I purposefully named this trio of articles in homage to an episode of the Spielberg/Hanks series Band of Brothers, where American forces in WWII first encounter the Nazi concentration camps. They absorb the unspeakably inhuman state of the Jews and the horrifying nature of the deaths that were suffered there, and see how much more important their cause was than they ever realized. Likewise, when we understand the gravity of our destiny in the kingdom of heaven, we will burn with purpose and chase it relentlessly.
So far we’ve covered Scripture that shows humanity’s function before sin handed dominion over to Death and Satan, and Scripture that shows how our dominion has been restored through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. Now beyond some of the obvious points, I’d like to discuss why it’s critically important that we know why we must carry out the purpose of dominion.
We’ve heard many a sermon about Hebrews 12, there being “such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us”, and in turn, encouraging us to “run with endurance the race set before us.” Interestingly to me, the picture painted by said sermons is of, like, a stadium full of people in heaven who are looking down on us and cheering us on, like a football game. The angle is kind of, “All these people did it and now we’re doing it too, thanks to Jesus!”
And I’m thinking, “Doing what?”
Ask that question and the answer is that running the race is, “Stayin’ away from the devil and all his ten-tations, and being loving and helpful to people like a good Christian should… And above all, lovin’ Jesus cuz he freed us from our sinnnnnzzzz!”
Okay, so. I have some thoughts about that, and I’m going to cover this passage and see what you think. The really important part is in chapter 11, and the totality of that chapter sets up a single – very desperate – point.
Hebrews 11:1; Now faith is certainty of things hoped for, a proof of things not seen. For by it the people of old gained approval.
We’ve covered “certainty” which I equate to “expectation“. Note what they gained was “approval”. That’s good, but not great, as we shall see. The chapter goes on to describe the faith of many of “the people of old”:
By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain… God commending him by accepting his gifts…
By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.
This part is really important:
And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
Put that statement I bolded in the back pocket. Like so many things lol. And “bolded” is not a verb. Okay; chapter 11 continues:
By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen…
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance… By faith he went to live in the land of promise… For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God…
And then a really, really important part in 11:13:
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar…
Note please that they are doing all of these actions by faith, which it taught us is “certainty of things hoped for”, and they are NOT receiving what was promised or hoped for. They live, they see something ahead in the Spirit, they believe, they expect, they act… they die. And they are commended by God. Like, “Well done, my good and faithful servant. You did your part in building the foundations of the city.”
There are cathedrals in Europe that took 4 and 5 generations to build. (and more, thank you Gaudi) Can you imagine spending your whole life carving three dozen marble gargoyles and a statue of each apostle and some framing for three giant stained glass windows… and dying before you get to see them installed? And your kid is making twenty-four 200-foot pillars for the inside, and his kid is making flying buttresses with carved marble plum leaves at 50x scale at each end… and then his kid gets to come worship in the finished building when he’s 42 and everyone before him is buried? This is what their acts of faith were like; they were laying foundation in the city whose designer and builder is God.
Sub-theme of this article: We cannot relate to these people!
Continuing in 11:17:
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac…
By faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau…
By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph…
By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Isrealites and gave directions concerning his bones…
By faith Moses… did freakin’ tons of stuff… and in verse 26 He considered the reproach of Christ (there he is, are we paying attention?) greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward…
11:32, And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets…
And next we see what these faithful people went through. But I wanna point something out. We read these stories like popping potato chips. “Moses went out to the desert and then he saw a burning bush and the LORD spoke to him and then he’s in Egypt and he’s messing up Pharaoh's magicians, and…” This stuff took months and YEARS to happen. These are real people’s lives. Moses lives in a desert for forty years before the bush. Forty. Take a minute and think about how much effort the last 40 years of your life has taken. “That’s more than my whole life so far…” Yeaahpp. Even Hebrews is like, “Let’s blow through maybe 500 combined years of real people’s blood sweat & tears in 20 sentences.” We don’t take the time to consider the vast investment people made for this faith.
Imagine Abram: the Lord tells him to move to a new land. Storybook Mode you flip one page and he’s there. Real Life Mode, think of what a pain in the ass it is to pack and move a family. I mean, just the packing part! A couple months maybe to actually get things organized and be ready to hit the road. Then literal months walking beside donkeys, camping, worrying about coyotes and running out of food and not finding water and getting shot at by the Taliban…
These real people spent serious swaths of their lives and an exhausting amount of effort and legitimate threats to their existence carrying out the instructions of the Lord. No joke. Take another minute to let that sink in.
