Hebrews 11:12-16 – Faith That Sojourns (Abraham & Sarah) II

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 18 Aug. 2019

Omitting greyed-out text should bring presentation time down to 45 minutes.

Intro on Faith

• Sometime in the 400’s A.D. Saint Patrick wrote a letter from his mission station in Ireland recounting how he got there: “I was in Britain with my people who... besought me that... I should not leave them and go elsewhere. And there I saw in the night the vision of a man, whose name was Victoricus, coming as it were from Ireland, with countless letters. And he gave me one of them, and I read the opening words of the letter, which were, `The voice of the Irish'; and as I read the beginning of the letter I thought that at the same moment I heard their voice---they were those beside the Wood of Voclut, which is near the Western Sea---and thus did they cry out as with one mouth: `We ask thee, boy, come and walk among us...' And I was quite broken in heart, and could read no further, and so I woke up.… Thus I can say: `Who am I, O Lord, and to what hast Thou called me, Thou who didst assist me with such divine power that to-day I constantly exalt and magnify Thy name among the heathens wherever I may be, and not only in good days but also in tribulations?' So indeed I must accept with equanimity whatever befalls me, be it good or evil, and always give thanks to God, who taught me to trust in Him always without hesitation... So... the Gospel has been preached unto those parts beyond which there lives nobody… I came to the people of Ireland to preach the Gospel, and to suffer insult from the unbelievers... and to give my free birth for the benefit of others; and, should I be worthy, I am prepared to give even my life without hesitation and most gladly for His name, and it is here that I wish to spend it until I die, if the Lord would grant it to me...”

• The Perigrini missionaries who first brought Christianity to Western Europe followed Patrick’s example, leaving home to be wandering preachers, committed to never come back to their friends and family. Some called it the “white martyrdom.”

• It’s only been in the last two hundred years that Western missionaries made it for the first time into the heart of China, then Africa, then South America. As Student Volunteer Mis­sion­ary recruiters toured the American college campuses around the turn of the 20^th century, young Christians signed up by the thousands to take the Gospel where it had never gone before, so that the rest of the world could be evangelized “within [their] genera­tion.” They went, knowing that tropical diseases would probably kill half of them, so many of them packed their belongings in coffins, prepared to be buried in Africa, never to return home.

• How did these missionaries arrive at that kind of mentality of being willing to leave home behind in order to share the Gospel? It is something that Christian faith does when it realizes the value of our heavenly home. That is what we’re going to be looking at in this passage.

• Over the last few weeks we’ve looked at the faith of Abel, Enoch, and Noah, and now we’re in the middle of a longer passage in Hebrews 11 on the faith of Abraham and Sarah. With faith, they persevered in trusting God to make good on His covenant promises to provide them a land of their own and a big family, even when they couldn’t see the fulfillment of those promises by any natural means. They also lived as sojourners, as a way of expressing their faith, and I want to meditate on that as well.

  • “For Abraham, who had left behind him the comparative solidity of the Chaldean civili­zation, to have sought security in similar foundations and cities in the land of Canaan would have made no sense… His tent-dwelling was precisely a dwelling without found­ations in this world, a dwelling which, though it offered scant protection… he was con­tent to endure because as a man of faith he looked forward with certainty to the eventual­ly attainment of the city – not any city, but the one… [whose] designer and constructor is God himself.” ~P.E. Hughes, A Commentary on The Epistle To The Hebrews, 1977

v.12) So, as a result, from one man – and one who had been finished at that – was brought into being as many as the stars of the sky in their plentifulness and as the innumerable sand-grains along the lip of the sea.

• The birth of Isaac was a faith-venture for both Sarah and Abraham, and as they trusted God, God began to roll out results.

• God had promised to give Abraham lots of children and grandchildren, and our author quotes from places throughout Genesis (and Exodus¹) where God had made this promise:

  • Gen. 13:16 “And I will make thy seed like the dust of the earth; if any one is able to num­ber [ἐξαριθμῆσαι] the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed be numbered... 15:5 Look up now to heaven, and count [ἀρίθμησον] the stars, if thou shalt be able to number them fully [ἐξαριθμῆσαι]... Thus shall thy seed be… 22:17 ...I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is by the shore of the sea, and thy seed shall inherit the cities of their enemies." (Brenton, cf. Ex. 32:13)

• But there was a challenge to believing this promise: Abraham was “dead” – the Greek text literally says he had already been killed – although it is generally agreed that this is a figurative use of the word for “killed” which should be interpreted more along the lines of him being “finished-off” or “as-good-as dead.” Not only was Sarah unable to conceive, they were now both past normal childbearing age. Abraham was a hopeless case; there was no possibility of him becoming a father.

