Reading: Hebrews 12
Speaker: Sam Burton (Awaken)
This Week’s Thoughts
Hebrews 11 teaches that faith is ‘the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things that are not seen.’ Faith believes what God has revealed and trusts what God has promised. Faith listens to God, walks with God, fears God, obeys God, and gains from God. And that’s not all! Faith submits to God, worships God, hopes in God, depends on God, and commits to God.
Biblical figures of faith aren’t thin on the ground. This leads Hebrews to ask rather breathlessly: ‘What more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets’ (11:32). Yet while some faithful conquered, ‘others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free’ (11:35). Does this shock you? Well, even more surprisingly, the Hall of Faith chapter doesn’t end on a high. Instead it says ‘all these, though commended through this faith, did not receive what was promised’ (11:39).
Really? How could these faithful not win what was promised? Well, while Abraham and Moses did not receive what was promised, they did gain wonderful gifts from God. They knew what it was to be forgiven in the same way we do. (No small thing!) While we look back to Jesus’ work on the cross, the ancients gazed ahead to what God would accomplish. And wasn’t this pursuit the whole point of the Old Testament?
Once Jesus paid the price for sin, all these saints joined God in heaven. For Asaph says: ‘You will guide me with Your counsel and afterward receive me to glory’ (Ps. 73:24). So what part of God’s promise did they not receive? Hebrews 11:40 tells us. ‘God had something better in mind for us, that they (Old Testament saints) would not be made perfect apart from us.’ You see, God had a better plan: for their faith and ours to merge. If this is hard to grasp, just focus on two important words: ‘Something better.’
‘Something better’is not a contrast between Old and New Testament blessings, for Hebrews talks of being ‘made perfect,’ which does happen in this life. No, the contrast is our fallen world and the perfect world to come. The ancients looked forward to being made perfect, and we still have the same hope. God planned ‘something better’for Jesus than the cross and the grave. Likewise, He planned ‘something better’for believers: earthbound faith leading to heavenly perfection.
Old Testament saints went ahead of us. Now they eagerly wait for us to finish the race, as apart from us they cannot be made perfect. While ‘to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord’ (2 Cor. 5:8), they wait patiently for Christ to bring the rest of His people home. For God’s family to be regathered into one. Only then will they – and us – enter perfect communion and win resurrection bodies. Only then will we all enter the best ‘something better.’
How does this effect us? Well, the Hebrew heroes ran their race and we must now run ours. ‘Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight,and the sin which so easily ensnares us.And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us’ (Heb. 12:1). How do we run with endurance? By ‘looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith’ (12:2).
Faith looks to Jesus. Hence He said: “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). Abraham looked to Jesus just like Moses did, seeing ‘the reproach of Christ as greater riches than the treasures of Egypt’ (Heb. 11:26). When we believe as they believed, we endure as they endured. We look to Christ, the author and perfecter of faith. He formed and founded faith in us. He laid hold and put His Spirit in us. He opened our eyes to truth, brought our faith into being, and He will bring our faith to completion.
If faith unites us to Christ, then what is His becomes ours. He is the vine and we are the branches. Because He lives, we live also. He endured the cross, and that endurance is ours. He ‘has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God’ (Heb. 12:2) and, one day soon, we will be there with Him. As Christ Himself said: “They will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and sit down in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29). Hallelujah! Come Lord Jesus!