Hebrews 11:11-16 The Faith to Wait

Chapters

• 0:00 Tempo: 120.0

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:11

All right, Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11. Verse 11 is what we'll be today. Hebrews 11. 11. And if you would like to uh later on flip to Genesis, you can sort of have an idea where Genesis 15 is, but it's not that hard to find. You'll be good. Hebrews 11. 11. All right. Well, we're talking about faith here in Hebrews chapter 11. It's a little visit to the hall of faith as it's known in many circles. And uh we've seen various examples of faith. We've seen Abel and Enoch and Noah. Now we're camped out on the life of Abraham. Uh few weeks here with Abraham. Pretty important person in this hall of faith. Uh, Romans chapter 4 lets us know that he's the father of those who would believe, uh, father of the faithful. Um, and a large chunk of Genesis uh chapters 11 through 25 really uh have to do with Abraham and his life and his development in faith. And it's really uh quite the account as he's taken, we saw last time, uh, a guy in a place called Ur of the Chaldees, an idol worshiper. Uh he's taken from this point where no record of any understanding of who God is, and God leads him out, and God begins to work in his life. And it's a very sweet account in Genesis there of this one, Abraham, just a normal guy learning to walk by faith. Now, um, faith today we'll see is in the waiting. The faith that we'll see demonstrated today is in the waiting, and it's the faith to wait. Um, nobody in the Bible pictures waiting better than Abraham and Sarah, waiting decades for just a hint at God's promises. And uh this is relevant, right? Because none of us like waiting. It involves patience. Uh, we want our stuff now, right? From waiting to the end of the school day for some of us to waiting uh for a wedding day for others. Uh what we're waiting for can never come fast enough. I mean, goodness, uh, most of us can't even wait through the microwave for our frozen burrito to cook, right? You know, it's three, two, you know, it's good enough. And there's just that perpetual one second on the microwave there from the time that we couldn't wait. Um, but waiting is one of God's favorite answers to wait. It requires faith. And during the waiting, God builds our faith. Um, in the waiting, we are often forced to trust God. So let's jump in here, Hebrews chapter 11. Let's read verse 11 through 16, what we'll look at today. Hebrews 11, 11. By faith, Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him faithful, who had promised. Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead. That's an encouraging way to look at Abraham there in his uh, well, at this point, in his 90s, as good as dead, were born as many as the stars and the sky in multitude, innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore. And these all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them, embraced them, and confess that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland, and truly, if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is a heavenly country. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. So here we see the waiting there in verses 11 and 12. The waiting for the promised son. You perhaps know this story. Isaac was the promised son given there to Abraham in Genesis 15. God promised to make Abraham a people uh living in the promised land. Um, he's not seeing it for a good eight to ten years. And there in Genesis 15, Abraham presumes and has a conversation with God where he says, you know, maybe, maybe it's um my servant Eliezer. Maybe he'll be the one to start this nation with. And God responds to Abraham in Genesis 15, verse 4. If you're there, you can look at it. Uh, Genesis 15, 4, and behold, the word of the Lord came to Abraham, saying, This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir. Then he brought him outside and said, Look now toward heaven, count the stars if you were able to number them. And he said to him, So shall your descendants be. Verse 6. And he believed in the Lord, and God accounted it to him for righteousness. So here we see Abraham getting this very distinct promise. You are gonna have actual literal descendants from your body. Uh, the Hebrew nation, the Jews would come from Abraham's own body, Isaac, right? And you know the story there. They're given this promise in Abraham and Sarah, they wait and they trusted God, and out popped Isaac. Not quite. But we see the struggle that they had. Uh, this is a very common theme in the Bible: the waiting for a child, Abraham and Sarah. Rebecca, Abraham's daughter-in-law, struggled with barrenness. And Isaac prayed for her, and they got two, Jacob and Esau. Um, and and and even Jacob's wife, Rachel, struggled and spoke to Jacob at one point. Give me a child or I will die. And and this barrenness, she eventually had Joseph, uh, and later Benjamin. Later in the time of the judges, we see this thing of barrenness. Uh, a woman named Hannah waits for a child, desires a child. She's praying and she's crying out to God, God, just please give me a child. And and she's just hit to the core. Now, these are things that hit us deep inside. Wanting to have children, not being able to have children. Uh, that was a story in our life uh for so many years, unable. And I get it, right? I remember uh the tears. I remember just crying out, God, why would you give me desire for this thing and not uh give them to me? And it just rips our guts out, right? To put it plainly, right? These things, these desires for something that we don't have, and we all have very unique things that we desire in our life. And so many times the thing that God tells us is wait. Um, and so we see here the promise is made, a nation, but yet they had to wait. There's also the waiting in verse 13 and 14 for a homeland. Um, verse 14 specifically, they sought a homeland. Uh, now this is something that that generation, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, they never really saw with their eyes. We read that a little later there. Um, and yet God says, this is the promise. Your people are gonna have a homeland. Wait for it. Um, there's so much that we wait for in life, and so many times God just says, You're gonna have to trust me and wait. But the question is, how do we wait? How can we wait? Well, I think there's some good lessons here to look at. So let's look at him in verse 11, number one. They discovered personally the faithful God. Look at verse 11. It says there they judged him faithful who had promised. Uh, they discovered personally who God was. Uh, they discovered that he was faithful, they understood that he was faithful. Now, check it out. Being faithful is not just something God does. God just, that's not something he does, it's something he is. As we look at the character and the attributes of God, God is faithful. It's said many times in the Bible, Deuteronomy 7 9. He is God the faithful one. Hosea 11, 12. Uh, he is the holy one who is faithful. 