Hebrews 11:32-35 From Judges To Jesus: Why Faith, Not Works, Carries Us

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All right, Hebrews chapter 11. Looks like verse 32 is where we're gonna pick up. Alright, so we've been considering here the Hall of Faith in uh what's known as the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11. And it's kind of an in-between time. I do want to encourage you to be considering what you might want to go through next. I'm open to suggestions. I'll pray about it. But if there's a book that we can jump into at the beginning of the year, um, give me your ideas. I really want to know. Um, but here we are in Hebrews chapter 11, known as the Hall of Faith, many circles. As we jump in, it's useful to review why there is a book of Hebrews, right? Um, Hebrew believers in the early church were being tempted to go back to a works-based kind of philosophy of getting to God. That's kind of where it had become, uh, was about observing the law, the traditions, the feasts, all these things, the Sabbaths. And while those things had a purpose, uh, it wasn't to get us to God, uh, aside from driving us to Him uh because of our sinfulness, it wasn't to get us to God. We're saved by grace through faith. It's not by works, lest anyone should boast. And here, the author of the book of Hebrews is encouraging the people, you can't go back to the way it was. You cannot go back to that. You started by faith, uh, you need to continue and end by faith. It's always been by faith, and that's really the message of Hebrews chapter 11 here is to show them since the very beginning of time, it has always been a relationship with God by faith. Now, since faith is better demonstrated than defined, the author gives uh his readers a sort of history lesson. Again, starting back in Genesis, we've been through uh Genesis, we've seen uh through Leviticus and Moses as an example of faith. We've considered Joshua last week and Rahab. In verse 32, we see kind of just uh the something you would expect a speaker to say in verse 32. What more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Uh women received their dead, raised to life again. And so we consider here the author just says, Yeah, I don't have time to mention everybody. We could go through the entire Old Testament and give you examples of those who lived by faith. What more shall I say? He's running out of time there. And he heads into, as we saw here, some rapid-fire examples of those who live by faith. Um, now remember, written to Hebrews, Hebrew believers, as as these names are mentioned, they would have thought of the stories, the accounts of Gideon and Barak and Jephthah and Samson, some of the great heroes of the Old Testament, David, right? And everyone, like here, probably, everyone would have known David, a man of faith. He faced off with Goliath by faith, right? And they would have just pictured it there. That great example, right? In in 1 Samuel, where David is there and he sees this Goliath coming in the valley of Elah there, and and and facing off with Israel. David, this little kid, goes down and and in front of Goliath says, You're coming at me with a sword and a spear and a javelin, but I come at you in the name of the Lord God of Israel, whom you've defied. I'm gonna take your head and I'm gonna feed your army to the birds, right? And they would have said, That's David, some faith, right? As a little boy running towards Goliath with a sling, his hair blowing back, and just you know, knocking that guy down in the power of God. And and everybody would have had that. And some great examples here. Notice, just to name some greats, close the mouths of lions there in um verse 34, I guess. Um, right, 34. Uh no, maybe is it 33? 30, 33. They're in there, lions. Stop the mouths of lions, right? It's Daniel, right? Uh, Daniel, this example of purity there in the Babylonian Empire and the Persian Empire. He's faced with this dilemma. Um, pray to God and get thrown to the lions. And he says, Well, I'm gonna listen to God. And he opens his windows there by faith and and prays to God, even when it was against the law. Thrown into the lion's den, God stops the mouths of the lions. But he was a guy who lived by faith, a great example. I admire that guy for sure. Um, and this shows what real faith looks like. Some just examples they would have known. But notice there are others that we maybe didn't say so much about, but notice Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephtha. This is a time of the judges, right? We don't want to miss this. The time of the judges here. Um, now Paul lets us know in the book of Acts that that was about 450 years after uh after the time of Joshua, 450 years, the book of Judges, right? And you can read that, and it's encouraging and it's discouraging, it's gross in a lot of ways, right? When you read the book of Judges, it's it's this whole thing that could be summed up by the last verse of the book, Judges 21, 25. In those days there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Picture that. This is the theme of the book of Judges and these guys who were in here. There was no king, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Everybody just did whatever they felt