Verses 1-40
Chapter 11
11:1-3 Faith means
that we are certain of the things we hope for, convinced of the thing we
do not see. It was because of faith that the men of old time had their
record attested. It is by faith that we understand that the world was
fashioned by the word of God, so that what is seen came into being out
of what is unseen.
To the writer to the Hebrews faith is absolutely certain that
what it believes is true and that what it expects will come. It is not
the hope which looks forward with wistful longing; it is the hope which
looks forward with utter conviction. In the early days of persecution
they brought a humble Christian before the judges. He told them that
nothing they could do could shake him because he believed that, if he
was true to God, God would be true to him. "Do you really think," asked
the judge, "that the like of you will go to God and his glory?" "I do
not think," said the man, "I know." At one time Bunyan was tortured by
uncertainty. "Everyone doth think his own Religion rightest," he said,
"both Jews and Moors and Pagans; and how if all our Faith and Christ and
Scriptures should be but a 'Think so' too?" But when the light broke he
ran out crying, "Now I know! I know!" The Christian faith is a hope
that has turned to certainty.
This Christian hope is such that it dictates all a man's
conduct. He lives in it and he dies in it; and it is the possession of
it which makes him act as he does.
As Silesius sang:
"With Hope for pilgrim's stall I go,
And Patience is my travelling dress
Wherewith through earthly weal and woe,
I fare to everlastingness."
Moffatt distinguishes three directions in which the Christian hope operates.
(i) It is belief in God against the world. If we follow the
world's standards we may well have ease and comfort and prosperity; if
we follow God's standards we may well have pain and loss and
unpopularity. It is the conviction of the Christian that it is better to
suffer with God than to prosper with the world. In the book of Daniel,
Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego are confronted with the choice of
obeying Nebuchadnezzar and worshipping the king's image or obeying God
and entering the fiery furnace. Without hesitation they choose God (
Daniel 3:1-30
). When Bunyan was due for trial he said: "With God's comfort in my
poor soul, before I went down to the justices I begged of God that if I
might do more good by being at liberty than in prison, then I might be
set at liberty. But if not, his will be done." The Christian attitude is
that in terms of eternity it is better to stake everything on God than
to trust to the rewards of the world.
(ii) The Christian hope is belief in the spirit against the
senses. The senses say to a man: "Take what you can touch and taste and
handle and enjoy."
"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying."
The senses tell us to grasp the thing of the moment; the spirit
tells us that there is something far beyond that. The Christian
believes in the spirit rather than the senses.
(iii) The Christian hope is belief in the future against the
present. Long ago Epicurus said the chief end of life was pleasure. But
he did not mean what so many people think he meant. He insisted that we
must take the long view. The thing which is pleasant at the moment may
bring pain in the long run; the thing which hurts like fury at the
moment may bring joy in the long run. The Christian is certain that in
the long run no man can exile the truth for "great is truth, and in the
end she will prevail."
It looked as if his judges had eliminated Socrates and as if
Pilate had crushed Christ; but the verdict of the future reversed the
verdict of the moment. Fosdick somewhere says that Nero once condemned
Paul, but the years have passed on and the time has come when men call
their sons Paul and their dogs Nero.
It is easy to argue: "Why should I refuse the pleasure of the
moment for an uncertain future?" The Christian answer is that the future
is not uncertain because it belongs to God; and it is enough that God
has commanded and that God has promised.
The writer to the Hebrews goes on to say that it was precisely
because the great heroes of the faith lived on that principle that they
were approved by God. Every one of them refused what the world calls
greatness and staked everything on God--and history proved them right.
The writer to the Hebrews goes further. He says that it is an
act of faith to believe that God made this world and adds that the
things which are seen emerged from the things which are not seen. This
was aiming a blow at the current belief that God created the world out
of existing matter which, being necessarily imperfect, meant that from
the beginning this was an imperfect world. The writer to the Hebrews
insists that God did not work with existing material but created the
world from nothing. When he argued like this he was not interested in
the scientific side of the matter; he wanted to stress the fact that
this is God's world.
If we can grip that fact, two things follow. First, we will use
it as such. We will remember that everything in it is God's and will try
to use it as God would have us use it. Second, we will remember that,
even when it may not look like it, somehow God is in control. If we
believe that this is God's world then into our lives come a new sense of
responsibility and a new power of acceptance, for everything belongs to
God and all is in his hands.
11:4 It was by faith
that Abel offered to God a fuller sacrifice than Cain and so gained the
verdict of being a just man, for God himself witnessed to that fact on
the grounds of the gifts he brought: and although he died because of his
faith, he is still speaking to us.
The writer to the Hebrews begins his honour roll of faith with the name of Abel whose story is in
Genesis 4:1-15.
Cain tilled the ground and brought to God an offering of the fruits of
the ground; Abel was a flock-master and brought to God an offering from
his flocks. God preferred the gift of Abel to the gift of Cain who,
moved to bitter jealousy, murdered his brother and became an outcast
upon the earth. In the original, the meaning of the story is difficult.
There is no indication why God preferred the gift of Abel to the gift of
Cain. It may well be that the only offering which a man can properly
bring to God is his most precious possession. This is life itself, and
to the Hebrews blood always stood for life. We can well understand that,
because when the blood flows away, life ebbs away. On that principle
the only true sacrifice to God was a sacrifice of blood. Abel's
sacrifice was of a living creature, Cain's was not; therefore Abel's was
the more acceptable.
But it may well be that the writer to the Hebrews is thinking
not only of the story as it is in Genesis but also of the legends which
gathered round it in Jewish folk-lore. The Jews themselves found the
story puzzling and elaborated it in order to find a reason for God's
rejection of Cain and for Cain's murder of Abel. The earliest legend
tells how every time Eve bore children she bore twins, a boy and a girl,
and that they were given to each other as man and wife. In the case of
Abel and Cain, Adam tried to change this and planned to give the twin
sister of Cain to Abel. Cain was bitterly dissatisfied. To settle the
matter, Adam said to them: "Go, my sons, sacrifice to the Lord; and he
whose sacrifice is accepted shall have the young girl. Take each of you
offerings in your hand and go, sacrifice to the Lord and he will
decide." So Abel, who was a shepherd, took his best lamb to the place of
sacrifice; but Cain, who was a tiller of the ground, took the poorest
sheaf of corn he could find and laid it on the altar. Whereupon fire
descended from heaven and consumed Abel's offering so that not even the
cinders were left while Cain's was left untouched. Adam then gave the
girl to Abel and Cain was sorely vexed. One day Abel was asleep upon a
mountain; and Cain came upon him and took a stone and crushed his head.
Then he threw the dead body on his back and carried it about because he
did not know what to do with it. He saw two crows fighting and one
killed the other, then dug a hole with its beak and buried it. Cain
said: "I have not the sense of this bird. I, too, will lay my brother in
the ground," and he did so.
The Jews had still another story to explain the first murder.
Cain and Abel could not agree as to what they should possess. So Abel
devised a scheme whereby they might bring an end to contention. Cain
took the earth and everything stationary; Abel took everything moveable.
But in Cain's heart there was still bitter envy. One day he said to his
brother: "Remove thy foot; thou standest on my property; the plain is
mine." Abel ran to the hills but Cain pursued him, saying: "The hills
are mine." Abel took refuge on the mountains but Cain still pursued him
saying: "The mountains, too, are mine." And so, in his envy, he hunted
his brother until he killed him.
At the back of this story lie two great truths. First, there is
envy. Even the Greeks saw its horror. Demosthenes said: "Envy is the
sign of a nature that is altogether evil." Euripides said: "Envy is the
greatest of all diseases among men." There was a Greek proverb which
said: "Envy has no place in the choir of God." Envy leads to bitterness;
bitterness to hatred; and hatred to murder. Envy is that poison which
can poison all life and kill all goodness. Second, there is this strange
and eerie thought that Cain had discovered a new sin. One of the old
Greek fathers said: "Up to this time no man had died so that Cain should
know how to kill. The devil instructed him in this in a dream." It was
Cain who introduced murder into the world. There is condemnation for the
sinner; but there is still greater condemnation for the man who teaches
another to sin. Such a man, even as Cain was, is banished from the face
of God.
So the writer to the Hebrews says: "Although he died for his
faith, he is still speaking to us." Moffatt finely comments: "Death is
never the last word in the life of a righteous man." When a man leaves
this world, he leaves something in it. He may leave something which will
grow and spread like a canker; or he may leave something fine which
blossoms and flourishes without end. He leaves an influence of good or
ill; every one when he dies still speaks. May God grant to us to leave
behind not a germ of evil but a lovely thing in which the lives of those
who come afterwards will find blessing.