1 Corinthians 1 9, Paul says, God is faithful. So we see it over and over again. It's not just what he does, it's who he is. God is faithful. And it is one of those things that God can't be. It's unfaithful. Uh we realize that God can do anything, nothing is impossible with God. But there's a few things that he actually can't do. He can't learn, right? God will never learn because he knows everything, he's omniscient, right? Um, but he also can't lie. It's impossible for God to lie because he will not fail. He always does exactly what he says he will do. Now, Abraham and Sarah, they learn that through their life. They learn that God is faithful and they learn to trust him. Um also, though, look at verse 13. They learned to discover him personally, but they were also deeply convinced. Assured is the word in verse 13 of the promises. The word assured there could be convinced. That's a good word to use for assured, convinced. Um, sometimes we think about the Christian life as a life by blind faith. Right? I just trust God, I don't see it, but I trust Him. Yeah, it's it's part of life. But there's a lot of things you can be convinced of. There's a lot of reasons to believe. There's a lot of reasons to believe that what we see around us didn't just happen, bang, it happened. That God created the heavens and the earth. There's a lot of good proof that you can be convinced of. Um, you can be convinced that he is there, that he knows. Um, all these things we can be convinced in our life. And Abraham and Sarah, they were convinced of the promise. Now, I'm gonna disagree that they were totally, they weren't totally convinced, right? We see times where their faith is high and their faith is low, and sometimes they doubt, and sometimes they believe, but we're just gonna say here, they were assured, they were convinced that God, being faithful, will do the things he says. The third one here, though, look at verse 13 also. They drew into the promises. Look at the word embraced, right? They embraced under the right circumstances. I'm a big hugger, I can do that, maybe making some uncomfortable sometimes. Uh, but you experience that in your life, don't you? Like, you know, when your kids get through a situation uh, you know, where there's danger and they run up to you and they just give you this big, big bear hug, and they're scared. Um, when I went away for the first time in our married life uh on, I think it was a missions trip, I surprised Leela at the door of the place where she was staying. I knocked and she wasn't expecting me. I just remember that was like the biggest hug. She was crying, she's laughing, she you know, and it's just a big hug embrace, took it in, brought close. Um, here they embrace the promises of God. Pretty sweet, sweet picture to embrace the promises of God. Um, the promised son, they pulled that promise in as their own. Now we're gonna say they can see they struggled, but that's a great way to look at the promises of God, to bring it in where Jesus says, if I go, we'll read, I'll come again. To bring it close in your life. I believe that and I embrace it, I love it. Hold it dear, the promises of God. Now, verse 14, interesting here. Another thing they do that helped in this waiting is they declared it plainly. They declared it plainly that they sought the homeland. Now, it's helpful sometimes to declare the promises of God to others. And I don't know what it is. I feel embarrassed. I do sometimes. When I think of the promises of God, I'll come again that where I am, there you may be also. Heaven, the promise of heaven. I have a hard time saying, you know what? God says, oh, this isn't all that there is. One day we're gonna go to heaven, right? The promises of God, I'll never leave you or forsake you. Somebody's going through it. Sometimes I'm a little embarrassed to say it. Hey, you know, God can be with you. You know, um, but sometimes it helps to declare uh the promises of God. Um now notice verse 16. They also desired uh heaven, right? Uh they they desired, is that 16? Yeah, they desire a better, that is a heavenly country. They desired it. And and that was really their hope and the thing that they longed for, the thing that they kept in sight, this desire for heaven. That helps us in the waiting, having these perspectives. Now, these are some ways that we can uh kind of boost ourselves to wait through that time. But I want to point out one thing before we move on. Abraham and Sarah look pretty good here, right? They know who God is, they're convinced in their mind that his promises are real, they know his faithfulness and they're looking for it and declaring heaven is a real place. I can't wait to go there. But a little side note here, let's turn to Genesis 16. Turning is good. Genesis 16. It's important to know that Abraham and Sarah weren't perfect. There's a lot of places you could go in the book of Genesis to find this out, but chapter 16 is kind of a big one here. Chapter 16, verse 1. Now Sarah, Abram's wife, had borne him no children, and she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, See now the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please go into my maid. Perhaps she shall obtain children, you shall obtain children by her. And Abram heeded the voice of Sarah. And Sarah, Abram's wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. And