like doing, right? And it's just disgusting to see in the book of Judges, as there's just judgment and idolatry. And there's this whole process as you look at the book of Judges. That's kind of what we're looking at the rest of our time today. The book of Judges, it's like a sickening carousel, right? I never, when I was a kid, got sick on carousels or a child's play, right? A carousel, a merry-go-round. Now I look at a carousel and I get nauseous, right? What happened to my inner ear? I have no idea. But it just goes round and round and round. That's the book of Judges, but in a much deeper way, right? You know the story. The book of Judges uh follows idolatry. The people do what's right in their own eyes. Idolatry. They serve other gods, they intermarry with the people of the land. And eventually God says, Y'all are so wicked, I am gonna send judgment on you. Idolatry, judgment. Well, they're oppressed by people like the Philistines and the Midianites, and they cry out to God in their oppression, right? And God in his mercy sends a judge, a hero, right? Someone to deliver the people from the oppressor. And he does over and over again. Well, the problem is that when they're saved from their oppressors in the book of Judges, then they fall back into idolatry and sin and comfort. Does that sound like our lives so many times? Sometimes, you know, we have high highs and low lows, high, high, low lows, you know, and it just over and over again. It's a pattern sometimes in our life. And that's the book of Judges. That's where we find ourselves today. The bottom line is it's pretty ugly, right? Now, here we're gonna look at these judges starting in verse 32, and I'm gonna take them a little bit out of order for a reason. But Gideon, we'll start with Gideon. If you want to turn to Judges chapter six and follow along, you can look there. But we don't have, like the author said, we don't have a whole lot of time, so it's not gonna be as much reading as much as summarizing, but you can kind of keep your eye on that. So God finds the story goes in in Judges chapter six, it's the land of Ophra. And here, as the story opens, we see Gideon. Gideon is threshing wheat in a wine press. Now, the only reason he's doing that is because he's scared, right? He's hiding from the Midianites. The Midianites would raid and they would take the food from the people. And so Gideon is doing all this in secret. Look at chapter 6, verse 12. And the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and said to him, The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor, right? Uh, and this is where the account starts. Oh, mighty man of valor. And Gideon says, Who me? You talking to me, right? Because he is not a mighty man of valor, he is afraid, and he's threshing wheat in a wine press. And he says, essentially, you got the wrong guy. Now, God is going to use Gideon to deliver his people from the Midianites, but there's a whole lot that goes on before then. Gideon there says at the beginning, Well, let me bring you a sacrifice. And it's pretty amazing because Gideon brings, you'll see there in chapter six, Gideon brings a sacrifice, some meat, some bread, some broth. And the angel of the Lord says, Well, pour the broth out. I don't do broth. And put the sacrifice on the rock. As he puts the sacrifice on the rock, the angel of the Lord there puts his staff on the sacrifice, and fire comes up out of the rock and consumes the sacrifice. Angel of the Lord disappears, right? Uh, Gideon is freaked out. But yet God says there in chapter seven, I'm gonna use you to deliver my people. Now, there's a whole thing of the fleece in chapter six, you can read about that. But chapter seven, God gives him the battle plan, right? 32,000 men in chapter seven have come to gather around Gideon to deliver his people from Midian. And God says, This, Gideon, that's too many people. 32,000, too many people. If I give you the victory with 32,000, you'll say, Well, it was our great army that did this. So you know the story. God tells Gideon, tell anyone who is scared and wants to go home, just go on home. And 20,000 people leave at that point. Um, from 32,000 to 10,000. Um Gideon's feeling a little less confident, but you know the story. There's a final test of how they drink water. And through a process there, God whittles it down to 300 men against 135,000 Midianites. 300 men. What's more difficult there is that God says, here's how I want you to win the battle. I want you to take torches. Torches, yeah, torches, put them in jars, cover them with jars. I want you to take a trumpet in your other hand. You're gonna surround the Midianites, and on the queue, I am gonna have you break those jars, flare up those torches, and blow the trumpets and yell the sword of the Lord of Gideon, right? And he does it. Now it's not quite that simple. There's a lot of doubting going on, but he does it, and God delivers the people from the hand of Midian. And I look at that and I go, by faith, Gideon. And he's got doubts and he's got fleeces, and he's got all sorts of things that God works with. I'm gonna give him in this case a B plus, just for funsies. I'm gonna grade him and give him a B plus on faith. But God says, by faith, Gideon. Now, notice