11:5-6 It was by faith
that Enoch was transferred from this to the other life so that he did
not die but passed from men's sight, because God took him from one life
to the other. For, before this change came to him it was testified that
he pleased God. Apart from faith it is impossible to please God, for he
who approaches God must believe that God is, and that he is the rewarder
of those who spend their lives seeking him.
In the Old Testament the life of Enoch is summed up in one
sentence: "And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him" (
Genesis 5:24).
Many legends gathered around his name. He was said to be the first man
skilled in tailoring and in sewing and that he instructed men how to cut
out skins in the proper shape to make garments. He was said to be the
first to teach men to make shoes to protect their feet. He was said to
be the first to put pen to paper and instruct men from books.
Legend tells that with Enoch the Angel of Death made a compact
of friendship. Enoch made three requests of him. First, to die and come
back again so that he might know what death was like. Second, to see the
abode of the wicked so that he might know what the punishment of the
evil was like. Both these requests were granted. His third request was
to be permitted to see into Paradise so that he might see what the
blessed enjoyed. This also was granted, but Enoch, having been granted a
glimpse of Paradise, never came back to earth again.
The simple statement in Genesis has a kind of mystical quality.
In itself it does not say how Enoch died. It simply says that in God's
good time he passed serenely from this earth. There were two specially
famous interpretations of the death of Enoch.
(i) The Book of Wisdom (
Wisdom of Solomon 4:10
ff.) has the idea that God took Enoch to himself when he was still
young to save him from the infection of this world. "He was taken away
while he lived amidst sinners.... He was snatched away lest evil should
change his understanding or guile deceive his soul." This is another way
of putting the famous classical saying: "Whom the gods love die young."
It looks on death as a reward. It means that God loved Enoch so much
that he removed him before age and degeneration descended hand in hand
upon him.
(ii) Philo, the great Alexandrian Jewish interpreter, saw in
Enoch the great pattern of repentance. He was changed by repentance from
the life that is apart from God to the life that walks with God.
The writer to the Hebrews reads into the simple statement of the
Old Testament passage the idea that Enoch did not die at all but that
in some mystic way God took him to himself. But surely the meaning is
much simpler. In a wicked and corrupt generation Enoch walked with God
and so when the end came to him, there was no shock or interruption.
Death merely took him into God's nearer presence. Because he walked with
God when other men were walking away from him, he daily came nearer to
him and death was no more than the last step that took him into the very
presence of that God with whom he had always walked.
We cannot think of Enoch without thinking of the different
attitudes to death. The sheer serenity of the Old Testament statement,
so simple and yet so moving, points forward to the Christian attitude.
(i) There are those who have thought of death as mysterious and inexplicable. William Morris wrote:
"Death have we hated, knowing not what it meant."
Bacon said: "Men fear death as children fear to go in the
dark." To some, it has always been the terrifying unknown giving rise to
what Hamlet called "that dread of something after death."
(ii) There are those who simply have seen in death the one
inevitable thing in life. Shakespeare makes Caesar say in Julius Caesar:
"It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come."
And in Cymbeline he writes with a strange fatalistic beauty:
"Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta'en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
"Fear no more the frown o' the great,
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke:
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, Teaming, physic must
All follow this, and come to dust.
"Fear not more the lightning-flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finish'd joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust."
Death is inevitable and there is nothing to be gained by struggling against it.
(iii) Some have seen in death sheer extinction. It was that
loveliest of Roman poets, Catullus, who pled with Lesbia for her kisses
because the night was coming:
"Lesbia mine, let's live and love!
Give no doit for tattle of
Crabbed old censorious men;
Suns may set and rise again,
But when our short day takes flight
Sleep we must one endless night."
To die was to go out to nothingness and be lost in an eternal sleep.
(iv) Some have seen in death the supreme terror and the
unmitigated evil. In Measure for Measure Shakespeare makes Claudio say:
"Death is a fearful thing.
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world....
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death."
To Claudio the worst and bitterest of life was to be preferred to death. W. S. Gilbert wrote in The Yeomen of the Guard:
"Is life a boon?
If so, it must befall
That Death, whene'er he call,
Must call too soon."
Robert Burns wrote of the early death of Highland Mary:
"But oh! fell death's untimely frost
That nipt my flower sae early!"
There are those who have seen only the grim terroriser and despoiler in death.
(v) Many have seen in death release. Weary of the world and of
life, they have seen it as escape. Keats said that he had been "half in
love with easeful death." Shakespeare in one of his sonnets cried:
"Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry."
Nicholas Rowe wrote: "Death is the privilege of human nature."
The Stoics held that the gods had given men the gift of life and the
still greater gift of taking their own lives away. Swinburne best of all
caught this mood of world-weariness in The Garden of Proserpine:
"From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever,
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light;
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight;
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night."
There are those for whom death is good because it is the end of life.
(vi) Some have seen in death transition--not an end, but a stage
on the way; not a door closing, but a door opening. Longfellow wrote:
"There is no Death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call death."
George Meredith wrote:
"Death met I too,
And saw the dawn glow through."
To such death has always been a call to come up higher, a crossing from the dark to the dawn.
(vii) Some have seen death as an adventure. As Barrie made Peter
Pan say: "To die will be an awfully big adventure." Charles Frohman,
who had known Barrie so well, went down with the Lusitania in that
disaster of 7 May 1915. His last words were: "Why fear death? It is the
most beautiful adventure in life." An old scholar who was dying turned
to his friends: "Do you realize," he said, "that in an hour or two I
will know the answers for which we have been searching all our lives?"
To such death is the adventure of supreme discovery.
(viii) Above all, there are those, like Enoch, who have seen
death as an entering into the nearer presence of him with whom they have
lived for so long. If we have lived with Christ, we may die in the
certainty that we go to be for ever with our Lord.
In this passage the writer to the Hebrews lays down in addition
the two great foundation acts of faith of the Christian life.
(i) We must believe in God. There can be no such thing as
religion without that belief. Religion began when men became aware of
God; it ceases when they live a life in which for them God does not
exist.
(ii) We must believe that God is interested. As the writer to
the Hebrews put it, we must believe that God is the rewarder of those
who diligently seek him.
There were those in the ancient world who believed in the gods,
but they believed that they lived out in the spaces between the worlds,
entirely unaware of these strange animals called men. "God," said
Epicurus as a first principle, "does nothing." There are many who
believe in God but do not believe that he cares. It has been said that
no astronomer can be an atheist; but it has also been said that an
astronomer is bound to believe that God is a mathematician. But a God
who is a mathematician need not care. Men have called God The First
Principle, The First Cause, The Creative Energy, The Life Force. These
are the statements of men who believe in God, but not in a God who
cares.
When Marcus Aurelius was asked why he believed in the gods, he
said: "True, the gods are not discernible by human sight, but neither
have I seen my soul and yet I honour it. So then I believe in the gods
and I honour them, because again and again I have experienced their
power." Not logic but life convinced him of the gods. Seneca said: "The
first essential of the worship of the gods is to believe that there are
gods...and to know those gods who preside over the world, because they
control the universe with their power, and work for the safety of the
whole human race, while they still remember each individual person."
Epictetus said: "You must know that the most important thing in
reverence for the gods is to have right beliefs that they are and that
they order all things righteously and well."
We must believe not only that God exists but also that he cares
and is involved in the human situation. For the Christian that is easy,
for God came to the world in Jesus Christ to tell us how much he cares.
11:7 It was by faith
that Noah, when he had been informed by God about things that were still
unseen, reverently accepted the message and built an ark to preserve
his household in safety. Through that faith he passed judgment on the
world and became an heir of the righteousness which is the result of
faith.
The Old Testament story of Noah is in
Genesis 6:1-22;
Genesis 7:1-24;
Genesis 8:1-22.
The earth was so wicked that God decided that there remained nothing to
do but destroy it. He told Noah his purpose of judgment and instructed
him to build an ark in which he and his family and the representatives
of the animal creation might be saved. With reverence and obedience Noah
took God at his word and so in the destruction of the world he was
preserved.
As is usually the case, legend adds many a detail to this story.
The writer to the Hebrews must have known these legends and they must
have helped to add vividness to the picture in his mind. One story tells
how Noah was in doubt as to the shape he was to give the ark. God
revealed to him that it was to be modelled on a bird's belly and was to
be constructed of teak wood. Noah planted a teak tree and in twenty
years it grew to such a size that out of it he was able to build the
entire ark. Another story tells that, after he had been forewarned by
God, Noah made a bell of plane wood, about five feet high, and that he
sounded it every day, morning, noon and evening. When he was asked why,
he answered: "To warn you that God will send a deluge to destroy you
all." Another story tells that, when Noah was building the ark, the
people laughed at him and counted him mad. But he said to them: "Though
you rail at me now, the time will come when I shall rail at you; for you
will learn to your cost who it is that punishes the wicked in this
world and reserves for them a further punishment in the world to come."
