heroic and I am just
ordinary.”
This mindset results in one of two possible reactions. First, we look at the example of these
“heroes” and we want to be like them; we want to be great. So we start to work and work and work. We feel that if we did enough, we could be
like them. In the process of working
this hard, we forget that the struggle of the Christian life is to rest! We are to rest in the promises of God, rest
in the provision of God, and rest in the all-sufficiency of God’s grace. We are reminded that the Ten Commandments are
not essentially a “to-do” list for the people of God. Our relationship with God is not defined by
our performance. For at the very heart of
the Ten Commandments is the Sabbath command.
Exodus 20:8-11 says this: “Remember
the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six
days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of
the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your
daughter…” your servants or your work animals, or foreigners who are staying
with you (NASB).
And the purpose of the command is explicit in the
introduction. God says, “I am the Lord
your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
slavery” (Ex. 20:2, NASB). The essence
of the Sabbath command is to commemorate by a weekly reminder that God is not a
“slave-master” deity who demands the performance of his people and then
begrudgingly grants them a part of his glory.
No. He is the God who stoops to conquer. Islam says you must follow the Five Pillars
in this life and your performance will be weighed by Allah at the end of your
life. You must strive upward. Hinduism says that you must work to do good
in this life, that you might be reincarnated in a higher form in the next
life. This cycle repeats itself again
and again until followers reach nirvana.
Again, we are to climb upward toward glory. The “Noble Eightfold Path” of Buddhism is
similar, in that we are to reshape our thoughts and behaviors in order to
escape the corrupted physical world and attain spiritual liberation. Human effort is the ultimate means to
spiritual freedom. In all these
religions, our striving determines our ultimate fate.
Men and
women must struggle to scale the utmost heights, climbing, ascending,
scrambling up the impossible incline of personal merit.
But Christianity is the only religion in which the
transcendent deity comes down! God says,
“I have seen your afflictions, I have heard your cries, and I have come down to
rescue you.” The Nicene Creed, speaking
of Christ, affirms, “For us and for our salvation, he came down from
heaven.”
The other reaction to the heroes of the faith would be the
opposite extreme. One response says we
must “work, work, work” to be saintly.
The other says, “There’s no point in trying.” We accept that we will never be heroic; we
will never be like Abraham, Moses, or those gone before us. And the apathy stemming from this mindset is
equally dangerous. We come to care
little for personal holiness. We pay
little attention to devout obedience.
In the end, we must avoid both
extremes and find ourselves somewhere in the middle. So what’s our solution? The answer is found in defining faith.
Defining
Faith
We said above that we had three main goals for this
sermon. First, we wanted to understand
the overall structure of the book of Hebrews.
We had handled that issue pretty extensively.
But second, we had also wanted to know more about faith. There are innumerable passages in the Bible
about faith, including Hebrews 11. But I
want to go outside the immediate context briefly to establish an essential
point. Many of you will be able to quote
Ephesians 2:8-9 by heart. If you’ve been
in the AWANA program, you undoubtedly recognize these verses as comprising one
of the foundational passages for understanding salvation.
It says, “For by grace (feminine singular noun) you have been saved
through faith (feminine singular noun);
and that (neuter singular pronoun) not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God” (NASB).
And the question that so often came to my mind is this: What
is the gift of God? Which one is the
gift, grace or faith? Some people are
out there saying that grace is the gift of God and faith is your part. Have you heard them preaching this way? Grace is God’s part; faith is your part. God has blessed you with every blessing in
Christ (that’s grace). And you must
access those blessings through faith.
You access wealth through faith.
You access healing through faith.
You access health, wealth, prosperity, happiness; you access your best
life now by faith. Does that sound
familiar? I want you to know this
morning that this kind of teaching is heresy.
It is not biblical and it is dangerously erroneous. The Greek nouns “grace” and “faith” are both
feminine singular nouns, whereas the descriptive pronoun “this” is neuter. The Greek language is very consistent in
using feminine nouns with feminine pronouns and likewise, masculine nouns with
masculine pronouns.