another name here uh Barak, someone you maybe haven't heard of. The story there, the account of Barak is in Judges chapter four. Um, and it starts with a prophetess named Deborah in Judges chapter four. She's in Bethel. And Deborah, by the word of the Lord, calls a man named Barak to deliver God's people from the hand of a general named Sisera. And she tells him, This is what God has for you, Barak. You're gonna deliver my people from Sisera. Well, chapter four, verse eight, we can read Barak's response. Barak said to her, If you will go with me, then I will go. But if you will not go with me, I will not go. Now, maybe he wasn't very confident in his ability to lead the people, but Deborah says, That's fine. Look at verse 9. Uh, I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, there will be no glory for you in the journey you are taking, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. Then Deborah arose and went with Barak to Kadesh. So God uses this team of Barak and Deborah to win a victory. And as they win this victory, Sisera escapes. And Sisera runs off. He's running down the road, right? The general, the big guy. And he comes to the tent of a woman named Jael, uh, and the wife of Heber the Kenite. And and there JL says, Sisera, hey, come in here real quick. Hide in my tent. You'll be fine. And Sisera jumps into the tent and says, thanks a lot. Hey, can can can I just lay down here? Will you give me something to drink? And you know the story. JL gives him some warm milk, warm milk, right before bed, right? And and lets him fall asleep there on the floor in the tent. Well, God then uses JL. We read this, Judges 4, verse 21. Then JaL, Heber's wife, took a tent peg, took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and drove the tent peg into his temple, and it went down into the ground, for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died. That's a great way to end that. So he died. And and there, God uses JL to just nail his head to the ground. Isn't that wonderful? The Bible's colorful stuff. Um, so as Deborah said, who gets the glory in this? Well, God does, but it was JL who gets the real force in this in this account. Um, so we look at Barak. Barak by faith did these things, and I'm just gonna grade him with a C. You know, I'm gonna give him a C. Is that fair? I think that's fair. Barak can get a C in my grade book. Um then we meet Jephthah now. He's at the end, but I want to take him first because I think his grade's a little bit higher in this situation. Jephthah, Judges chapter 11. You can turn to uh to be looking at that story. Jephthah has a sordid background there in Judges chapter 11. He's the son of a prostitute in Gilead. His father's family didn't think very highly of him, I guess, and they chase him off. Now, in verse 3, we read that as he's kind of banished from his family, quote, worthless men banded together with him. So, kind of a Robin Hood kind of situation here, really. He he has this band of worthless men that come around him, and Ammon comes against the people of God. Jephtha's family turns to him and says, You know what? You help us out, you and your worthless men, you help us out, and we'll let you be our leader. Now he agrees to go negotiate with the Ammonites. He gives them a little bit of a history lesson there in Judges chapter 11, and that doesn't work. Chapter 11, verse 30. And so Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, If you will indeed deliver the people of Ammon into my hands, then it will be that whatever comes out the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the people of Ammon surely will surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering. So here before the battle, Jephthah makes a vow. God, you give me victory, I'll give you whatever comes running to me when I come home. Whatever. Verse 32. So Jephtha advanced toward the people of Ammon to fight against them, and the Lord delivered them into his hands, and he defeated them from Aor as far as Mineth, 20 cities, and to Abel Karamin with a very great slaughter. And the people of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel. Awesome! Great victory. Look at verse 34. When Jephthah came to his house at Mitzpah, there was his daughter coming out to meet him with timbrels and dancing, and she was his only child. Besides her, he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass when he saw her that he tore his clothes and said, Alas, my daughter, you have brought me very low. You are among those who trouble me, for I have given my word to the Lord, and I cannot go back on it. So Jephthah just, oh no, I vowed to the Lord that whatever came to me when I came home, I would give as a burnt offering. I would give it entirely to the Lord. Now, commentators differ on this because you your heart's sinking at this point. Commentators differ on this. Did he offer her as a burnt offering to the Lord? I think he did, because they have a holiday after this in her honor for being so willing to be sacrificed in this sense. And yet, listen, if Jephthah had known what God said in Leviticus chapter 5, verse 4 through 6, that if you make a foolish vow, here's the sacrifice you can offer to God to go back on your foolish vow. That