Even more than Abel and Enoch, Noah stands out as a man of faith.
(i) Noah took God at his word. He believed the message which God
sent him. God's message might look foolishness at the moment; but Noah
believed it and staked everything on it. Obviously if he was going to
accept that word of God, he had to lay aside his normal activities and
concentrate on doing what his message commanded. Noah's life was one
continued and concentrated preparation for what God had said would come.
The choice comes to every man either to listen to or to
disregard the message of God. He may live as if that message is of no
importance or as if it is the most important thing in the world. We may
put it in another way--Noah was the man who heeded the warning of God;
and because he heeded he was saved from disaster. God's warning comes to
us in many ways. It may come from conscience; it may come from some
direct word of God to our souls; it may come from the advice or the
rebuke of some good and godly man; it may leap out at us from God's Book
or challenge us in some sermon. Wherever it comes from, we neglect it
at our peril.
(ii) Noah was not deterred by the mockery of others. When the
sun was shining, his conduct must have looked like that of a fool. Who
ever in his senses built a great hulk of a ship on dry land far from the
sea? The man who takes God's word may often have to adopt a course of
action which looks like madness.
We have only to think of the early days of the Church. One man
meets a friend. He says to him: "I have decided to become a Christian."
The other man replies: "Do you know what happens to Christians? They are
outlaws. They are imprisoned, thrown to the lions, crucified, burned."
The first man replies: "I know." And the other says despairingly: "You
must be mad."
It is one of the hardest challenges of Christianity that we have
to be prepared to be sometimes a fool for Jesus' sake. We should never
forget that there was a day when his friends came and tried to get him
to go home because they thought that he was mad. The wisdom of God is so
often foolishness with men.
(iii) Noah's faith was a judgment on others. That is why, at
least in one sense, it is dangerous to be a Christian. It is not that
the Christian is self-righteous; it is not that he is censorious; it is
not that he goes about finding fault with other people; it is not that
he says: "I told you so." It often happens that simply by being himself
the Christian passes judgment on other people. Alcibiades that brilliant
but wild young man of Athens used to say to Socrates: "Socrates, I hate
you, for every time I meet you, you show me what I am." One of the
finest men who ever lived in Athens was Aristides, who was called "the
just." But they voted to banish him. One man, asked why he had so voted,
answered: "Because I am tired of hearing Aristides called 'the just.'"
There is danger in goodness, for in its light evil stands condemned.
(iv) Noah was righteous through faith. It so happens that he is the first man in the Bible to be called dikaios (
Greek #1342), righteous (
Genesis 6:9).
His goodness consisted in the fact that he took God at his word. When
other men broke God's commandments, Noah kept them; when other men were
deaf to God's warnings, Noah listened to them; when other men laughed at
God, Noah reverenced him. It has been said of Noah that "he threw the
dark scepticism of the world into relief against his own shining faith
in God." In an age when men disregarded God, for Noah he was the supreme
reality in the world.
11:8-10 It was by
faith that Abraham, when he was caned, showed his obedience by going out
to a place which he was going to receive as an inheritance, and he went
out not knowing where he was to go. It was by faith that he sojourned
in the land that had been promised to him, as though it had been a
foreign land, living in tents, in the same way as did Isaac and Jacob,
who were his coheirs in the promise of it. For he was waiting for the
city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
The call of Abraham is told with dramatic simplicity in
Genesis 12:1.
Jewish and eastern legends gathered largely round Abraham's name and
some of them must have been known to the writer to the Hebrews. The
legends tell how Abraham was the son of Terah, commander of the armies
of Nimrod. When Abraham was born a very vivid star appeared in the sky
and seemed to obliterate the others. Nimrod sought to murder the infant
but Abraham was concealed in a cave and his life saved. It was in that
cave the first vision of God came to him. When he was a youth he came
out of the cave and stood looking across the face of the desert. The sun
rose in all its glory and Abraham said: "Surely the sun is God, the
Creator!" So he knelt down and worshipped the sun. But when evening
came, the sun sank in the west and Abraham said: "No! the author of
creation cannot set!" The moon arose in the east and the stars came out.
Then Abraham said: "The moon must be God and the stars his host!" So he
knelt down and adored the moon. But after the night was passed, the
moon sank and the sun rose again and Abraham said: "Truly these heavenly
bodies are no gods, for they obey law; I will worship him who imposed
the law upon them."
The Arabs have a different legend. They tell how Abraham saw
many flocks and herds and said to his mother: "Who is the lord of
these?" She answered: "Your father, Terah." "And who is the lord of
Terah?" the lad Abraham asked. "Nimrod," said his mother. "And who is
the lord of Nimrod?" asked Abraham. His mother bade him be quiet and not
push questions too far; but already Abraham's thoughts were reaching
out to him who is the God of all. The legends go on to tell that Terah
not only worshipped twelve idols, one for each of the months, but was
also a manufacturer of idols. One day Abraham was left in charge of the
shop. People came in to buy idols. Abraham would ask them how old they
were and they would answer perhaps fifty or sixty years of age. "Woe to a
man of such an age," said Abraham, "who adores the work of one day!" A
strong and hale man of seventy came in. Abraham asked him his age and
then said: "You fool to adore a god who is younger than yourself!" A
woman came in with a dish of meat for the gods. Abraham took a stick and
smashed all the idols but one, in whose hands he set the stick he had
used. Terah returned and was angry. Abraham said: "My father, a woman
brought this dish of meat for your gods; they all wanted to have it and
the strongest knocked the heads off the rest, lest they should eat it
all." Terah said: "That is impossible for they are made of wood and
stone." And Abraham answered: "Let thine own ear hear what thine own
mouth has spoken!"
All these legends give us a vivid picture of Abraham searching
after God and dissatisfied with the idolatry of his people. So when
God's call came to him he was ready to go out into the unknown to find
him! Abraham is the supreme example of faith.
(i) Abraham's faith was the faith that was ready for adventure.
God's summons meant that he had to leave home and family and business;
yet he went. He had to go out into the unknown; yet he went. In the best
of us there is a certain timorousness. We wonder just what will happen
to us if we take God at his word and act on his commands and promises.
Bishop Newbigin tells of the negotiations which led to the
formation of the United Church of South India. He had a share in these
negotiations and in the long discussions which were necessary. Things
were frequently held up by cautious people who wished to know just where
each step was taking them, until in the end the chairman reminded them
that a Christian has no right to ask where he is going.
Most of us live a cautious life on the principle of safety
first; but to live the Christian life there is necessary a certain
reckless willingness to adventure. If faith can see every step of the
way, it is not really faith. It is sometimes necessary for the Christian
to take the way to which the voice of God is calling him without
knowing what the consequences will be. Like Abraham he has to go out not
knowing where he is going.
(ii) Abraham's faith was the faith which had patience. When he
reached the promised land, he was never allowed to possess it. He had to
wander in it, a stranger and a tent-dweller, as the people were some
day to wander in the wilderness. To Abraham God's promise never came
fully true; and yet he never abandoned his faith.
It is characteristic of the best of us that we are in a hurry.
To wait is even harder than to adventure. The hardest time of all is the
time in between. At the moment of decision there is the excitement and
the thrill; at the moment of achievement there is the glow and glory of
satisfaction; but in the intervening time there is necessary the ability
to wait and work and watch when nothing seems to be happening. It is
then that we are so liable to give up our hopes and lower our ideals and
sink into an apathy whose dreams are dead. The man of faith is the man
whose hope is flaming bright and whose effort is intensely strenuous
even in the grey days when there is nothing to do but to wait.
(iii) Abraham's faith was the faith which was looking beyond
this world. The later legends believed that at the moment of his call
Abraham was given a glimpse of the new Jerusalem. In the Apocalypse of
Baruch God says: "I showed it to my servant by night" (4: 4). In 4 Ezra
the writer says: "It came to pass when they practised ungodliness before
thee, that thou didst choose one from among them whose name was
Abraham; him thou didst love and to him only thou didst reveal the end
of the times, secretly, by night" (4: 13). No man ever did anything
great without a vision which enabled him to face the difficulties and
discouragements of the way. To Abraham there was given the vision; and,
even when his body was wandering in Palestine, his soul was at home with
God. God cannot give us the vision unless we permit him; but if we wait
upon him, even in earth's desert places be will send us the vision and
with it the toil and trouble of the way become all worth while.
