A True & Greater Faith – Part 2 (Jesus in Genesis #13)
Have you ever noticed how some movies save their best trick for the final scene? There is a literary technique that films and books sometimes employ that I like to call the bookend structure, though I learned this week some people call it the circular narrative. The opening scene introduces you to a character or a moment, and then you never return to it until the very end. But when you do come back, that first scene suddenly makes so much more sense because of everything you experienced in between.
If you have seen Saving Private Ryan, you have seen it done well. The film opens with an elderly man walking a path ahead of his somber family, and as he steps out from under the trees you realize he is in a military cemetery. He sees the rows of white crosses, buckles at the knees, and is overwhelmed. Then the story sweeps you away for two and a half hours, and you forget all about him until the final scene, when young Private Ryan’s face fades into the old man’s, and you understand: the whole movie was his memory, and the weight of it belongs to all the men who gave their lives to save his.
The author of Hebrews does the same thing. As we conclude our Jesus in Genesis series, which has really been a long walk through Hebrews 11, the author bookends his chapter. The themes he introduced in verse 1 come back around at the end. That is why I called this sermon “A True and Greater Faith, Part 2.” We started this series at the end of May with Part 1. Now the ending scene helps illuminate everything we heard at the beginning.
The Definition We Started With
Back in verse 1, the author defined faith this way: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” We combined that definition with the stories around it and summarized faith like this: the present confidence of a future reality substantiated by past events.
In other words, you can have confidence right now in who God is, what He is doing, and what He will do in your future, both here on earth and in eternity, because of what He has done in the past. As Christians, we look back and see the cross. We see the empty tomb. And what God has already done gives us peace as we move into a future we cannot see.
That definition inspires me. It also convicts me, because there are plenty of moments when I have not had present confidence, when I did not know what God was up to. But here at the end of the chapter, the bookend adds something the beginning could not: faith is beautiful, and faith is also painful. Sometimes faith inspires you with amazing things. Sometimes faith absolutely breaks you. We need both halves to have a proper understanding of it, because faith leads us to what God holds for His glory and for our good.
Our passage, Hebrews 11:32-40, gives us three simple points. Faith can carry us to amazing things. Faith can carry us through horrific things. And faith carries us to Christ together.
Time Would Fail Me
Starting in verse 32, you can almost hear the author realize how long his chapter is getting: “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.”
He could keep going, and he knows it. He could take us to the book of Judges and tell us about Gideon, the least of his clan, whom God used to defeat the Midianites. He could tell us about Barak, who was too afraid to lead until Deborah went with him, and God gave the victory anyway. Samson. David. Samuel. He does not have enough paper and ink.
Instead he gives us a list of what faith did: conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword. We know these stories. David conquering kingdoms and uniting Israel. Solomon asking God for wisdom instead of riches so he could lead with justice. Daniel, who would not stop praying when prayer was outlawed, thrown to hungry lions whose mouths God shut.
Faith carried these people to amazing things. And God has not retired.
The Tumor That Disappeared
When Leanne and I lived in Cedar Rapids, I served as a young adult pastor, and for several years I worked alongside a deacon named Brian. But I knew Brian before he was a deacon, because of something his family walked through.
One night Brian’s wife Joanna was giving their little daughter Brianna a bath. Afterward, Brianna went running down the hallway to get her pajamas, laughing the whole way, and as she turned into her bedroom Joanna thought she saw a small bump on her daughter’s back. That is strange, she thought. I just bathed her. How did I not see this?
Over the following weeks the bump grew, and it was hard. The doctors eventually concluded that Brianna had absorbed an undeveloped twin in the womb, and her blood vessels had connected to the mass and were feeding its growth. It is astonishingly rare, roughly once in every 500,000 live births. And it was happening right here in Iowa.
Because of all the blood vessels involved, the surgical team in Iowa City planned carefully. Scans, ultrasounds, markings on her body. On operating day they did one final scan, confirmed the plan, and rolled her into the OR. Leanne and I decided we needed to be with Brian and Joanna, so we drove down. When we arrived, Brian came to us and said, “Guys, something’s happened.”
They had opened Brianna up from the back, where the tumor was, and had to roll her over and close. The tumor was gone.
If you are skeptical, I do not blame you. Tumors do not just disappear in the half hour between an ultrasound and an incision. And honestly, you could ask why God did not take it away before the surgeon’s knife touched her; now the poor girl has a scar on the front and the back. But He did it. And that moment marked Brian and Joanna. It grew their faith, became part of Brian’s journey to becoming a deacon and a leader, and carried him into years of work with the American Cancer Society, where he had endless opportunities to tell his daughter’s story and give the glory to God.
Sometimes your faith carries you to something amazing. God can do it.
But I know that as some of you read that story, something else rises up in you: if God can do that, why doesn’t He do it for me? For my neighbor? For my kid? If He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, why not in my today?
That question is exactly where the author of Hebrews goes next.
The Verses We Would Rather Skip
Verse 35 begins with women receiving back their dead by resurrection, and then it turns: “Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”
You read that and think, you have got to be kidding me. The same God who stopped the mouths of lions allowed His people to be flogged, mocked, tortured, and murdered? Surely not. Right?
Wrong.