• And yet, he, like Sarah, believed that God would make good on this promise and make him the patriarch of a large family – a family so large that counting them would be impossible. Faith is believing God’s word even when you don’t see how it could be possible.

  • The Greek word ἀναρίθμητος translated “countless/innumerable” has the Greek alpha prefix of negation indicating you can’t count them.

  • Maybe somebody could compute how many square feet of coastlines there are in the world and multiply that by how many grains of sand are in an average square foot, but that would not be a very exact estimate, and it would be a fool’s errand to try to manually count the exact number of grains of sand on even one coastline, much less every one in the world.

  • I think it’s also interesting that God made sure that Abraham knew experientially what it meant to be “as innumerable as the grains of sand.” Abraham didn’t grow up near an ocean, but when Abraham obeyed God and left his home, his travels took him to the Mediterran­ean coast where he could physically take in the impossibility of counting sand-grains. This is what a sovereign God does: He organizes your life experiences – even the hard ones – to equip you to understand Him better and do His will better. He is a good Father.

  • And when it comes to numbering stars, every time astronomers think they’ve got a handle on it, a more powerful telescope is developed, and they see more stars, so they have to go back to the drawing board! Back when I was in school, we thought Pluto was a planet, and we didn’t know it had moons, but now, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, we can see photos of Pluto’s five satellite-moons². But what we still don’t know is what we don’t know, and we don’t really know how many stars are out there, although, every night, Abraham and Sarah could remind themselves of God’s promise when they looked up at the sky and saw more stars than they could count.

• Such faith in God to fulfill such an extravagant promise in such an impossible situation is humbling to those of us who think that faith is praying for the sale items not to run out before you get to the grocery store.

• But, come to think of it, our situation as regards salvation, is also an extravagant promise: eternal fellowship with God in holiness, for persons whose rebellion against God is so egregious that there’s a yawning abyss between us and God – everyone who tries to cross it “falls short” (Rom. 3:23). It takes some faith, when you understand it rightly, that you, as spiritually dead as you are, could ever receive God’s eternal life!

  • Do you believe that God created the world by speaking it into existence, even though you can’t see how He could have done that, given the laws of physics?

  • Do you believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, so that He could be both God and Man, even though you can’t explain exactly how that happened?

  • Do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, even though you didn’t see it?

  • Do you believe that God has forgiven your transgressions of His law on the basis of Jesus’ death on your behalf, even though you’ve never physically met this God?

  • The most important things in life are things we can’t see which we have to take on faith.

• Now, God promised, but did God make good on that promise to Abraham, as v. 12 claims?

  • Isaac, the one child of Abraham and Sarah, doesn’t seem like much of a fulfillment compared with the promise of “more descendants than the stars in the sky,”

  • but Isaac’s descendants numbered in the millions by the time they entered the Promised Land under Joshua³,

  • and, in the N.T., we see the numbers get into the uncountable range due to an unexpected twist: Forms of this same Greek word for “number/counting” appear in the first century book of Acts describing the church (those who are “the seed of Abraham by faith” ~Rom. 4:16) and also in the book of Revelation, describing all of God’s people in heaven:

    • Acts 6:7 Then the word of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith... 11:19-21 Now those who were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to no one but the Jews only. But some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord... 16:4-5 And as they [Paul & Silas] went through the cities, they delivered to them the decrees to keep, which were determined by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem. So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and increased in number daily." (NKJV)

    • Rev. 5:11-12 "Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice: 'Worthy is the Lamb who was slain To receive power and riches and wisdom, And strength and honor and glory and blessing!' ... 7:9-10 After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number [ἀριθμῆσαι], of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes... saying, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!'" (NKJV)

  • By imparting the same faith Abraham and Sarah had, to the Gentile world, to believe an extravagant promise of eternal life in the face of spiritual death, God blew the top out of the numbering system to compute Abraham’s family! Are you “in that number”?

• And yet, Abraham never saw the fulfillment of God’s extravagant promise in his lifetime. When he died, he was a nomad with one legitimate son and zero grandchildren.