11:11-12 It was by
faith that Sarah, too, received power to conceive and to bear a son,
although she was beyond the age for it, for she believed that he who
gave the promise could be absolutely relied upon. So from one man, and
he a man whose body had lost its vitality, there were born descendants,
as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, as countless as the sand
upon the seashore.
The story of the promise of a son to Abraham and Sarah is told in
Genesis 17:15-22;
Genesis 18:9-15;
Genesis 21:1-8.
Its wonder is that both Abraham and Sarah were ninety years old, long
past the age of begetting or bearing a child; and yet, according to the
old story, that promise was made and came true.
The reaction of Abraham and Sarah to the promise of God followed a threefold course.
(i) It began with sheer incredulousness. When Abraham heard the promise he fell upon his face and laughed (
Genesis 17:17). When Sarah heard it she laughed within herself (
Genesis 18:12). On first hearing of the promises of God, the human reaction often is that this is far too good to be true.
"How thou canst think so well of us,
And be the God thou art,
Is darkness to my intellect,
But sunshine to my heart."
There is no mystery in all creation like the love of God. That
he should love men and suffer and die for them is something that
staggers us into sheer incredulity. That is why the Christian message is
the gospel, good news; it is news so good that it is almost impossible
to believe it true.
(ii) It passed into dawning realization. After the incredulity
came the dawning realization that this was God who was speaking; and God
cannot lie. The Jews used to lay it down as a primary law for a teacher
that he must never promise his pupils what he was unwilling or unable
to perform; to do so would be to accustom the pupils thus early to the
broken word. When we remember that the one who makes the promise is God,
there comes the realization that however astonishing that promise may
be, it must none the less be true.
(iii) It culminated in the ability to believe in the impossible.
That Abraham and Sarah should have a child, humanly speaking, was
impossible. As Sarah said: "Who would have said that Sarah would suckle
children?" (
Genesis 21:7).
But, by the grace and the power of God, the impossible became true.
There is something here to challenge and uplift the heart of every man.
Cavour said that the first essential of a statesman is "the sense of the
possible." When we listen to men planning and arguing and thinking
aloud, we get the impression of a vast number of things in this world
which are known to be desirable but dismissed as impossible. Men spend
the greater part of their lives putting limitations on the power of God.
Faith is the ability to lay hold on that grace which is sufficient for
all things in such a way that the things which are humanly impossible
become divinely possible. With God all things are possible, and,
therefore, the word impossible has no place in the vocabulary of the
Christian and of the Christian Church.
11:13-16 All these
died without obtaining possession of the promises. They only saw them
from far away and greeted them from afar, and they admitted that they
were strangers and sojourners upon the earth. Now people who speak like
that make it quite clear that they are searching for a fatherland. If
they were thinking of the land from which they had come out, they would
have had time to return. In point of fact they were reaching out after
something better, I mean, the heavenly country. It was because of that
that God was not ashamed to be called their God, for he had prepared a
city for them.
None of the patriarchs entered into the full possession of the
promises that God had made to Abraham. To the end of their days they
were nomads, never living a settled life in a settled land. They had to
be for ever moving on. Certain great permanent truths emerge from them.
(i) They lived for ever as strangers. The writer to the Hebrews uses three vivid Greek words about them.
(a) In
Hebrews 11:13 he calls them xenoi (
Greek #3581).
Xenos is the word for a stranger and a foreigner. In the ancient world
the fate of the stranger was hard. He was regarded with hatred and
suspicion and contempt. In Sparta xenos (
Greek #3581) was the equivalent of barbaros (
Greek #915), barbarian. A man writes complaining that he was despised "because I am a xenos (
Greek #3581)". Another man writes that, however poor a home is, it is better to live at home than epi (
Greek #1909) xenes (
Greek #3581), in a foreign country. When clubs had their common meal, those who sat down to it were divided into members and xenoi (
Greek #3581). Xenos (
Greek #3581) can even mean a refugee. All their lives the patriarchs were foreigners in a land that never was their own.
(b) In
Hebrews 11:9 he uses the word paroikein (
Greek #3939), to sojourn, of Abraham. A paroikos (
Greek #3941) was a resident alien. The word is used of the Jews when they were captives in Babylon and in Egypt. A paroikos (
Greek #3941)
was not very much above a slave in the social scale. He had to pay an
alien tax. He was always an outsider and only on payment a member of the
community.
(c) In
Hebrews 11:13 he uses the word parepidemos (
Greek #3927).
A parepidemos was a person who was staying there temporarily and who
had his permanent home somewhere else. Sometimes his stay was strictly
limited. A parepidemos (
Greek #3927)
was a man in lodgings, a man without a home in the place where life had
sent him. All their lives the patriarchs were men who had no settled
place that they could call home. It is to be noted that to dwell in a
foreign land was a humiliating thing in ancient days; to the foreigner
in any country a certain stigma attached. In the Letter of Aristeas the
writer says: "It is a fine thing to live and to die in one's native
land; a foreign land brings contempt to poor men and shame to rich men,
for there is the lurking suspicion that they have been exiled for the
evil they have done." In Ecclesiasticus (
Sirach 29:22-28) there is a wistful passage:
"Better the life of the poor under a shelter of logs
Than sumptuous fare in the house of strangers.
With little or much be contented:
So wilt thou not have to bear the reproach of thy wandering.
An evil life it is to go from house to house,
And where thou art a stranger thou must not open thy mouth.
A stranger thou art in that case and drinkest contempt;
And besides this thou wilt have to hear bitter things:
'Come hither, sojourner, and furnish my table,
And if thou hast aught feed me therewith';
Or, 'Get thee gone, sojourner, from the face of honour,
My brother is come as my guest, I have need of my house.'
These things are grievous to a man of understanding:
Upbraiding concerning sojourning, and the reproach of a
moneylender."
At any time it is an unhappy thing to be a stranger in a
strange land, but in ancient days to this natural unhappiness there was
added the bitterness of humiliation.
All their days the patriarchs were strangers in a strange land.
That picture of the sojourner became a picture of the Christian life.
Tertullian said of the Christian: "He knows that on earth he has a
pilgrimage but that his dignity is in heaven." Clement of Alexandria
said: "We have no fatherland on earth." Augustine said: "We are
sojourners exiled from our fatherland." It was not that the Christians
were foolishly other-worldly, detaching themselves from the life and
work of this world; but they always remembered that they were people on
the way. There is an unwritten saying of Jesus: "The world is a bridge.
The wise man will pass over it but will not build his house upon it."
The Christian regards himself as the pilgrim of eternity.
(ii) In spite of everything these men never lost their vision
and their hope. However long that hope might be in coming true, its
light always shone in their eyes. However long the way might be, they
never stopped tramping along it. Robert Louis Stevenson said: "It is
better to travel hopefully than to arrive." They never wearily gave up
the journey; they lived in hope and died in expectation.
(iii) In spite of everything they never wished to go back. Their
descendants, when they were in the desert, often wished to go back to
the fleshpots of Egypt. But not the patriarchs. They had begun and it
never struck them to turn back. In flying there is what is called the
point of no return. When the aeroplane has reached that point it cannot
go back. Its petrol supply has reached such a level that there is
nothing left but to go on. One of the tragedies of life is the number of
people who turn back just a little too soon. One further effort, a
little more waiting, a little more hoping, would make the dream come
true. Immediately a Christian has set out on some enterprise sent him by
God, he should feel that he has already passed the point of no return.
(iv) These men were able to go on because they were haunted by
the things beyond. The man with the wanderlust is lured on by the
thought of the countries he has never yet seen. The great artist or
composer is driven by the thought of the performance he has never yet
given and the wonder he has never yet produced. Stevenson tells of an
old byreman who spent all his days amidst the muck of the byre. Someone
asked him if he never got tired of it all. He answered; "He that has
something ayont (beyond) need never weary." These men had the something
beyond--and so may we.
(v) Because these men were what they were, God was not ashamed
to be called their God. Above all things, he is the God of the gallant
adventurer. He loves the man who is ready to venture for his name. The
prudent, comfort-loving man is the very opposite of God. The man who
goes out into the unknown and keeps going on will in the end arrive at
God.
11:17-19 It was by
faith that Abraham offered up Isaac when he was put to the test. He was
willing to offer up even his only son, although it had been said to him:
"It is in Isaac that your descendants will be named." He was willing to
do this for he reckoned that God was able to raise him even from the
dead. Hence he did receive him back which is a parable of the
resurrection.