Therefore, the word “this” (or, in some translations, “that”)
cannot describe either grace or faith, but must describe them both. It describes the process by which we are saved (grace through faith), acknowledging
both as the gift of God. In fact, this
is a common Greek construction used throughout the Bible. Where we see the neuter pronoun, we find that
it refers to the process. Now… what does
that mean? It means that faith is a gift
of God. Grace is God’s part; and faith
is God’s part. God grants each believer
a gift of faith, awakening his dead heart to respond to the gospel. Without the gift of God, no one is born
again; no one responds to the good news; no one finds Christ compelling,
glorious, or the greatest treasure of the human heart. No one.
Every believer receives the gift of faith. It is not that we conjure it up from within
us. Do you see what this does? There are no ordinary Christians. Everyone is given the gift of faith. Abraham was given faith. Moses was given faith. You and I are given the gift of faith.
We now
return to Hebrews 11 with a better understanding of faith.
Hebrews continues to develop a biblical definition of faith
built on the foundational understanding that Ephesians presents. The writer tells us that faith is the
“assurance” (Greek word is literally, “substance”) of things hoped for. Do you see that in Hebrews 11:1? Faith is the substance of things hoped for. There is a certainty, a substantial belief,
that something real awaits us. This is
primarily directed toward future realities, by which I mean the inheritance of
the saints, the resurrection and glorification of the believer, the return of
Christ, and the everlasting life of those who submit to him. We hope for these future things… and the
writer of Hebrews says that faith is the substance of that hope. It gives us certainty, assurance, and bold
conviction that what we have believed is real.
The immediate context informs our understanding here by way
of an illustration. 1st
Century Christians were being imprisoned for their faith (in some instances,
this was the best-case scenario). Other
Christians were then forced to make a risky decision. On the one hand, they could stay quiet and
relatively anonymous. The result would
be that their Christian brothers and sisters in jail might die from lack of
food or other provisions. You see, there
was no care for prisoners in those days.
You were left in deplorable conditions without food or water or proper
sanitation. You were dependent upon your
family members to feed you and keep you alive while you served your
sentence. So this was the first option. Stay quiet and let them die.
The second option would have been to step out, identify with
your Christian brothers and sisters in jail, and take care of them. But what happened to your home while you were
away visiting those prisoners? Your home
was looted and your property was seized.
So the second option was to take care of prisoners, thus identifying
yourself as a believer, and risk the plundering of your property. You would risk losing everything. Who would make that kind of decision? And Hebrews 10:34 tells us, “For you showed
sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property,
knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one”
(NASB). What does that mean? They were happy to have their homes plundered
because they were certain of something better.
They had a substantial assurance that their hope was grounded in
reality. In other words, they had
hope. And the substance of their hope
was the reality of heaven. You see, if
heaven is real, then the possessions of this world are fleeting, and the better
possession is the lasting one, the heavenly one. If we have homes in glory-land that outshine
the sun, then we need not hold tightly to the sheetrock and shingles that we
presently call home.
So faith is a gift of God to every believer. It is also the assurance that heaven is
real. There is substance to hope. There is a reality beyond the scope of our
vision that only the heart of faith perceives.
And next, Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is the “conviction
(Greek word is literally, “evidence”) of things not seen” (NASB). This is a further expansion of what we’ve
just been talking about. There is
something real beyond what our eyes can see.
But it is not all confined to the future. There are spiritual realities all around us
that the eyes of faith can see. Faith
provides the evidence of forgiveness of sin, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit,
the intercessory role of Christ as mediator between God and man, the access we
have to God through prayer. We cannot
see these present realities. But do you
have faith? If so, you have all the
evidence you need that these things are real.
So once again… faith is a gift of
God to every believer. It is the
assurance (or substance) that all things heavenly are real. And it is the evidence that God’s present
work in the lives of believers is also real.
We cannot see what we hope for, but we know it is substantial. We cannot see what is invisible, but we have
been given evidence of it through faith.
Exposition
of Hebrews 11:13-16
13These all died in faith, not having received the
things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having
acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14For people who speak thus make it
clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15If
they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would
have had opportunity to return. 16But
as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God
is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city
(ESV).