was a foolish vow. And God said, We do it, people will do it. We'll make foolish vows, offer this as a sacrifice, and you can get out of a foolish vow. That's number one. Number two is Deuteronomy 18, Deuteronomy 12, Leviticus 18. All these say that God is not into human sacrifice. In fact, here's Jeremiah chapter 7, verse 31, which of course is after Jephthah's time, but hey, I get it. Uh this is what God says about the whole deal. Then the people have built high places, which is in the valley of Hinnam, to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my heart. So God says very strictly, I am not into human sacrifice. I am not into this. I will not ask that of you. And so, Jephthah, some victory, some faith. But man, if he had just known God's word, that's pretty heavy. I'm gonna give him a D, right? Well, Samson, Samson, Judges chapter 13 to Judges chapter 16. It's the longest account that we have in the Judges, and yet it's the least amount of faith, in my opinion. Uh, there's the miraculous story of Samson's birth. His parents are barren, and God comes to them and says, You're gonna have a son, and they do, and they name him Samson. So cute, right? Samson means sunshine, right? That's essentially what they called their son Samson. It might have been some of the reason why he got into so many fights, right? Sunshine, right? Um, but there he is, miraculous story of his birth, and and yet everything pretty much goes downhill from there as he's commanded to live according to the Nazirite vow. You know the story. No dead bodies, not allowed to eat anything that comes from the grapevine, um, and grow your hair out as an outward sign of your consecration to God. Now, the rules are there, right, for Samson. Be a Nazirite. And I feel like the rules are only there to give him something to break, right? Because he breaks every single one of those Nazirite rules. And and yet he he's used by God. Now, he's used by God in some pretty base ways, right? He gets himself into a few situations, but one is in the city, the village of Timnah. He finds a woman there that he just falls in love with, a Philistine woman. And he asks his parents to get her for him. And and it's just bad all around, right? The the ends up that the woman is and her father are killed by the Philistines there to get at Samson, and and he kills 1,030 Philistines by the end of chapter 15. He rules for 20 years, we're told in 15 verse 20, but there's not much there to really hold on to. Now, chapter 16, if you're looking at it, chapter 16 opens with Samson going to Gaza to meet with a prostitute. This is Samson's weak point for sure. And the Philistines hear it and they want to lay in wait. They're gonna kill him there in the city. At midnight, story is he goes out, and while he's going out of the city, he pulls these massive gates of the city off of their not even off their hinges. He takes the bars and the gates and everything, and he carries it to a hill and drops them down. This is how God, uh God's power is used in Samson's life to pull the gates of the city off and take. Now it is interesting uh that where is that hill that he dropped him? It's about 35 miles from the city, so you know it's kind of a big deal, right? Well, Samson then in chapter 16 sees a girl named Delilah, and he is smitten and she's viral, right? Uh literally, and he's playing with fire, we see throughout this story. Well, through a process of events, she finds a secret in his mind to his great strength. You cut my hair, I'll be like anyone else. And she does it, right? She lulls him to sleep, cuts his hair, and we see in Samson, was it a death wish that he had? Is that what Samson was looking for? Now listen, was it a death wish, or did he really just not think that anything would happen if he cut his hair, if he went against his vow? I think he just really didn't think anything would happen because we read in chapter 16, verse 20, the saddest verse in the Bible, I think. One of the saddest verses in the Bible. She said, The Philistines are upon you, Samson. So he awoke from his sleep and said, I will go out as before, at other times, and shake myself free. But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him. So sad. He played with fire and he got burnt. He didn't know that the Lord had departed. And you know the story, the Philistines there, they gouge out Samson's eyes, they chain him up and have him walk around in circles like a beast of burden. And they really just make fun of him. Ah, God's deliverer, here he is. And and if we were to grade him, now of course, following that, 3,000 Philistines are killed as Samson knocks the temple down upon himself and them. But if I were to grade Samson, and Samson's gonna beat me up when I get to heaven, I just know it. But if I were to grade Samson, big old F, I cannot find one point of faith in Samson's life. I can't. And I'm not very gracious with Samson, but there it is. Now, here's the problem. There's a lot of problems with this. The one number one problem is that we see things wrong, wrongly, right? We we don't see things right. We grade, right? You were kind of with me while I was grading these folks in the book of Judges. We judge on our faithfulness on a gradient. More faithful, less