The Isaac story, told in
Genesis 22:1-18,
is that most dramatic account of how Abraham met the supreme test of
the demand for the life of his own son. To some extent this story has
fallen into disrepute. It is excluded from syllabuses of religious
education because it is held to teach an unacceptable view of God. Or it
is held that the point of the story is that it was in this way that
Abraham learned that God did not desire human sacrifice. No doubt that
is true; but, if we want to see this story at its greatest and as the
writer to the Hebrews saw it, we must take it at its face value. It was
the response of a man who was asked to offer God his own son.
(i) This story teaches us that we must be ready to sacrifice
what is dearest to us for the sake of loyalty to God. There have been
many who have sacrificed their careers to what they took to be the will
of God. J. P. Struthers was the minister of the Reformed Presbyterian
Church in Greenock, a little congregation, which, it is neither false
nor unkind to say, had a great past but no future. Had he been willing
to forsake the Church of his fathers, any pulpit in the land was open to
him and the most dazzling ecclesiastical prizes were his; but he
sacrificed them all for the sake of what he considered to be loyalty to
God's will.
Sometimes a man may have to sacrifice personal relationships. He
may feel called by God to a task in a sphere which is difficult and in a
place that is unattractive and it may be that the girl he is to marry
will not face it with him. The man must choose between the will of God
and the relationship which means so much to him. When Bunyan was in gaol
he was thinking of what must happen to his family if he was executed.
Especially the thought of his little blind daughter, who was so dear to
him, haunted him: "O," he said, "I saw in this condition I was a man who
was pulling down his house upon the head of his wife and children; yet,
thought I, I must do it, I must do it."
"The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from thy throne,
And worship only thee."
Abraham was the man who would sacrifice even the dearest thing
in life for God. Time and again in the early Church it happened. In a
home one partner became a Christian and the other did not; the children
became Christians and the parents did not. The sword came down upon that
home; and unless there had been those who counted Christ dearer than
all else, there would be no Christianity today.
God must come first in our lives, or he comes nowhere. There is a
story of two children who had been given a toy Noah's Ark as a present.
They had been listening to the Old Testament stories and determined
that they too would offer a sacrifice. They examined the animals in
their toy ark and finally decided on a sheep with a broken leg. The only
thing they would offer was a broken toy they could well do without.
That is the way in which so many people would like to sacrifice to God;
but only the dearest and the best is good enough for him.
(ii) Abraham is the pattern of the man who accepts what he
cannot understand. To him there had come this incomprehensible demand.
It did not make sense. The promise was that in Isaac his seed would grow
and grow until he became a mighty nation in which all others would be
blessed. On the life of Isaac depended the promise; and now God seemed
to want to take that life away. As Chrysostom put it: "The things of God
seemed to fight against the things of God, and faith fought with faith,
and the commandment fought with the promise." For everyone at some time
there comes something for which there seems to be no reason and which
defies explanation. It is then that a man is faced with life's hardest
battle--to accept when he cannot understand. At such a time there is
only one thing to do--to obey and to do so without resentment, saying:
"God, you are love! I build my faith on that."
(iii) Abraham is the pattern of the man who, with the test,
found a way of escape. If we take God at his word and stake everything
on him, even when there seems to be nothing but a blank wall in front of
us, the way of escape will open up.
11:20-22 It was by
faith that Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in the things concerning the
future. It was by faith that Jacob, when he was dying. blessed each of
the sons of Joseph and prayed leaning, on the head of his staff. It was
by faith that Joseph, as he came to the end, had his mind the days when
the children of Israel would leave Egypt, and gave instructions
concerning his bones.
One thing links these three examples of faith together. In each
case it was the faith of a man to whom death was very near. The
blessing which Isaac gave is in
Genesis 27:28-29;
Genesis 27:39-40. Given after Isaac had said: "Behold. I am old, I do not know the day of my death" (
Genesis 27:2).
it was: "God give you of the dew of heaven. and of the fatness of the
earth and plenty of grain and wine. Let peoples serve you and nations
bow down to you." The blessing of Jacob is given in
Genesis 48:9-22. The story has just said that "the time drew near that Israel must die" (
Genesis 47:29).
The blessing was: "in them let my name be perpetuated, and the name of
my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the
midst of the earth" (
Genesis 48:15-16). The incident from the life of Joseph comes from
Genesis 50:22-26.
When Joseph was near to death he made the Israelites take an oath that
they would not leave his bones in Egypt but would take them with them
when they went out to possess the promised land, which in due time they
did (
Exodus 13:19;
Joshua 24:32).
The point which the writer to the Hebrews wishes to make is that
all three men died without having entered into the promise that God had
made, the promise of the Promised Land and of greatness to the nation
of Israel. Isaac was still a nomad, Jacob wits an exile in Egypt. Joseph
had attained to greatness but it was the greatness of a stranger in a
strange land; and yet they never doubted that the promise would come
true. They died not in despair but in hope. Their faith defeated death.
There is something of permanent greatness here. The thought in
the mind of all these men was the same: "God's promise is true, for he
never breaks a promise. I may not live to see it, death may come to me
before that promise becomes a fact; but I am a link in its fulfilment.
Whether or not that promise comes depends on me." Here is the great
function of life. Our hopes may never be realized but we must live in
such a way that we shall hasten their coming. It may not be given to
every man to enter into the fullness of the promises or God, but it is
given to him to live with such fidelity as to bring nearer the day when
others will enter into it. To us all is given the tremendous task of
helping God make his promises come true.
11:23-29 It was by
faith that Moses, when he was born, was kept hidden for three months by
his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful: and they did
not fear the edict of the king. It was by faith that Moses, when he
grew to manhood, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter and
chose rather to suffer evil with the people of God than to enjoy the
transient pleasures of sin, for he considered that a life of reproach
for the sake of the Messiah was greater wealth than the treasures of
Egypt, for he kept his eyes fixed upon his reward. It was by faith that
he left Egypt, unmoved by the blazing anger of the king, for he could
face all things as one who sees him who is invisible. It was by faith
that he carried out the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that
the destroying angel might not touch the children of his people. It was
by faith that they crossed the Red Sea as if they were going through dry
land and that the Egyptians, when they ventured to try to do so, were
engulfed.
To the Hebrews Moses was the supreme figure in their history.
He was the lender who had rescued them from slavery and who had received
the Law of their lives from God. To the writer of the letter to the
Hebrews Moses was pre-eminently the man of faith. In this story, as
Moffatt points out, there are five different acts of faith. As with the
other great characters whose names are included in this roll or honour
of God's faithful ones, many legends and elaborations had gathered round
the name of Moses and doubtless the writer of this letter had them also
in his mind.
(i) There was the faith of Moses' parents. The story of their action is told in
Exodus 2:1-10.
Exodus 1:15-22
tells how the king of Egypt in his hatred tried to wipe out the
children of the Israelites by having them killed at birth. Legend tells
how Amram and Jochebed, the parents of Moses (
Exodus 6:20),
were troubled by the decree of Pharaoh. As a result Amram put away his
wife, not because he did not love her, but because he would spare her
the sorrow of seeing her children killed. For three years she was put
away, and then Miriam prophesied: "My parents shall have another son,
who shall deliver Israel out of the hands of the Egyptians." She said to
her father: "What hast thou done? Thou hast sent thy wife away out of
thine house, because thou couldst not trust the Lord God that he would
protect the child that might be born to thee." So Amram, shamed into
trusting God, took back his wife; and in due time Moses was born. He was
so lovely a child that his parents determined to hide him in their
house. This they did for three months. Then, the legend tells, the
Egyptians struck upon a cruel scheme. The king was determined that
hidden children should be sought out and killed. Now when a child hears
another child cry, he will cry too. So Egyptian mothers were sent into
the homes of the Israelites with their babies; there they pricked their
babies until they cried. This made the hidden children of the Israelites
cry, too, and so they were discovered and killed. In view of this,
Amram and Jochebed decided to make a little ark and to entrust their
child to it on the waters of the Nile.
That Moses was born at all was an act of faith; that he was preserved was another. He began by being the child of faith.
(ii) The second act of faith was Moses' loyalty to his own people. The story is told in
Exodus 2:11-14.
Again the legends help to light up the picture. When Moses was
entrusted to the waters of the Nile, he was found by the daughter of
Pharaoh, whose name is given as Bithia, or more commonly Thermouthis.