  • “Abraham did not obtain possession of it, nor did his posterity, till nearly five centuries after. To use the language of Stephen, ‘God gave him no inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on…’ [Acts 7:5] ... Though the promise was long in being fulfilled, he did not doubt but it would be, in due time, fulfilled; and therefore, he determined that he and his posterity should continue in the land to which the promise referred.” ~J. Brown, 1862

v.13-14) Faithful throughout, all these guys died, not having received the things promised, but rather, having seen and welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that that they are foreigners and pilgrims upon the earth. ¹⁴ Now, those who say such things bring to light that they are eagerly seeking a fatherland.

• With the word “all,” our author zooms out from his consideration of Abraham and Sarah alone to take in Isaac and Jacob, who were mentioned in v.8 (and other O.T. saints could also be included in that).

  • Sure, some of them saw some of God’s promises fulfilled, and a couple of them – like Enoch – even passed into the next life without dying,

  • but none of them saw God’s plan of redemption come together through the death and resurrection of Jesus,

  • and not even we have seen the perfection of the kingdom of God which is coming.

• The early Greek church father John Chrysostom compared the believers’ situation to that of travellers on a ship: “persons on ship-board seeing from afar the longed-for cities: which, before they enter them, they take and occupy by words of greeting.”

  • “Faith has a long arm, and can lay hold of blessings at a great distance, can make them present, can love them, and rejoice in them; and thus ante-date the enjoyment of them.” ~M. Henry, AD 1714

  • In John 8:56, Jesus said, “Abraham rejoiced to see my day.”

• But in the “boat” of this life, they “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims:”

  • When Sarah died, Abraham told the Canaanites who joined him for the funeral, “I am a sojourner⁴ and a stranger among you.” (Genesis 23:4, Brenton)

  • “And Jacob said to Pharaoh, ‘The days of the years of my life, wherein I sojourn, are a hundred and thirty years...’" (Genesis 47:9, Brenton)

  • King David was the next person recorded in the Bible as confessing this, “O Lord, hearken to my prayer and my supplication: attend to my tears: be not silent, for I am a sojourner in the land, and a stranger, as all my fathers were." (Psalm 39:12, Brenton, cf. Ps. 119:19, 1 Chron. 29:15)

  • And the Apostle Peter picked up on this theme at the beginning of his first letter, calling all Christians “pilgrims”: 1 Peter 1:1 “...To elect pilgrims scattered at Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia… 2:11 Loved ones, I am offering an encouragement like [I would to] temporary residents and pilgrims, to keep yourselves away from the fleshly desires which are at war against your soul..." (NAW)

  • This is what believers “confess” to be true in this life; this is part of being faithful.

• The opening of v.13 is a little different in Greek than all the other verses in Hebrews 11 that open with “by/with faith.” Here, an extra preposition is added: Κατὰ πίστιν⁵, which gives a little different emphasis on what is being said about the faith of these patriarchs:

  • Most of the commentators I read said that the preposition kata denotes comparison between the faith and the manner of death of the Patriarchs:

    • “[T]hey died according to the life of faith they lived, and the doctrine of faith they professed, being the Lord's, both living and dying.” ~John Gill's Exposition of the Bible, 1766

    • “[T]hey died as believers” ~Hebrews commentary by John Brown, 1862/ Hebrews Commentary by A.R. Fausset, 1871⁶

    • “[I]t was in accordance with the principle of faith that they faced the moment of death” ~Phillip Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 1977

  • However, it is my opinion that the preposition kata was not intended to limit the assess­ment of their faithfulness merely to the time of their death, but rather was intended to denote all the time during which they practiced faith in God – throughout their lives, all the way through until their passing-away in death.

    • This broader, temporal sense is the way the NIV translators also interpreted it (although almost half of the NIV’s words aren’t actually in the Greek text), “All these people [were still living] by faith [when] they died.”

• Now, what they were all searching for by faith was a πατρίδα – literally a “fatherland.”

  • The implication is that they’re “not from around here;” they’re looking for where they came from, and when they get there, that will be their own home country where they can settle down.

  • Hebrews 13:14 expands that principle to all believers: “For here we have no continuing city, but we seek [ἐπιζητοῦμεν] the one to come." (NKJV)

  • Have you ever talked with an international student about their home country? You can see them visibly relax and smile when they talk about the country that is familiar to them – the “homeland” they love.

