Hebrews 11:28-30 – Faith Overcomes through the Lamb, the Way, and the Power of God (Israel)

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 22 Sep. 2019

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

Intro

v.28 Faith trusts God’s atoning sacrifice to save from sin’s punishment
With faith, he [speaking of Moses] has instituted the Passover and the application of the blood in order that the Destroyer of the first­borns might not touch them.

vs.29 Faith takes God’s way out of bondage to sin toward His promises
With faith they traversed the Red Sea as across dry {land}. When
the Egyptians tried to take advantage of it, they were drowned.

v.30 Faith Overcomes by Appropriating God’s Power
With faith, the walls of Jericho fell, after having been walked around over the space of seven days.

Conclusion

  1. The Passover story teaches us to trust Jesus as the lamb of God - as God’s atoning sacrifice to save from sin’s punishment,

  2. The crossing of the Red sea teaches to trust Jesus as “the Way” out of bondage to sin toward the fulfillment of God’s promises,

  3. And the Battle of Jericho teaches us to trust Jesus to be our power to fight opposition and come out victorious!

Romans 8:34-37 "...It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ...  Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us...." (NKJV)

APPENDIX: Greek Text & English Versions of Hebrews 11:28-30A

Greek NT

NAW

KJV

28 Πίστει πεποίηκεB τὸ πάσχα καὶ τὴν πρόσχυσινC τοῦ αἵματος, ἵνα μὴ ὁ ὀλοθρεύωνD τὰ πρωτότοκα θίγῃE αὐτῶν.

28 With faith, he has instituted the Passover and the application of the blood in order that the Destroy-er of the firstborns might not touch them.

28 Through faith he kept the pass-over, and the sprink-ling of X blood, lest he that destroyed the firs-tbornX should touch them.

29 Πίστει διέβησανF τὴν ᾿ΕρυθρὰνG Θάλασσαν ὡς διὰ ξηρᾶς [γηςH], ἧςI πεῖρανJ λαβόντες οἱ Αἰγύπτιοι, κατεπόθησανK.

29 With faith they traversed the Red Sea as across dry {land}. When the Egyptians, tried to take advantage of it they were drowned.

29 By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned.

30 Πίστει τὰ τείχη ᾿Ιεριχὼ ἔπεσενL κυκλωθένταM ἐπὶ ἑπτὰ ἡμέρας.

30 With faith, the walls of Jericho fell, after having been walked around over the space of seven days.

30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about X seven days.


1ἐκτριβῆναι - compare with Heb. 11:28 ὀλοθρεύων "destroyer" and Ex. 12:23 τὸν ὀλεθρεύοντα

2“τὸ πάσχα, ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων.”

3Luke 22:7, Mk 14:12, Exod. 12:21; Deut. 16:2-6

4“prepare[d] the Passover” (Luke 22:8&13, Matt. 26:19; Mk. 14:16) | “eat/ate the Passover” (Luke 22:11&15, Exod. 12:11, Matt. 26:17; Mk. 14:12, 14; Jn. 18:28)

5ὁ ὀλοθρεύων τὰ πρωτότοκα - lit. “the one who destroys the firstborns”

6Jesus & the apostles used the same verb (poiew) of the Lord’s Supper as was used of the Passover (Mt. 26:18, Lk. 22:19, 1 Cor. 11:24-25).

7from “Beneath The Blood-stained Lintel” by Henry Ironside

8e.g. in Ex. 15:22, Deut. 11:4, Josh. 2:10, 4:23, 24:6, Neh. 9:9, Psalm 106:9&22, 136:13-15, and Acts 7:36

9John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." NKJV (cf. Acts 16:17; 18:25-26; 24:14, Matt. 7:13-14)

10i.e. lifestyle

AThe Greek is the Majority text, edited by myself to follow the majority of the earliest-known manuscripts only when the early manuscript evidence is practically unanimous. My original document includes notes on the NKJV, NASB, NIV, & ESV English translations, but since they are all copyrighted, I cannot include them in my online document. Underlined words in English versions indicate a standalone difference from all other English translations of a certain word. Strikeout usually indicates that the English translation is, in my opinion, too far outside the range of meaning of the original Greek word. The addition of an X indicates a Greek word left untranslated – or a plural Greek word translated as an English singular. [Brackets] indicate words added in English not in the Greek. Key words are colored consistently across the chart to show correlations.