She was entranced by his beauty. Legend says that when she drew the ark
out of the water, the archangel Gabriel boxed the ears of the little
baby to make him cry so that the heart of Thermouthis might be touched
as she saw the little face puckered in sorrow and the eyes full of
tears. Thermouthis, much to her sorrow, was childless; so she took the
baby Moses home, and cared for him as her own son. He grew to be so
beautiful that people turned in the street, and even ceased their work,
to took at him. He was so wise that he was far beyond all other children
in learning and in knowledge. When he was still a child, Thermouthis
took him to Pharaoh and told him how she had found him. She placed him
in his arms, and he was so entranced by the child that he embraced him
and. at the request of Thermouthis, he promised to make him his heir. By
way of jest he took his crown and placed it on the child's head; but
the infant snatched the crown from his head and flung it on the ground
and trampled on it. Pharaoh's wise men were full of foreboding that this
child would some day trample the royal power under foot. They wished to
destroy Moses there and then. But a test was proposed; they set before
the child a bowl of precious stones and a bowl of live coals. If he put
out his hand and touched the jewels, that would prove that he was so
wise that he was a danger; if he put out his hands and touched the
coals, that would prove that he was so witless that he was no danger.
The infant Moses was about to touch the jewels when Gabriel took his
hand and put it on the coals. His finger was burnt; he put the burnt
finger in his mouth and burnt his mouth; that, they say, was why he was
not a good speaker (
Exodus 4:10) but stammered all his life.
So Moses was spared. He was brought up in all luxury. He was
heir to the kingdom. He became one of the greatest of all Egyptian
generals; in particular he conquered the Ethiopians when they were
threatening Egypt and in the end was married to an Ethiopian princess.
But all the time he had never forgotten his fellow-countrymen; and the
day came when he decided to ally himself with the downtrodden Israelites
and say goodbye to the future of riches and royalty that he might have
had.
Moses gave up earthly glory for the sake of the people of God.
Christ gave up his glory for the sake of mankind; and accepted scourging
and shame and a terrible death. Moses in his day and generation shared
in the sufferings of Christ, choosing the loyalty that led to suffering
rather than the ease which led to earthly glory. He knew that the prizes
of earth were contemptible compared with the ultimate reward of God.
(iii) There came the day when Moses, because of his intervention
on behalf of his people, had to withdraw from Egypt to Midian (
Exodus 2:14-22). Because of the order in which it comes that must be what
Hebrews 11:27
refers to. Some people have found difficulty here, because the Exodus
narrative says that it was because Moses feared Pharaoh that he fled to
Midian (
Exodus 2:14),
while Hebrews says that he went out not fearing the blazing wrath of
the king. There is no real contradiction. It is simply that the writer
of the letter to the Hebrews saw even more deeply into the story. For
Moses to withdraw to Midian was not an act of fear; it was an act of
courage. It showed the courage of the man who has learned to wait.
The Stoics were wise; they held that a man should not throw his
life away by needlessly provoking the wrath of a tyrant. Seneca wrote:
"The wise man will never provoke the wrath of mighty men; nay, he will
turn aside from it; in just the same way as sailors in sailing will not
deliberately court the danger of the storm." At that moment Moses might
have gone on but his people were not ready. If he had gone on recklessly
he would simply have thrown his life away and the deliverance from
Egypt might never have happened. He was big enough and brave enough to
wait until God said: "Now is the hour."
Moffatt quotes a saying of A. S. Peake: "The courage to abandon
work on which one's heart is set and accept inaction cheerfully as the
will of God is of the rarest and highest kind and can be created and
sustained only by the clearest spiritual vision." When our fighting
instincts say: "Go on," it takes a big and a brave man to wait. It is
human to fear to miss the chance; but it is great to wait for the time
of God--even when it seems like throwing a chance away.
(iv) There came the day when Moses had to make all the arrangements for the first Passover. The account is in
Exodus 12:12-48.
The unleavened bread had to be made; the Passover lamb had to be slain;
the door post had to be smeared with the blood of the lamb so that the
Angel of Death would see the blood and pass over that house and not slay
the first-born in it. But the really amazing thing is that, according
to the Exodus story, Moses not only made these regulations for the night
on which the children of Israel were leaving Israel; he also laid it
down that they were to be observed annually for all time. That is to
say, he never doubted the success of the enterprise, never doubted that
the people would be delivered from Egypt and that some day they would
reach the promised land. Here was a band of wretched Hebrew slaves about
to set off on a journey across an unknown desert to an unknown promised
land and here was the whole power of Egypt hot upon their heels; yet
Moses never doubted that God would bring them safely through. He was
pre-eminently the man who had the faith that if God gave his people an
order he would also give them the strength to carry it out. Moses knew
well that God does not summon his servants to a great task and leave it
at that; he goes with them every step of the way.
(v) There was the great act of the crossing of the Red Sea. The story is told in
Exodus 14:1-31
. There we read of how the children of Israel were wondrously enabled
to pass through and of how the Egyptians were engulfed when they tried
to do the same. It was at that moment that the faith of Moses
communicated itself to the people and drove them on when they might well
have turned back. Here we have the faith of a leader and of a people
who were prepared to attempt the impossible at the command of God,
realizing that the greatest barrier in the world is no barrier if God be
there to help us overpass it. The book As in Adam has this sentence:
"The business of life, the way to life, consists in getting over fences,
not in lying down and moaning on the hither side." To Moses belonged
the faith to attempt what appeared to be the most insurmountable fences
in the certainty that God would help the man who refused to turn back
and insisted on going on.
Finally, this passage not only tells us of the faith of Moses; it also tells us of the source of that faith.
Hebrews 11:27
tells us that he was able to face all things as one who sees him who is
invisible. The outstanding characteristic of Moses was the close
intimacy of his relationship with God. In
Exodus 33:9-11
we read of how he went into the Tabernacle; "and the Lord used to speak
to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend." In
Numbers 12:7-8
we read of God's verdict on him when there were those who were ready to
rebel against him: "with him I speak mouth to mouth." To put it
simply--the secret of his faith was that Moses knew God personally. To
every task he came out from God's presence.
It is told that before a great battle Napoleon would stand in
his tent alone; he would send for his commanders to come to him, one by
one; when they came in, he would say no word but would look them in the
eye and shake them by the hand; and they would go out prepared to die
for the general whom they loved. That is like Moses and God. Moses had
the faith he had because he knew God in the way he did. When we come to
it straight from God's presence, no task can ever defeat us. Our failure
and our fear are so often due to the fact that we try to do things
alone. The secret of victorious living is to face God before we face
men.
11:30-31 It was by
faith that the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled
for seven days. It was by faith that Rahab, the harlot, did not perish
with the disobedient because she had welcomed the scouts in peace.
The writer to the Hebrews has been citing as examples of faith
the great figures of the time before Israel entered into the Promised
Land. Now he takes two figures from the period of struggle when the
children of Israel were winning a place for themselves within Palestine.
(i) The first is the story of the fall of Jericho. That strange old story is told in
Joshua 6:1-20.
Jericho was a strong city, barred and fortified. To take it seemed
impossible. It was God's commandment that once a day for six days and in
silence the people should march round it, led by seven priests marching
in front of the ark and bearing trumpets of rams' horn. On the seventh
day the priests were to blow upon the trumpets, after the city had been
encircled seven times, and the people were to shout with all their
might, "and the wall of the city will fall down flat." As the old story
tells it, so it happened.
That story left an indelible mark upon the memory of Israel.
Centuries after this Judas Maccabaeus and his men were facing the city
of Caspis, so secure in its strength that its defenders laughed in their
safety. "Wherefore Judas with his company, calling upon the great Lord
of the world, who without any rams or engines of war did cast down
Jericho in the time of Joshua, gave it fierce assault against the walls
and took the city by the will of God" (
2 Maccabees 12:13-16).
The people never forgot what great things God had done for them and,
when some great effort was called for, they nerved themselves for it by
remembering them.
Here is the very point the writer to the Hebrews wishes to make.
The taking of Jericho was the result of an act of faith. It was taken
by men who thought not of what they could do but of what God could do
for them. They were prepared to believe that God could make their
obvious weakness able for an incredible task. After the smashing of the
Spanish Armada, there was erected on Plymouth Hoe a monument with the
inscription: "God sent his wind and they were scattered." When the
people of England saw how the storm and the gale had shattered the
Spanish Armada, they said: "God did it." When we are faced with any
great and demanding task, God is the ally we must never leave out of the
reckoning. That which to us alone is impossible is always possible with
him.
(ii) The second story the writer to the Hebrews takes is that of Rahab. It is told in
Joshua 2:1-21 and finds its sequel in
Joshua 6:25.