The first thing that I want us to notice this morning is that
we are looking into the heart of the faithful.
These are men and women being identified in Hebrews as those who have lived
and died in faith. In the immediate
context, we have several examples of the faithful acts that they
performed. But let us not miss this
subtle, yet supremely important, fact.
The outward actions were merely a reflection of an inward conviction.
The second thing is that they endured. They did not pass in and out of a lifestyle
of faith. No. They lived and died in faith. And this is the purpose of the writer of
Hebrews: that the believers of the middle 1st Century would endure,
would remain faithful in Christ until the end.
We will be told that the way to endure is to fix our eyes on those who
have walked faithfully in the past. And
of course, chapters 11 &12 pivot on that very axis, moving from the
secondary and tertiary examples of faith to the primary example… through the
secondary and tertiary heroes of the faith to the primary hero (I would dare
say here… the ONLY hero of the faith; the only one who lived in perfect
submission to God the Father and in complete dependence upon the Holy Spirit). The
writer of Hebrews would have us endure because Christ, our faithful High
Priest, endured until the end.
The third point that emerges from the text is the phrase “these
all died in faith.” We recognize that
this refers to the saints that have just been introduced to the original
hearers of the Hebrews sermon, such as Abel, Enoch, and Noah… but primarily
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The author
tells us that they “died in faith.” I
would not have us overlook such an important point, for there are actually two
kinds of death. The Bible speaks
powerfully about those who die in faith as those who have actually passed over
from death to life (see John 5). For
this group, death is merely a transition from life to life (physical life to
spiritual life). But there are those who
die apart from faith and are lost forever.
There is also a transition, but a horrifying one: from physical death to
spiritual death. Some will be eternally
joyous in the presence of God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) forever. And some will be eternally haunted in the
fierce self-imprisonment of the soul apart from God forever.
The fourth observation from the Hebrews passage is that they
died in faith without receiving the promises.
According to the author, what it means to die in faith is to die without
receiving the promises. He wants to tell
us that the promises of God are mostly for the future (for the Kingdom) and
only some of them are for now. The
promises of God are not mainly for this world.
For sure, there are some that we experience now… but the vast majority
of the promises are for the coming Kingdom.
These men and women continued to believe in God, who promised innumerable
descendants, a blessed Land of their own, a royal lineage, and even the
complete cosmic renewal that meant the reversal of the curses of Genesis 3
after the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden.
I think Abraham is chief character in view here… and you heard a great
sermon on Abraham a couple of weeks ago, if I’m not mistaken. So I only need to remind you that, at the end
of Sarah’s life, after she had died, Abraham had to haggle over the price of a
small field in the land that had promised to him as an eternal
inheritance. He was charged three times
what the land was worth (it was extortion, because the tribal leaders could see
the wealth of Abraham in terms of flocks and servants). So the man who owned the land was
cheated. Check out Genesis 23 for the
details, but that’s the point of the narrative.
And our astute author of Hebrews picks up on this. Abraham died without inheriting Canaan, with
only two sons (the older of which had been exiled to the desert), no royal
offspring, and the desperate plight of sin’s continual presence. Nothing of what had been promised to him was
delivered… except Isaac. And Abraham had
to wait 25 years for the one legitimate son (he was 75 when God promised… and
100 years old when the boy was born).
But notice that the text says they did not receive the THINGS
promised. Do you see that there? That’s really important. This says something to us about the character
of these Old Testament saints. They were
not interested in getting God’s gifts more than they were in getting God. They were faithful unto death, but had not
received God’s gifts. We are tempted so
often to be like this, aren’t we? We
think about the Kingdom and we say, though never so brazenly and openly as
this: “God, we don’t care about you, just give us your stuff.” But we do say it. We say, “The best part about heaven will be
seeing your loved ones again.”