Bcf. Matthew 26:18 “ποιῶ τὸ πάσχα” ("Do" the "pascha" is also in the LXX: Exod. 12:48; Num. 9:2-14; Deut. 16:1; Jos. 5:10; 2 Ki. 23:21; 1 Es. 1:6; Ezr. 6:19) John 6:4 defines the passover as “the feast of the Jews” - “τὸ πάσχα, ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων.” But later, Paul defines the passover as “Christ” (1 Cor. 5:7 “...τὸ πάσχα ἡμῶν ἐτύθη Χριστός”), and Jesus used the same verb “do” in relation to observing holy communion. Other verbs associated with this same object (pascha) are “kill” (Luke 22:7, Mk 14:12, Exod. 12:21; Deut. 16:2-6), “prepare” (Luke 22:8&13, Matt. 26:19; Mk. 14:16), and “eat” (Luke 22:11&15, Exod. 12:11, Matt. 26:17; Mk. 14:12, 14; Jn. 18:28). AGNT= instituted (which would be L&N#13.9), but the AGNT tagging selected L&N#90.45 “do, to perform, to practice, to make.” It wasn’t the meal which kept the destroyer from touching the child but the sacrifice of the lamb and the Christological fulfillment of that typological act. Vncent, A.T. Robertson and Blas & DeBrunner noted that the perfect tense refers to starting an institution (the passover) that would continue on.

CHapex legomena. cf. Exodus 12:7 καὶ λήμψονται ἀπὸ τοῦ αἵματος καὶ θήσουσιν(from tithemi)/וְנָֽתְנ֛וּ
... 22 καθίξετε (from
kata+tithemi?)/
וְהִגַּעְתֶּ֤ם (from ng’ - cause to strike – perhaps this is the basis for the translation “sprinkling”?) ATR said it should be translated “pouring out,” Vincent “affusion.”

Dcf. Ex. 12:13 πληγὴ τοῦ ἐκτριβῆναι “plague of destruction” See also 1 Cor. 10:10 ἀπώλοντο ὑπὸ τοῦ ὀλοθρευτοῦ "destroyed by the Destroyer," also the ολεθρος that will come upon those who reject God’s wisdom in Prov. 1:26-27.

EOnly here and Col. 2:21 “do not taste, do not touch, do not HANDLE); and Heb. 12:20 (Quoting Exod. 19:12 about not touching the holy mountain).

FThis verb appears in the recounting of the Israelites camps in the LXX of Numbers 33:8 “...καὶ διέβησαν μέσον τῆς θαλάσσης εἰς τὴν ἔρημον...” “and they crossed through the middle of the sea into the desert.” It is used almost exclusively in the Bible of crossing bodies of water, whether supernaturally on foot or naturally by boat.

GThis is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word סוּף, which Holliday’s lexicon defines as: “reed (Ex. 23:5 Is. 19:6), water-plants Jon. 2:6.” But in Greek, eruthran means “red,” and of the 27 times in the Greek Bible this word occurs, it always refers to the Red Sea (except for the one instance in Isaiah 63:2). In Deut. 1:1, it occurs without the word "Sea." The sea wasn't red in color; it was just a name for a particular body of water. Other definite bodies of water, such as the Jordan and Euphrates rivers receive their own separate entries as proper nouns, but the Red Sea isn't even listed in L&N's index. Acts 7:36 is the only other passage in the N.T. which mentions the Red Sea. Marvin Vincent noted: “By the Greeks the name was at first applied to the whole ocean from the coast of Ethiopia to the island of Taprobana or Ceylon. Afterward, when they learned of the existence of an Indian Ocean, they applied the name merely to the sea below Arabia, and to the Arabian and Persian gulfs.”

HAll 5 oldest-known Greek manuscripts include the word “land,” thus it is in modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament, but it is not in the majority of Greek manuscripts or in the Greek Orthodox or Textus Receptus editions of the Greek New Testament. The oldest-known manuscript which does not contain this noun dates to the 9th century. Its presence or non-presence does not change the meaning, as the term “dry” by itself can also mean “dry land.”

IThis relative (properly translated “which” by the KJV, fairly translated “it” by the NASB, and erroneously translated “so” by the NKJV & ESV and “the same” by the ESV”) is genitive and feminine, referring to “dry land.” The Egyptian army literally was “taking a stab” at traversing the “dry land” behind the Israelites, but they lived to regret it.

JOnly here and v.36 and in the LXX of Deut. 28:56 & 33:8.

KNot used in the history account in Ex. 14, but used in the song about it in Ex. 15:12.

LFour of the six Greek manuscripts from the first millennium (as well as half a dozen second-millennium manuscripts) spell this verb in the plural (επεσαν), so this was adopted by contemporary critical texts (and the 1904 Greek Patriarchal edition). The singular form which I preserved is in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, including the oldest-known one (The Chester-Beatty Papyrus, dated around the year 200AD). The singular form of this verb is what the modern Greek Orthodox version as well as the renaissance-era Textus Receptus went with. There is a curious exception in Greek grammar which does not require the number of the subject and verb to match when the subject is neuter. The word for “walls” is neuter and plural, so, according to the rules of Greek grammar, its verb could be spelled singular or plural without making any difference in meaning. I can imagine, however, that it bugged enough editors that they changed the original singular spelling to a plural spelling to match the subject more obviously.

Mcf. Joshua 6:7 κυκλῶσαι τὴν πόλιν

2