  • Abraham and Sarah were physically born in what is now Iraq, but their eyes were on their spiritual fatherland, the celestial city where God, the giver of eternal life, dwells.

• Abraham and Sarah provide an example of how we can live by faith -

  • By being “faithful throughout” until they “died in faith”

    • “God... left him in suspense and perplexity of mind... Why did he defer to point out the place, except that his faith might be more and more exercised? ... [T]o be a so­journer seemed contrary to what had been promised. That Abraham then courageous­ly sustained this trial was an instance of great fortitude; but it proceeded from faith alone…. Though God gave to the fathers only a taste of that grace which is largely poured on us, though he showed to them at a distance only an obscure representation of Christ, who is now set forth to us clearly before our eyes, yet they were satisfied and never fell away from their faith: how much greater reason then have we at this day to persevere? If we grow faint, we are doubly inexcusable. It is then an enhancing circumstance, that the fathers had a distant view of the spiritual kingdom of Christ, while we at this day have so near a view of it, and that they hailed the promises afar off, while we have them, as it were, quite near us; for if they nevertheless persevered even unto death, what sloth will it be to become wearied in faith, when the Lord sustains us by so many helps." ~J. Calvin, AD 1551

  • Abraham and Sarah also provide an example of how we can live by faith – by “welcoming… from a distance… the things promised”:

    • In the sermon that the famous preacher John Chrysostom delivered on this passage around the year 400 in Constantinople, he gave this exhortation: “[T]hey indeed, when things on earth were promised them, regarded them not, but sought the future city: whereas God again and again speaks to us of the city which is above, and yet we… to our shame… seek that which is here… For us He spared not His Only Begot­ten, for us when we were enemies He gave up His own Son to death; of what will He not count us worthy, having become His friends? what will He not impart to us, hav­ing reconciled us to Himself?” He went on to suggest a practical way to “welcome from a distance” the promise of salvation: ...Give a hand, stretch it forth, O ye who have not yet been overwhelmed, to them who are undone through their drunkenness: ye that are whole to them that are sick, ye that are sober-minded to them that are mad, that are giddily whirling round. Let no man, I beseech you, prefer the favor of his friend to his salvation... Each one is in earnest as to how he shall increase his posses­sions; no one as to how he shall aid the needy... lest we should fall into hell...”

  • Abraham and Sarah also provide an example of how we can live by faith – by “confes­sing that that they are foreigners and pilgrims upon the earth... bringing to light that they are eagerly seeking a fatherland.”

    • Let us confess in conversation that we are pilgrims on our way to the celestial city.

    • Do you speak of your house and your possessions as though they were temporary and not essential to you?

    • Do you ever talk wistfully about heaven and what you’re looking forward to there? (Or maybe about the bad things you’re looking forward to NOT being there – When I was a child, my parents taught me a song by Bill & Gloria Gaither with a chorus that went, “...I’m making my list of won’t-be’s in heaven!” and it included things like “skeeter bites” and “people who are not nice”!)

    • With our words, we can “show/declare plainly/make it clear/ἐμφανιζουσιν” – literally bring “into the light” - that we have set our sights on the city of God in heaven!

  • I was just reading about the persecution of Christians by the Chinese government in the 1990’s in the book The Heavenly Man. Brother Yun testified, “Just after we left the [secret church] meeting place, about a dozen men carrying flashlights confronted us at the outskirts of the village. They shouted, ‘Who are you? What is your business here?’ … Suddenly I felt tense inside as I realized many brothers and sisters still in the meeting place were in danger… I shouted in a loud voice, ‘I am a heavenly man!… My father’s name is Abundant Blessing!...’ They threw me to the ground, beating and kicking me... I would surely have died if the Lord had not protected me… five of us were [then] placed in a prison cell inside the police station… The next morning the guards opened the cell door and took us out into the yard… The chief guard waved his electric baton in front of my face… He ordered me to kneel down before him. I loudly protested, ‘I will not kneel down before you. I will only kneel down before my God.’ He arrogantly stated, ‘I am your Lord! I am your God! If you kneel down before me I can release you immediately.’ I spoke angrily to him, ‘In the name of Jesus you are not my God. You are just an earthly officer. My Lord is in heaven….’ He turned on the power switch on his baton… In an instant I was stung with hundreds of volts of electric current… as if a thousand arrows had pierced my heart. Feeling I was about to pass out, I cried out, ‘Lord, have mercy on me!’ Immediately the electric baton malfunctioned! They couldn’t get it to work! I opened my eyes and stared at the guard who had dared to call himself God. He was terrified. Despite the [freezing] temperature, he was sweating! He turned and ran away as fast as he could! The four brothers had witnessed this event and [had been]… pray[ing for]...me. The next morning the five of us were shoved into a van. They took us to [another] prison...” Would you be willing to talk about God and heaven like that?