Sometimes when you put your faith in Christ, life gets better. I have watched faith radically change marriages for the good. I have watched addictions break. I have watched people so overwhelmed with blessing they hardly knew what to do with it. And I have also watched people put their faith in Christ and life got harder. This is why Jesus says in Luke 14 that anyone who wants to be His disciple must count the cost, like a builder who sits down first to see whether he has the money and the skills to finish the building. Sometimes the cost of following Jesus is overwhelming benefit. Sometimes counting the cost means realizing this might lead to hardship.
In his book Tortured for Christ, Richard Wurmbrand tells his story as a pastor in communist Romania. One Sunday morning, on his way to preach, he was arrested. He spent the next fourteen years in prison being tortured emotionally and physically. Most people in his situation would have abandoned their faith; it certainly looked like God had abandoned him. Not Richard. They took his Bible, so he recited the scriptures he had memorized. They would not let him preach to his church, so he found ways to preach to the prisoners around him. His faith carried him through the horror.
And his story is not unique. It was not unique to the Old Testament saints in verses 35 through 38, and it has not been unique since. Thousands upon thousands of Christians in Russia, China, Vietnam, and North Korea have gone to prison for naming Christ. People in nations where conversion is illegal have had a dream of the risen Savior saying “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” believed Him, and lost their families, their jobs, their countries, sometimes their lives.
And before we get too comfortable being glad we do not live there: it happens here. I can tell you about Andrew, who grew up in a cult, and when he realized the truth of Jesus and put his faith in Him, his family utterly rejected him and wanted nothing to do with him again.
So Why Risk It?
If faith might cost that much, why would we gamble on it?
Because your current circumstance is not your forever circumstance. You are in a present hardship, but He is not done. The only way you get to rejoice in a resurrection is by going through the grave. Whatever hardship you are facing, hold on, because on the other side is the glory and the joy. Give up in the middle and you miss it.
Let me put it plainly. If this world is all there is, then you have my permission: renounce your faith and be done with it. But if there is any possibility that what is written in Scripture is true, about God, about sin, about life, about eternity, then the dumbest thing you could do is give up on God. If there is no God, you have lost nothing. If there is, you gain everything.
Waiting for Us
That brings us to the last two verses, and I will admit they tripped me up this week. Verse 39: “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”
Notice the bookend again. Back in verse 2 the author said “by it the people of old received their commendation,” and here at the end they are “commended through their faith.” These people were honored. God did amazing things in them and through them. However, they did not receive what was promised.
Wait, you might say, verse 33 said they obtained promises. Some did. But so many of the people we studied all summer did not. Take Abraham, whom we spent the most weeks on. He was promised a mighty nation and a land. He saw the land but never occupied it. He saw a son born but never saw a nation. Neither did Isaac, nor Jacob, nor Jacob’s twelve sons. Even Moses, as Jake showed us last week, never entered the promised land. By faith they knew what God said would happen, and they died without receiving it.
Why would God do that? Because He had provided something better, and the author says something startling: better for us. God was not only writing those stories for their good and His glory. He was writing them for our good and His glory too. Their stories were always meant to reach us.
And the last phrase goes deeper still: “that apart from us they should not be made perfect.” James 1 tells us to count it joy when we go through trials, because through those hard things, losing a baby, losing a job, losing a loved one, holding on like Wurmbrand in that cell for fourteen years, God is at work in ways we cannot see. He is perfecting us. And who is the only person who ever lived perfect and complete? Jesus. That is who God is shaping us into. Sometimes it is the amazing thing that teaches us to praise Him. Sometimes it is the hard thing that He uses for our good and His glory.
But those Old Testament saints were not made perfect through their own faithful works. God had them wait, in a sense, for the ultimate fulfillment, so that they and we would be brought to Christ together, one people, one church.
Think about how the promises escalate. God promised Abraham a mighty nation; what is greater than becoming a mighty nation? Being part of the royal nation of God. He promised them land; what is greater than possessing land? Living in the land of the living God. He brought Noah through the flood; what is greater? Being brought out of the flood of sin through Christ. He brought Israel out of Egypt through the blood of a Passover lamb painted on the doorposts; now we are brought out of the Egypt of sin by the true Passover Lamb, whose blood is painted over the doorway of our hearts.
So do not settle for the things of this earth. Yes, it is great when God provides the job. Yes, it is great when the baby lives. And when your current circumstance does not seem to reflect His goodness, He is still good. He is still at work. He is perfecting you, and He will carry you to Christ, and He is going to do it with all of us together.
Why We Ended at the Table
No matter where you are in your walk with Christ, whether you are walking strong right now or you are struggling and doubting, run to Him. Put your faith in Him. It might lead you to some amazing things. It might be exactly what He uses to carry you through the horrific ones.
That is why we ended our gathering at the communion table. The wafer is the body of Christ broken for you; the juice represents the blood of Jesus shed for your sin. If you follow Jesus, that table is for you. And if you are not yet a follower of Jesus, we simply ask you to let the songs and the meditations of your heart lead you to seek Him. Ask Him: is this true? Did the Son of God really come to this earth, live a sinless life, and die in the sinner’s place on a cross? And if the Holy Spirit shows you it is true, then rather than taking the elements into yourself, let the Holy Spirit come live within you.
If you made that decision this Sunday, please let me know on a connection card. Not because we want check marks on a card, but because we want to help you live like Jesus lived and love like Jesus loved, knowing it could lead to amazing things, and knowing it might be exactly what God is doing in you now to carry you through whatever comes next.