Remember what you were doing last year at this time, and what kind of pain and worry you ran into along the way to get from there to here. That’s one year. Now imagine it without a bunch of emotional validation from social media and without a car and without food stores and without freakin’ running water. Now multiply that imagination by twenty years. And add sword fights.
No, seriously. We can’t even begin to relate to the reality that some of this “living by faith” included killing people who attacked, or who were in the land the Lord promised. The best some of us can muster is what it looks like to play Call of Duty, where nothing hurts and you're never tired out and when you die, you respawn. No terror, no exhaustion, no gross smells and blood everywhere. Did I mention “no terror”? Hebrews doesn’t mention, “By faith, normal Israelites had to charge into cities with swords and see an Amalekite woman cowering over her two children and kill all three of them screaming. And it took more than one slice to do it.” They had to do some unspeakably horrific things that would make us sick, and we never, ever think about what it looked or felt like.
We complain about the PTSD we got from someone who called us fat. We count it a great victory of faith if we go on a date and don’t sleep with them, “Cuz we’re just so in love with Jesus!”
We cannot relate. There was grievous, life-altering effort put into this faith. I’m literally crying trying to write this out. Do you feel this?
Now look what happens to them, starting in verse 36:
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… wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised.
People getting sawn in two for believing in and acting on a vision God showed them of what was to come, and it never happens during their lives. Take another minute to picture that scene, maybe even just watching from the crowd; not even being the one getting sawn.
You and I would be like, “Ick, this sucks,” if we had to spend two days and one overnight in a desert. Wondering before every step if we’re gonna disappear into quicksand and get chased by vipers and digested over 1,000 years by the Sarlacc pit. People of faith before us did this for years – to not receive what was promised.
Reach in your back pocket and pull out that bit about, “he rewards those who seek him.” Does it feel kinda unjust that some before us gave so much and they were rewarded with “commendation” rather than “what was promised”? Their precedent – since Able and Enoch – was literally to not see the promise fulfilled. It’s a solid bet that their expectation was “the promise is not for me,” which means their faith was “the promise is not for me.” And yet they acted anyway. Do we have that kind of selfless vision?
Please trust me that every question I ask “us” is something that I’m asking myself. These matters affect me very deeply.
Which brings us to the kicker, the last verse, verse 40, all these did not receive what was promised, “that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”
Understand this: The Lord gave them vision and instruction, they spend years of their lives doing terrifying things, and they never get to see the vision materialize apart from us. Meaning, if we don’t do our jobs materializing the vision, they went through all of that for nothing. What is their vision, exactly, that depends so greatly upon us? It’s back in verse 16, “they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.”
What’s a heavenly country? It’s not “heaven”. They weren’t trying to Escape My Life and die and “fly up to heaven”. They saw a vision of the kingdom of heaven on earth – the return of the Christ dominion – that thing that WE HAVE and that WE ARE SUPPOSED TO MANIFEST like Jesus showed us to do. We’re the Ambassadors of the Object of All Of These People’s Faith and they gave dozens of years of their real lives for it. sorry for yelling
So now we get to the part where those lighthearted sermons pick up, and we shall read it with the context that’s just been laid out for us.
Heb 12:1; Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
Do you think that “running the race” means, “Work hard not to screw up and need to ask Jesus for forgiveness and then go around quoting Romans 7”? Do you think it means, “Try hard to act real nice so that people ask why we’re so nice and we can tell them ‘It’s all Jesus!’”? Is that the definition of manifesting a heavenly country on earth?
All of these people that chapter 11 remembers are begging us to please do our jobs, so that the lives they lived don’t fizzle into nothingness. “I was sawn in two but my faith doesn’t get us jack unless you go free humanity from demons and disease and crush the head of the ruler of this world – Mister Ambassador!”
Dude, laying aside every weight and sin which clings so closely is supposed to be baseline disciple stuff, so that it’s unquestionably in the rearview when we’re called to act like the Sons of God that we actually are. Jesus calls us “brothers” and says, “Don’t cling to me. I’m headed up to send you the Helper. Your turn.” We are the Christ now, like Jesus and Elijah and Moses and Adam before us. We have the badge now, the name of the Lord: Jesus, the name above every name. We have the dominion. We have the understanding. We have the full realization of the vision they had, written out for us in four gospels and Acts and crap tons of other historical accounts. Do we need any further encouragement as to who we are and Why We Fight?
Hebrews 11:40 calls it as it is, saying, “since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.” We have the better thing; we’re living in the age when the dominion of Christ is now restored and available to all men again.
Please pray with me that we will digest this bold destiny together and grow into the body that makes heaven and earth submit to us like we were taught.
Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.
Comments