When Joshua sent out spies to spy out the situation in Jericho, they
found a lodging in the house of Rahab, a harlot. She protected them and
enabled them to make their escape; and in return, when Jericho was taken
she and her family were saved from the general slaughter. It is
extraordinary how Rahab became imprinted on the memory of Israel. James (
James 2:25)
quotes her as a great example of the good works which demonstrate
faith. The Rabbis were proud to trace their descent to her. And,
amazingly, she is one of the names which appear in the genealogy of
Jesus (
Matthew 1:5). Clement of Rome quotes her as an outstanding example of one who was saved "by faith and hospitality."
When the writer to the Hebrews cites her, the point he desires
to make is this--Rahab in face of all the facts believed in the God of
Israel. She said to the spies whom she welcomed and hid: "I know that
the Lord has given you the land.... For the Lord your God, is he who is
God in heaven above, and on earth beneath" (
Joshua 2:9-11).
At the moment when she was speaking, there seemed not one chance in a
million that the children of Israel could capture Jericho. These nomads
from the desert had no artillery and no siege-engines. Yet Rahab
believed and staked her whole future on the belief--that God would make
the impossible possible. When common sense pronounced the situation
hopeless, she had the uncommon sense to see beyond the situation. The
real faith and the real courage are those which can take God's side when
it seems doomed to defeat. As Faber had it:
"Thrice blest is he to whom is given
The instinct that can tell
That God is on the field when he
Is most invisible.
For right is right, since God is God;
And right the day must win;
To doubt would be disloyalty,
To falter would be sin."
The Christian believes that no man who takes the side of God
can ever ultimately be on the losing side for, even if he knows earth's
defeats, there is a victory whose trophies are in heaven.
11:32-34 And what more
shall I say? Time will fail me if I try to recount the story of Gideon,
of Barak, of Samson, or Jephthah, of David. of Samuel and of the
prophets, men who, through faith, mastered kingdoms, did righteousness,
obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire,
escaped the edge of the sword. from weakness were made strong, showed
themselves strong in warfare, routed the ranks of aliens.
In this passage the writer lets his mind's eye roam back over
the history of his people; and out of it there springs to memory name
after name of those who were heroic souls. He does not take them in any
particular order but, as we shall see when we look at the outstanding
characteristics of each, there is a line of thought which binds them all
together.
The story of Gideon is told in
6:1-40;
7:1-25.
With only three hundred men Gideon won a victory over the Ammonites in
days when they had terrorized Israel, a victory which went ringing down
the centuries. The story of Barak is in
4:1-24;
5:1-31.
Under the inspiration of the prophetess Deborah, Barak assembled ten
thousand young men and faced the fearful odds of the Canaanites with
their nine hundred chariots of iron to win an almost incredible victory.
It was as if a band of almost unarmed infantry had routed a division of
tanks. The story of Samson is in
13:1-25;
14:1-20;
15:1-20;
16:1-31.
Always Samson was fighting alone. In the isolation of his splendid
strength again and again he faced the most amazing odds and emerged
triumphant. He was the scourge of the Philistines. The story of Jephthah
is in
11:1-40;
12:1-15.
Jephthah was an illegitimate son; he was driven into a kind of exile
and into the life of an outlaw; but when the Ammonites were putting
Israel into fear, the forgotten outlaw was called back and won a
tremendous victory, although his vow to God cost him the life of his
daughter. There was David, who had once been a shepherd lad and who, to
his own and everyone else's astonishment, was anointed king in
preference to all his brothers (
1 Samuel 16:1-13). There was Samuel, born to his mother so late in life (
1 Samuel 1:1-28
), again and again moving alone as the only strong and faithful man of
God amongst an easily frightened, discontented and rebellious people.
There were the prophets, man after man of them bearing a faithful and
isolated witness to God.
The whole list is of men who faced incredible odds for God. It
is of men who never believed that God was on the side of the big
battalions and were willing to take tremendous and even terrifying risks
for him. It is of men who cheerfully and courageously and confidently
accepted God-given tasks which, on human terms, were impossible. They
were all men who were never afraid to stand alone and to face immense
odds for the sake of their loyalty to God. The honour roll of history is
of men who chose to be in God's minority rather than with earth's
majority.
In the second part of the passage the writer to the Hebrews
tells what these men did and others like them in a series of
machine-gun-like phrases. For most of us much of their impact may be
lost, for this reason--phrase after phrase is a reminiscence. For those
who knew the scriptures well in their Greek version, phrase after phrase
would ring a bell in the mind. The word used for mastering kingdoms is
what Josephus, the Jewish historian, used of David. The phrase used for
wrought righteousness is the description of David in
2 Samuel 8:15. The expression used for stopping the mouths of lions is that used of Daniel in
Daniel 6:18;
Daniel 6:23. The phrase about quenching the violence of fire goes straight back to the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego in
Daniel 3:19-28.
To speak about escaping the edge, of the sword was to direct men's
thoughts to the way in which Elijah escaped threatened assassination in
1 Kings 19:1 ff and Elisha in
2 Kings 6:31
ff. The trumpet call about being strong in warfare and routing the
ranks o the aliens would immediately make men think of the unforgettable
glories of the Maccabaean days.
The phrase about being made strong out of weakness might conjure
up many a picture. It might paint the mental picture of the
extraordinary healing of Hezekiah after he had turned his face to the
wall to die (
2 Kings 20:1-7).
Perhaps more likely in the time in which the writer to the Hebrews
wrote, it would remind his hearers of that epic but bloodthirsty
incident told in the Book o Judith, one of the apocryphal books. There
was a time when Israel was threatened by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar
led by his general Holofernes. The Jewish town of Bethulia had
determined to surrender in five days' time for its supplies of food and
water were at an end. In the town there was a widow called Judith. She
was wealthy and beautiful but she had lived in lonely mourning since her
husband Manasses had died. She dressed in all her finery, persuaded her
people to let her out of the town and went straight to the camp of the
Assyrians. She gained entry into the presence of Holofernes and
persuaded him that she was convinced of the defeat of her people as a
punishment for their sins. She offered him a way into Jerusalem by
stealth; and then, having gained his confidence, she slew him in his
drunken sleep with his own dagger, cut off his head and carried it back
to her people. The traitors within the camp were silenced and looming
defeat was turned into tumultuous victory. A woman's weakness had become
strength to save her country.
The writer to the Hebrews is here seeking to inspire new courage
and a new sense of responsibility by making his hearers remember their
past. He does not do it blatantly but with infinite artistry. He does
not so much tell them what to remember as by delicate hints compel them
to remember for themselves. When Oliver Cromwell was arranging for the
education of his son Richard, he said: "I would have him learn a little
history." When we are discouraged, let us remember and take heart again.
God's arm is not shortened; his power is not grown less. What he did
once he can do again, for the God of history is the same one as we
worship today.
11:35-40 Women
received back their own folk as if they had been raised from the dead.
Others were crucified because they refused to accept release, for they
were eager to obtain a better resurrection. Others went through scoffing
and scourging, yes, and chains and imprisonment. They were stoned; they
were sawn asunder; they underwent every kind of trial; they died by the
murder of the sword. They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, they
were in want, they were oppressed, they were maltreated--the world was
not worthy of them--they wandered in desert places and on the mountains,
they lived in caves and in holes of the earth. All these, though they
were attested through their faith, did not receive the promise. because
God had some better plan for us, that they, without us, should not find
all his purposes fulfilled.
In this passage the writer to the Hebrews is intermingling
different periods of history. Sometimes he takes his illustrations from
the Old Testament period; but still more he takes them from the
Maccabaean period which falls between the Old and the New Testaments.
First let us take the things that can be explained against the Old Testament background. In the lives of Elijah (
1 Kings 17:17 ff.) and of Elisha (
2 Kings 4:8 ff.) we read how. by the power and the faith of the prophets, women did receive back again their children who had died.
2 Chronicles 24:20-22
tells how the prophet Zechariah was stoned by his own people because he
told them the truth. Legend had it that down in Egypt Jeremiah was
stoned to death by his fellow-countrymen. Jewish legend tells that
Isaiah was sawn asunder. Hezekiah, the good king, died, and Manasseh
came to the throne. He worshipped idols and tried to compel Isaiah to
take part in his idolatry and to approve of it. Isaiah refused and was
condemned to be sawn asunder with a wooden saw. While his enemies tried
to make him recant his faith he steadfastly defied them and prophesied
their doom. "And whilst the saw cut into his flesh, Isaiah uttered no
complaint and shed no tears; but he ceased not to commune with the Holy
Spirit till the saw had cloven him to the middle of his body."