• The next verse continues the thought with a proof by the converse. The Greek grammar construction of v.15, with an “if” followed by imperfect verbs, indicates that the author is describing a condition that is contrary to fact – a hypothetical situation to prove his point:

v.15) Furthermore, if indeed they had been bringing to mind that [country] from which they had gone out, they’d be making occasion to double-back.

• The fact that Abraham & Sarah never did go back to Haran or Ur tells us that it was their goal to go somewhere else, for if they had wanted to go back to Chaldea, they had the money and they could have figured out a way and made the time for it.

  • “From the call of Abraham to the death of Jacob was a space of 200 years. During this per­iod they might easily have returned to Chaldea. The distance was no obstacle.” ~J. Brown

• This brings up a very important point. We tend to go in whatever direction our mind is set on.

  • Those of you who are of driving age know that if you’re driving down the street, staring at something to your right or left, you will unconsciously steer the car toward that side of the road. (Same thing happens when you’re walking and looking at something off to the side; your feet tend to veer off in the direction you’re looking.)

  • The same is true of what your mind dwells on. There’s a vacation cabin in Clark, Color­ado that I have been to for the last 20-odd years that I think of as a beautiful, peaceful, fun place. After it’s been a while since I’ve had a vacation, I start thinking about that place a lot, daydreaming about the crystal-clear mountain streams, the cozy fireplace, the long sledding hill, and the view from the top of Horn Peak, and I get to scheming how I could arrange a Sunday off and get my family over there. And after a while I find a way to get back to that cabin!

• Wherever your mind is set on, that’s where you will go. That’s why “remembering/bringing to mind” is so important to our spiritual life – and is mentioned so often in scripture.

  • Exodus 13:3 “...Moses said to the people, Remember this day, in which ye came forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, for with a strong hand the Lord brought you forth..."

    • Remembering how God delivered them from their awful slavery in Egypt was an important part of Israel’s being faithful to follow God to the Promised Land without turning back to Egypt.

    • Likewise we should “Remember his wonderful works which he has wrought, his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth" (1 Chron. 16:12, Brenton), so that we don’t want to go back to the world’s works and words.

    • If we get to “remembering” the world’s “cucumbers” we’re going to get tragically dissatisfied with God’s “manna” for us, like the wandering Israelites did⁷.

  • What was it that helped David stay “after God’s own heart”? Psalm 63:6-8 “Forasmuch as I have remembered thee on my bed: in the early [morning] seasons I have meditated on thee. For thou hast been my helper, and in the shelter of thy wings will I rejoice. My soul has kept very close behind thee: thy right hand has upheld me.” Use bedtime and wakeup time to “remember” God and set your heart in the right direction!

  • Jesus also said: "Remember the word that I said to you... these things I have told you, that when the time comes, you may remember ..." (John 15:20 & 16:4, NKJV)

  • Is it any wonder that the Apostles give the same exhortation: “Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead..." (2 Tim. 2:8, NKJV)

• Now, on to our last verse...

v.16) But, for the time being, a better one is what they long for – that is, a heavenly one; therefore God is not ashamed of them – God [is not ashamed] to be called upon by them, He even prepared a city for them!

• We’ve already seen the theme of the “heavenly” vs. the earthly in Hebrews with the:

  • “heavenly calling” to believe in Jesus (Heb. 3:1, the “heavenly man” from 1 Cor. 15:49)

  • and the “heavenly gift” of the Holy Spirit in (Heb. 6:4),

  • and now the destination of those with this heavenly gift and calling: the “heavenly [country],” which is called “better.”

• We’ve also seen this word “better” several times in Hebrews, associated with all that Jesus represents: the “better priest” (7:7), the “better hope” (7:19), the “better covenant” (7:22), the “better ministry” (8:6), and now the “better⁸ homeland” and “city.”