after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan. Uh so he went into Hagar and she conceived. So now here's the story. Abraham, Sarah, mighty in faith. They looked to the promise, they saw him as faithful. And then you know what? Ten years, eight to ten years go by, uh, even longer, really. And and Sarah goes, look, God's not giving me kids. If we're gonna have kids, you're gonna have to do this another way. And and the faith scale, it just goes down. Are they trusting God? They're not trusting God. Are they doubting? They are doubting a lot. But I love here in the book of Hebrews that as we see Abraham and Sarah, God sees them as faithful. And I take a lot of comfort in the failings of Abraham, right? Very sad to say that. I take a lot of comfort in the fact that he failed, that Bible characters failed because I failed. I certainly don't do it all right. My faith is up and down and here and there. Um, it's very comforting to me that in faith, specifically in faith in Jesus, God sees us as doing the right thing, as following through, and we trust Jesus for that. So all these things we put together, but then we got to wonder, what are we waiting for? That's the question to look at. What are you waiting for? Maybe it's some promises that God has made you in your life, personal promises He's He's uh made to you. I know when I read the story and the account of Abraham, I a lot of times took it to the bank and said, God, you gave Abraham children, you can give me children too. And I took it as this is the word of the Lord. Now, take it with a loose grip in times like that. If God's told you, then just believe it and that settles it and trust him. But either way, here's the thing with waiting and trusting. You have to leave it in God's hands. Because on the outside of things, it really didn't look like it was gonna happen. There was a lot of disappointment in their lives, and they could have easily said, you know what, God didn't do it, and they did. God didn't do what he said he's gonna do. But know this, his ways aren't our ways. The way that he makes these things happen, it's not the way we would have done it. The bottom line is you've got to trust God. And be honest, sometimes we can hear wrong, but trust God. But there's some other things that are even more stable. God's prophetic promises, things that he says he will do. The Bible still has plenty of things that God, who's never let us down before, has said are gonna happen in this world. Read the book of Daniel, read the book of Revelation, read the book of Ezekiel, it's there. Interesting things. Now we bank on those things, but in general, bank on this. The promises that God made, that this is not everything. I know you can look at that this week. Listen to this, just picture yourself there. It's the upper room before Jesus goes to the cross. His disciples are discouraged, it just feels weird, maybe. And John 14, verse 1. Listen to this and take it to heart. Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself. That where I am, there you may be also. Man, every time I read those words, I'm going to prepare a place for you. If I go to prepare a place, I'll go, I'll come and get you to myself. Every time I read that, I'm so encouraged because I really believe God is gonna do what he says he's gonna do. I look at this world and I go, it's just going downhill, it's getting worse and worse, this is horrible. But then I go, but God promised he's not gonna leave us here. God promised there's more to life after these things. And we take that and we trust it. We trust it and say, God, you're gonna do what you said. You're gonna, I don't see it, I don't feel it, but I believe it, and I'm gonna live my life in light of that. Well, last thing, let's go back to Hebrews chapter 11. Why wait in faith? There's some pretty pointed things. Hebrews 11. Verse 16 is where we'll see it, but why wait in faith? Number one, it pleases God. You can look back at verse 6 there in chapter 11, that faith pleases God. It pleases God that we trust him. That's what he wants. But notice verse 16. Therefore, therefore, because they trusted him and they trusted in in a better place, therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. Because they waited in faith and trusted God, therefore, God is not ashamed to be their God. That seems like a little thing. But, you know, I look at it and I go, you know, there's plenty of stuff in my life I feel like God would be ashamed, right? Oh, God, you're probably pretty ashamed of me, you know, and the things that I did, the things I said, and I'm still living things down from my childhood, you know. Um, and and you know, I understand what it feels like for people to be ashamed, right? You know, uh, but but I feel like I deserve it and I do. But when we trust God, God's not ashamed of us. That's because of what Jesus did. When we trust him with that, that's we we put on Christ and God sees his perfect son. But but it's so nice to know that God's not ashamed of us when we trust him. And notice there, he's prepared a city for them. Man, isn't that sweet? It's not this generic heaven thing, it's a city, it's a place for us. Not only that he would not be ashamed of us, but he wants to be with us forever. Uh, a wonderful truth to take into our life as this week could be challenging, it could be glorious and wonderful, but no matter what comes, good or bad, waiting or experiencing what we've been promised, uh, we have to trust God. And and and by God's grace, that's what we'll do. So, God, we see this example of Abraham and Sarah trusting you uh with their heart. And uh, God, I'm encouraged that I know they weren't perfect, but God you saw them as perfect. God, and and as we looked at their life, it's little by little you built this thing of faith and trust. That they knew who you were and what you were like. They put all of their weight on you, and you didn't let them down. God, even though they didn't see it, you did exceedingly abundantly above all they could ask of. God, thank you that you're the same God in our life. I pray that we trust you this week with the little things and the big things. God, watch over us in Jesus' name. We pray. Amen.