WRONG. We say, “You can live your
best life now, inheriting all the gifts of God while only paying lip service to
the Giver.” WRONG. We treat God like a heavenly butler and
prayer like the intercom system. We ring
and say, “Hey, it’s getting a little too hot down here (police are dying,
terrorism is flourishing, chaos is reigning)… it’s getting a little too hot
down here, could you turn up the AC a little bit.” And then we go back to watching TV. Like the prodigal son of Luke 18, we want our
inheritance now. And like the older
brother, we want the Father’s riches so we can be happy with our friends. Jesus confronts both brothers as essentially
saying to the Father, “We don’t care about you, just give us your stuff and let
us live our own lives.”
But these saints in Hebrews 11 were not interested in getting
the Father’s stuff. How do I know? This part is implicit in the text of Hebrews
11 and yet it is not difficult to see.
Refer back to 11:6, which says, “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” (NASB).
This verse says that the faith that pleases God believes two things: (1)
God exists, and (2) God rewards those who seek him…WHO SEEK HIM. Him.
When we see that faithful saints have died without receiving the
promises of God, we think that God did not reward them. But the nuance in the text is highlighted in
the way we just read it. The reward is
God himself. He rewards, not primarily
with blessings and gifts and promises (though, to be sure, he rewards with
these things too)… but with himself. So
these men and women died without receiving the promises of God, but they
certainly received God himself. This is
the definition of dying in faith… to receive God. Heaven is heaven because God is there… not our
deceased relatives. Eternity will be
either blessed or damned on the basis of God’s presence… and not on any other
factor. Every other blessing flows from
the presence of God; so we seek him first, just as the faithful before us have
done.
The fifth point provides a picture of faith. It sees the promises from afar and welcomes
them from a distance. It looks toward the
promised life to come and recognizes the Kingdom as home. It stands on the surface of earth and gazes
homeward into realms of glory. Faith
says to our hearts that we belong there… not here. What also surfaces from the passage is the
connection between the end of verse 13 and the content of verse 14. So let’s look at those verses briefly. The main point the author wants us to see is
that all who live by faith – all who seek God and welcome the blessings of the
Kingdom from afar – are exiles in this world.
We are strangers, aliens, migrants, vagrants… we do not belong. What it means to live by faith (or to walk by
faith) is to live with such a substantial view of the Kingdom that our lives
are lived as if we were already there.
We get a picture of this in the Old Testament. Remember Daniel and the story of the lion’s
den? The whole conflict centered on
whether or not Daniel would bow down to the idols of his surrounding
culture. The Babylonian king had decreed
that all should bow when they heard the music playing, upon penalty of
death. But Daniel lived in Babylon as if
he were still in Jerusalem. He lived in
the midst of darkness still belonging to the kingdom of light.
And out of these verses comes one of our two key words this
morning: seeking. Seeking. Faith seeks.
It is not passive. It is not
content with a vision of this world. It
sees the world to which the soul belongs, if only from a distance, and
continues to seek it out. We see Christ
in a new way and we fall in love with what is out there – that distant treasure
in heaven. My sight has been altered so
dramatically that my “wants” change… my values change. Simple
test of your faith – how content are you in this world? What is the level of your “belonging” in this
world? How can we become less
comfortable? We want to live as though
we’re not at home here because we have had a shift in values. On this point, I cannot give a picture of
what it might mean to live according to the values of the Kingdom because it
will look different for each of you. The
temptation would be to say that wealth makes us ungodly… that we need to be
poor in order to live within Kingdom values.
But that’s simply not Biblical. There
are wonderful believers who are wealthy and so generous toward God and his
work. The issue is the heart… and only
the Spirit of God can do heart surgery.
So I will pray for each of you… and you can pray for me, that he will do
whatever surgery we need without any resistance.
The sixth point that we observe from the text highlights the
reason behind their refusal to go home.
They could have retreated to their comfortable surroundings and home
culture, but they did not. They had a
chance to go back, but they didn’t. Now
remember, the author is trying to persuade the Jewish community not to revert
to empty forms of worship. They were not
to return to Judaism; they were not to go back.