faithful, right? But God doesn't see that way, does he? Uh Matthew 17, 20, Jesus says, if you have faith, like a mustard seed, you could move mountains. How much faith? I don't think it's much. It's just faith, right? If you have faith, you can move mountains. And and that's where we get it wrong. God's into trust, we're into how much, and we compare ourselves to other people. Dangerous, right? And the question is, do we have faith? Now, now that's not to say that great faith isn't noticed in the Bible, that God doesn't want our faith to grow, right? Ultimately, he wants our sanctification. There's a great word for you, sanctification to grow, our holiness to him. He wants our belief and our trust to affect the way we live every single day. God wants that, and true faith will affect our holiness. You can write this one down, 1 John 3:3. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself. So having a hope in God's faithfulness in the future, it'll purify our lives, it'll make us holy. Um, Acts 26 18 Those who are sanctified are sanctified by faith in Jesus, it says. And so Real faith leads to a change of life, and and and we should see that. We might notice that in our life as you look back at where you used to be. God is so gracious to work in our life. But here's the thing a lot of times we find ourselves in this exact same place as the judges. If we're honest, we look at our life and we go, I've got a lot of failure in faith. I've got some faithfulness, but I've got a lot of failure, a lot of wasted years, a lot of regret because we failed. And I like Samson really in the end because he shows me, man, if he can do it, I can do it, right? You know what I mean? Faith. I want to live by faith. And yet the enemy will come to us and say, but you're a failure in faith. Why don't you just stay there? And I'm always brought back to this illustration from Chariots of Fire. Great movie, right? But there's this one point where Eric Little gets knocked to the ground. You've seen it in the Olympics before, somebody trips or whatever, and he gets back up and he just runs. And he finishes the race and he finishes it. Well, that's what God wants. As we look at our faithlessness and our failures, God wants us to get back up. Now we have more to cover in Hebrews chapter 11, at least one more time, but turn to Hebrews chapter 12. And this is, as usual, a good place to end. Hebrews chapter 12, because the enemy will say, forget about it, stay down, you failed. Don't even try. But God will say, get up. Look at chapter 12, verse 1. The purpose of chapter 11. Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. So all these folks in chapter 11, they're a witness to us. That's essentially what this is saying. You look at this list of people, you look at people like Gideon and Barak and Jephtha and Samson. You look at them and you go, you know what? If they can do it, I can do it. By God's grace, I can do it. He says, We're surrounded by this cloud of witnesses. Notice, 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. So the author here says, You Hebrews, you folks in 2025, take these things to heart. Lay aside the weights in your life, things that weigh you down, lay aside the sin, and get up and run with endurance. Just keep going in the race that's set before us. And notice verse 2 so important, probably the most important part, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross. And so the author here says, where are you going to find the strength to keep enduring? You gotta look to Jesus. You look to Jesus and the cross. The joy that was set before him, he endured the cross for you because he loves you, right? And that's where the power comes from to just keep going by faith. He's the author and finisher of your faith. Just run with him with endurance, a race that's set before you, because we're all failures in this life of faith, right? We have ups, we have downs. If we graded ourselves, who knows what we would give ourselves. But God wants us to finish the race well, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, for the joy that was set before me, endured the cross. So, God, um thank you for the victories in our life. Thank you for loving us and saving us and forgiving us. God, forgive us for the times that we've been faithless. Plenty of examples we could give of that. But yet, God, it's not about that. It's about you and your faithfulness to finish the work that He started in us. So, God, I pray for those that are discouraged in life and just feel beat down by choices. God, um, we look at our past and we can get so discouraged. And yet, God, you don't want that. You want us to look to you. You want us to run with endurance the race set before each one of us. God help us this week to run that race with you. Uh, what a what a sweet part of life that you invite us to walk with you and run with you. God, you have um things for us to do this week, but you have things for us to experience as part of your goodness. Maybe it be those quiet times that we get to spend with you where you just tell us how much you care. God, uh, help us to live this week with you. Be by your grace. We pray all these things in Jesus' name.

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