Even more the mind of the writer to the Hebrews goes back over
the terrible days of the Maccabaean struggle. That is a struggle of
which every Christian should know something, for if in these killing
times, the Jews had surrendered their faith, Jesus could not have come.
The story is like this.
About the year 170 B.C. there was on the throne of Syria a king
called Antiochus Epiphanes. He was a good governor but he had an almost
abnormal love for all things Greek and saw himself as a missionary for
the Greek way of life. He tried to introduce this into Palestine. He had
some success; there were those who were willing to accept Greek
culture, Greek drama, Greek athletics. Greek athletes trained naked and
some of the Jewish priests even went so far as to seek to obliterate the
mark of circumcision from their bodies so that they might become
completely hellenized. So far, Antiochus had succeeded only in causing a
division in the nation; the greater part of the Jews were unshakeably
true to their faith and could not be moved. Force and violence had not
yet been used.
Then about 168 B.C. the matter came to boiling-point. Antiochus
had an interest in Egypt. He amassed an army and invaded that country.
To his deep humiliation the Romans ordered him home. They did not send
an army to oppose him; such was the might of Rome that they did not need
to. They sent a senator called Popilius Laena with a small and quite
unarmed suite. Popilius and Antiochus met on the boundaries of Egypt.
They talked; they both knew Rome and they had been friendly. Then, very
gently, Popilius told Antiochus that Rome did not wish him to proceed
with the campaign but wished him to go home. Antiochus said that he
would consider it. Popilius took the stall which he was carrying and
drew a circle in the sand round about Antiochus. Quietly he said:
"Consider it now; you will give me your decision before you leave that
circle." Antiochus thought for a moment and realized that to defy Rome
was impossible. "I will go home," he said. It was a shattering
humiliation for a king.
So Antiochus turned for home, almost mad with rage; and on the
way he turned aside and attacked Jerusalem, capturing it almost without
an effort. It was said that 80,000 Jews were killed and 10,000 sold into
captivity. But there was worse to come. He sacked the Temple. The
golden altars of the shewbread and of the incense, the golden
candlestick, the golden vessels, even the curtains and the veils were
taken. The treasury was sacked. Worse was to come. On the altar of the
burnt offering he offered sacrifices of swine flesh to Zeus; and he
turned the Temple chambers into brothels. No act of sacrilege was
omitted. Still worse was to come. He completely forbade circumcision and
the possession of the scriptures and of the law. He ordered the Jews to
eat meats which were unclean and to sacrifice to the Greek gods.
Inspectors went throughout the land to see that these commands were
carried out. And if any were found to defy them, they "underwent great
miseries and bitter torments.; for they were whipped with rods and their
bodies were torn to pieces; they were crucified while they were still
alive and breathed; they also strangled those women and their sons whom
they had circumcised, as the king had appointed, hanging their sons
about their necks as if they were upon their crosses. And if there were
any sacred book of the law found, it was destroyed; and those with whom
they were found miserably perished also" (Josephus, Antiquities of the
Jews, 12: 5, 4). Never in all history has there been such a sadistic and
deliberate attempt to wipe out a people's religion.
It is easy to see how this passage can be read against the
terrible happenings of these days. The Book of Fourth Maccabees has two
famous stories which were undoubtedly in the mind of the writer to the
Hebrews when he made his list of the things that the man of faith has
had to suffer.
The first is the story of Eleazar, the aged priest (
4 Maccabees 5:1-38;
4 Maccabees 6:1-35;
4 Maccabees 7:1-23).
He was brought before Antiochus and ordered to eat swine's flesh, being
threatened with the direst penalties if he refused. He did refuse. "We,
Antiochus," he said, "who are convinced that we live under a divine
law, consider no compulsion to be so forcible as obedience to our law."
He would not comply with the king's order, "no, not if you pluck out my
eyes and consume my bowels in the fire." They stripped him naked and
scourged him with whips, while a herald stood by him, saying: "Obey the
king's commands," His flesh was torn off by the whips and he streamed
down with blood and his flanks were laid open by wounds. He collapsed
and one of the soldiers kicked him violently in the stomach to make him
rise. In the end even the guards were moved to wondering compassion.
They suggested to him that they would bring him dressed meat which was
not pork, and that he should eat it pretending that it was pork. He
refused. "We should thus ourselves become an example of impiety to the
young, if we became to them an excuse for eating the unclean." In the
end they carried him to the fire and threw him on it, "burning him with
cruelly contrived instruments and pouring stinking liquids into his
nostrils." So he died, declaring: "I am dying by fiery torments for the
law's sake."
The second is the story of the seven brothers (
4 Maccabees 8:1-29;
4 Maccabees 9:1-32;
4 Maccabees 10:1-21;
4 Maccabees 11:1-27;
4 Maccabees 12:1-19;
4 Maccabees 13:1-27;
4 Maccabees 14:1-20).
They, too, were given the same choice and confronted with the same
threats. They were confronted with "the wheels and racks and hooks and
catapults and caldrons and frying pans and finger racks and iron hands
and wedges and hot cinders." The first brother refused to eat the
unclean things. They lashed him with whips and tied him to the wheel
until he was dislocated and fractured in every limb. "They heaped up
fuel and, setting fire to it, strained him upon the wheel still more.
And the wheel was besmeared all over with blood, and the heap of coals
was extinguished with the droppings of gore, and pieces of flesh flew
about the axles of the machine." But he withstood their tortures and
died faithful. The second brother they bound to the catapults. They
donned spiked iron gloves. "These wild beasts, fierce as panthers, first
dragged all the flesh off his sinews with their iron gauntlets to his
chin and tore off the skin of his head." He, too, died faithful. The
third brother was brought forward. "The officers, impatient at the man's
boldness, dislocated his hands and feet with racking engines and
wrenching them from their sockets, pulled his limbs asunder. And they
fractured his fingers and his arms and his legs and his elbows." In the
end they tore him apart on the catapult and flayed him alive. He, too,
died faithful. They cut out the tongue of the fourth brother before they
submitted him to like tortures. The fifth brother they bound to the
wheel, bending his body round the edge of it, and then fastened him with
iron fetters to the catapult and tore him in pieces. The sixth they
broke upon the wheel "while a fire roasted him from beneath. Then they
heated sharp spits and applied them to his back; and piercing through
his sides they burned away his bowels." The seventh brother they roasted
alive in a gigantic frying pan. These, too, died faithful.
These are the things of which the writer to the Hebrews is
thinking; and these are things which we do well to remember. It was due
to the faith of these men that the Jewish religion was not completely
destroyed. If that religion had been destroyed, what would have happened
to the purposes of God? How could Jesus have been born into the world
if the Jewish religion had ceased to exist? In a very real way we owe
our Christianity to these martyrs of the times when Antiochus made his
deliberate attempt to wipe out the Jewish religion.
There came a day when the situation ignited. The agents of
Antiochus had gone to a town called Modin and had erected an altar there
to make the inhabitants do sacrifice to the Greek gods. The emissaries
of Antiochus tried to persuade a certain Mattathias to set an example by
offering sacrifice, for he was a distinguished and influential man. He
refused in anger. But another Jew, seeking to curry favour and to save
his own life, came forward and was about to sacrifice. Mattathias, moved
to uncontrollable wrath, seized a sword and slew his apostate
countryman and the king's commissioner with him.
The standard of rebellion was raised. Mattathias and his sons
and those like-minded took to the hills; and once again the phrases used
to describe their life there were in the mind of the writer to the
Hebrews and he has echoes of them over and over again. "So Mattathias
and his sons fled into the mountains, and left all that they ever had in
the city" (
1 Maccabees 2:28).
"Judas Maccabaeus (and his friends) withdrew himself into the
wilderness and lived in the mountains, after the manner of beasts" (
2 Maccabees 5:27).
"Others, who had run together into caves near by, to keep the Sabbath
day secretly, being discovered...were all burnt together" (
2 Maccabees 6:11). "They wandered in the mountains and in the dens like beasts" (
2 Maccabees 10:6).
In the end under Judas Maccabaeus and his brothers the Jews regained
their freedom and the Temple was cleansed and the faith flourished
again.
In this passage the writer to the Hebrews has done as before. He
does not actually mention these things. Far better than his hearers
should be moved by this and that phrase to remember them for themselves.
In the end he says a great thing. All these died before the
final unfolding of God's promise and the coming of his Messiah into the
world. It was as if God had so arranged things that the full blaze of
his glory should not be revealed until we and they can enjoy it
together. The writer to the Hebrews is saving: "See! the glory of God
has come. But see what it cost to enable it to come! That is the faith
which gave you your religion. What can you do but be true to a heritage
like that?"
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)