And he uses the example of the Patriarchs who did not return, who did
not go back, either. Why not? The answer brings us to our second key word:
Desire. Notice, “They desire a better
country… a heavenly one.” Remember that
we are looking into the heart here. The
heart of the hero seeks the far-off country and the promises reserved for the
future. And as it seeks, it desires one
over the other. It falls in love with
the coming Kingdom to such an extent that it desires the Kingdom more than
anything this world has to offer. Faith
desires. It is not simply a decision we
made when we trusted Christ. Faith
changes the way we feel; it changes the nature of our desiring and adjusts the
objects of our desires. The old hymn
goes like this: “Once earthly joy I craved, sought peace and rest. Now thee alone I seek, give what is
best.” This is the idea. Simple
test of your faith – how do you react to the state of affairs here in the
crumbling American Empire?
I have met numerous people who are just seething below the
surface because our country is being given to immigrants, being taken over by
terrorists, and overrun by godlessness.
We are ticked. But guess what –
we are not from here. We are not
actually Americans. Citizens of the
kingdom have been tasked with taking the Gospel to every corner of the
world. How are we doing with that? It’s time for a gut-check… all of us. We’ve had trouble meeting the lost where they
live. So God is bringing the lost to our
neighborhoods… pretty soon people of every tongue and tribe and nation will be
standing at our doorsteps. We’ve been
given the blessing of making relationships with the global community without
even needing a passport.
Instead of loving these desperately lost people, we’re
hopping mad that they would request halal beef in McDonald’s burgers, demand
the removal of the Ten Commandments from government buildings, petition for the
words “under God” to be omitted or replaced in the pledge of allegiance. We’re caught in the 1st Century
mindset of the Zealots (like Simon, the disciple of Christ, or the Maccabean revolutionaries
before him) that we need to fight to bring about the kingdom of God on
earth. But we must acknowledge that
America is not God’s country. According
to NT theology, Israel is not even God’s country either. Our God is not an ethnic or tribal
deity. He is the God of the universe and
his kingdom exists in the lives of those who bow in submission to King Jesus
and enthrone him as Lord of their hearts.
Our reaction to the crumbling American empire will likely show us the
desires of our hearts. Do we prefer the
comforts of the familiar, comfortable, visible surroundings, or the promises
that can only be welcomed from afar?
Genuine faith does not stop at a one-time decision to follow
Christ. It continues throughout our
whole lives as seeking the one to whom we belong and desiring him above all
else. That’s it. That’s the message we need to hear this
morning. A new life emerges from the
shadows of the former self that has different vision and radically altered
values. These values are so radical from
our former worldly values that it seems we’ve been made into a new person
entirely. We’ve been given new
citizenship… we’ve been transformed from within… we’ve been born again. Therefore,…
We are citizens of heaven stranded on the earth.
We are sons and daughters of Zion, living as exiles in
Babylon.
We are people of the light, walking in the midst of
encroaching darkness.
We are aliens and strangers on the earth, looking for the
city of the living God.
We do not belong in Jamestown.
We are not American citizens.
We belong to the kingdom of God. Therefore, let us reject the pleasures and
treasures of this world and seek, by faith, the kingdom of our Heavenly Father,
desiring him above all else.
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The amazing statement that sums up this passage says that God
is not ashamed to be called their God.
Now imagine this: the God who created the world and everything in it,
the God who called forth the universe from formlessness, the God from whom all beings
derive their existence and thus, the God to whom all beings necessarily and
rightfully belong… this God becomes our God.
He belongs to us. And he is not
ashamed to belong to us. There are two
reasons for this… one is highlighted by the word “therefore” and the other by
the word “for.” There is one reason that
precedes the verse and one that follows.
The one that follows says that God is not ashamed to be our God because
he has made a city for us. And the one
that comes before says that God is not ashamed to be our God because we desire
that city. He has made us a city and we
desire that city. Now, we pause to
reflect on what makes God unashamed to be called our God. Is it that we must enact some huge and
monumental undertaking? Is it that we
must be holy enough for him to notice and be proud? It is simply that we must desire him. That’s it.
For in desiring God, we glorify him above all else that we could desire.
So the closing question this morning is this: What is sitting
on the throne of your heart that you desire more than God? Maybe you can discern this by the way you use
your time, what you think about most often, how you spend your money, what you
prioritize in the brining up of your children.
Faith means to desire God above all else.
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