  • “If he takes to himself the title of their God, he will fully answer it, and act up to it; and he has prepared that for them in heaven which will fully answer this character and rela­tion, so that it shall never be said, to the reproach and dishonour of God, that he has ad­opted a people to be his own children and then taken no care to make a suitable provision for them. The consideration of this should inflame the affections, enlarge the des­res, and excite the diligent endeavours, of the people of God after this city that he has prepared for them… [I]t is better situated, better stored with every thing that is good, better secured from every thing that is evil; the employments, the enjoyments, the society, and every thing in it, are better than the best in this world.” ~Matthew Henry

• This city is already “prepared” – the Greek Aorist tense of this verb seems to indicate a timelessness of always being in a finished state of preparation for those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus to be saved and who long to be with Him in heaven.

  • This was prefigured by the physical Promised Land, which is also called a place “prepared” by God for His people in Exodus 23:20 (And, behold, I send my angel before thy face, that he may keep thee in the way, that he may bring thee into the land which I have prepared for thee.")

  • But Jesus taught of the eternal places “prepared” both for His people and for those who live in rebellion against Him: Matt. 25:34-36 “Then the King will say to those off to His right, ‘Come here, you who have been blessed by my father! Start inheriting the kingdom prepared for y'all from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry, and y'all gave me [something] to eat; I was thirsty, and y'all gave me a drink; I was a stranger, and y'all gathered me in; I was naked, and y'all wrapped me up; I was sick, and y'all watched over me; I was in prison, and y'all came to me!’ … 41 Then he will speak also to those off to His left, ‘You who have been cursed, continue to conduct yourselves away from me into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels...’" (NAW)

  • John 14:2-3 "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 and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also." (NKJV, cf. 1 Cor. 2:9, Mt. 20:23)

  • Revelation 21:2 “Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." (NKJV)

• What is it that you are “eagerly seeking… bringing to mind... longing for/desiring?”

  • The Greek word here is an unusual one: ὀρέγονται, which pictures “stretching out” eagerly to get something.

  • It only occurs two other times in the Greek Bible, and one of those gives us the antithesis of heavenly longing: 1 Timothy 6:10 “For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing [ὀρεγόμενοι] for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." (NASB)

  • You’re either longing for heaven or you’re longing for the things of this world.

  • In fact, the present tense of this verb indicates that even the saints in heaven are still looking forward to the fulfillment of this heavenly city just as we are! (P.E. Hughes)⁹

• And if you’re longing for heaven and calling upon the name of Jesus as your God,

  • He is not ashamed of you. The Greek text actually says, “He is not ashamed of them,” but most translations drop the word “them” out. However, it is an important concept for those who are being shamed by the world for not loving the world -

    • Like the organization that sent a warning to our church this month that we are now on their list of hate groups because we received donations from a “religiously-intolerant” group called Evangelical Christians.

    • The world may cast shame on us, but God is not ashamed of us. We need to know that.

  • Verse 16 also gives a second thing that God is not ashamed of, and that is “being called upon by them” (or, as most versions put it, “being called their God”¹⁰)

    • Indeed, He’s the one who “sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts to cry out ‘Abba, Father!’” (Gal. 4:6, cf. Rom. 8:15) and “whoever calls upon the name of the LORD will be saved” (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21; 22:16; Romans 10:13.) - just as Abraham and Isaac “called upon the name of the LORD” (Genesis 12:8; 13:4; 21:33; 26:25) and God was not – and is not – ashamed of them.

    • Reciprocally, God was not ashamed to identify Himself as their God, for in Exodus 3:6 He proclaimed, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” (We saw that also in Hebrews 2:11 where Jesus “is not ashamed to call... brothers” those He sanctifies. ~NAW, cf. Mark 8:38)

Conclusion

• In light of such truths, I think it’s only appropriate to close with the doxology from Psalm 48 “1 Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised In the city of our God, In His holy mountain. Beautiful in elevation, The joy of the whole earth, Is Mount Zion on the sides of the north, The city of the great King. God is in her palaces; He is known as her refuge….12 Walk about Zion, And go all around her. Count her towers; Mark well her bulwarks; Consider her palaces; That you may tell it to the generation following. For this is God, Our God forever and ever; He will be our guide Even to death.” (NKJV)

APPENDIX: Greek Text & English Versions of Hebrews 11:12-16^A