Good evening. If you have a Bible, let me invite you to open with me to Hebrews, chapter 11. This evening, as we continue our study in Hebrews, we're at verses 13 through 16. The writer sums things up so far about people with saving faith, people who lived before Jesus came, but who trusted the promise of His coming to be our Savior.
Let me invite you to hear God's holy and inspired word from Hebrews, chapter 11, in beginning at verse 13. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking homeland. If they have been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had an opportunity to return.
But as it is, they desire a better country. That is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city. Amen, this is God's Word.
May He write it on our hearts. Let's look to Him in prayer. Father, thank You for this word of encouragement, and we pray that by the work of the Spirit, You would work Your Word deep into our hearts and that it would root and grow and bear much fruit for Your glory and our good. So speak to us.
We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Randy Alcorn in his book on Heaven tells the story of Young Florence Chadwick in 1952. She stepped into the waters of the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island, preparing to swim about 22 miles to the California mainland.
She had already been the first woman to swim the English Channel both ways, but here the water was foggy and chilly and she could hardly see the boats that were accompanying her. Still, she swam for 15 hours when she finally begged to be taken out of the water. Her mother and one of the boats pulled alongside and said that she was so close she could make it. But finally, physically, emotionally exhausted, she was pulled out at her demand.
It wasn't until she was on the boat that she discovered. The shore was less than half a mile away. At a news conference the next day, she said, all I could see was the fog. I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it.
Well, the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, the ones we've been looking at, they saw the shore. They saw it, the writer says, through faith. They saw it at a distance and they welcomed it and they kept their eyes on it by faith they saw it and by faith they reached it. So this passage invites us to think about us.
Are we following along in their footsteps so to speak on the journey to glory? And how do we do so? Well, we need to get our bearings like they got their bearings. What are those?
Well, you need to recognize your true identity. We'll see that in verse 13. You need to recognize your only home. We'll see that in verses 14 to 16.
And at the end of verse 16, we need to recognize our high privilege. I want you to think about these three. We need to get our bearings if we're going to make it to the end of our journey and receive the reward, which is ours through faith. So first of all, we need to recognize our true identity.
You need to know who you are. Look at this language of verse 13. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. Verse 13 talks about Abraham as an Isaac and Jacob all dying in faith.
These patriarchs, he says, didn't receive what was promised. That is, they received the promises. They received the words of the promises. They believed the words of the promises, but they didn't receive what was promised.
That is, they received the promises of land, but they didn't receive the true land that was promised. Not in this world, not in their lifetime in this world, but they greeted those promises from a distance, he says, and they confessed that they were strangers and exiles here. So they recognize their true identity. They understood who they were in this world.
They were strangers. That just means that they were, well, they were foreigners. They were aliens. It's a, well, it could be used in a pejorative way indicating they were outsiders.
They're not nearly someone from a different place, but someone who doesn't quite fit in, somebody who doesn't really belong here. And they were exiles or sojourners. And that means they lived in a place that was not their own. Their home was somewhere else.
They were just, well, as people sometimes are displaced or just passing through, living somewhere temporarily, but your home is somewhere else. They confessed. That's who they were. That was their identity of strangers and exiles on the earth.
And we should take, the writers say, the same position for ourselves. We should take that on as our own identity. It's important. You might say that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived a long time ago.
You might say, well, they lived a long time before Jesus. So of course they thought that way, but we live after Jesus and we should think differently. But no, you and I are still living in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob's sandals, essentially, in principle. It's the same thing.
We still haven't received all that has been promised us. I mean, Jesus said in John chapter 14, I go and prepare a place for you. I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am, you may be also. But he hasn't come for you yet.
You're waiting. You've received the promise. Lord, will you believe the promise? But you haven't received the fullness of what was promised.
You haven't received yet all that God has promised you. Now, it's all yours in Christ. And you belong to Christ. Christ belongs to you.
It's not in doubt. But we haven't seen with the eyes of, well, sight the glories that yet await us. And so, do you confess yourself to be a sojourner and an exile here on earth? Is that the way you think about yourself?
It's important. It's important to think about yourself correctly in life. Think how important it is to think about yourself correctly in life. I mean, if you're a supervisor at work, you might manage five or ten people.
You spend all day watching over the work of other people, telling them what to do. That's your role. That's who you are. That's your identity.
But when you leave work, you pick up your car and you have to take the mechanic shop. And when you walk in, you're not the supervisor. You may not know much about mechanics. You might try to tell the mechanic what's wrong with your car.
He might try to tell you what's wrong with your car, but you don't know all the language. So you don't try to fix it yourself. That's not your identity. And of course, when you go to the grocery store, you don't go in and rearrange the salad bar and fire the butcher or double the ice cream in the shelves.
You go in as a customer and you wait in line like everyone else because you're not the boss. That's not your identity. So your role changes as appropriate to your place. Well, what's your identity as a Christian as you live in this place, this world?
How do you think of yourself? What do you say about yourself? Robert Layton was the archbishop of Scotland at a certain time. He was a single man.
He had no family. He was a peace loving and devout man. And he said that if he had a choice on the matter, and if God gave him his druthers, he would want to die in an in, in like a motel. He would like to die at an in, he said, because he said that was the most appropriate thing for one who was on his way through the pilgrimage of this world.
Well, God gave him what he wanted in 1684 on a trip to London staying at an in on Warwick Blaine, near St. Paul's Cathedral. Clurice, he set in, which is a long condition. And well, he parted with his staff at his sandals as another put, and he continued to sojourn elsewhere.
He thought of himself as a pilgrim. How do you think of yourself? That's not an escape from reality. It's not an escape from this world, but it is how we are to relate to this world.
Right? We're in to be in the world, but not of it. We are of it, not of this world. So what difference does that make?
Well, it makes all the difference. I mean, it doesn't solve all our problems. It may just be because that's how we think of ourselves, because that's who we are. Our problems in this world actually multiply.
It could be, though, that thinking this way shapes us to welcome and love strangers and aliens we meet. I mean, they may be outsiders to us or to the church, but would they come and they're suddenly among us? Well, you know what it's like to be an outsider and a foreigner and a strange land and an exile, because we know what that's like. Maybe we have a compassion and pity for them.
Or maybe the way that this shapes us is it keeps us from being captivated by the American dream and making our long bucket list for the things we want to do, the experiences we want to have, and the stuff we want to own in this world as if this world is all there is. And the American dream is to be acquainted with Christianity when it's not. So do you say, I'm a foreigner? I'm an alien?
I'm a so jerner? Well, I think we all have to tell ourselves that again and again and again, especially we who live in the West in such a comfortable place where it's easy to settle in, settle down, and let this world really captivate our hearts. But if you want to make it to the end as a pilgrim, think of yourself as a foreigner and as a stranger and a sojourner. That's the first thing.
And how also do we make our journey to the end? Well, we need to recognize our true home. That's in verses 14 and 16. The writer says, for people who speak us, those who say such things, what things that they're strangers and aliens, well, where did he get that language that they're strangers and aliens?
Well, he knows what Abraham said from Genesis 2324. Abraham had family sorrow, his wife had died, he had to barrier and he didn't own any land. And he went to the Hittites who lived there and said, I'm a sojourner and a foreigner among you. Give me property for a burying place that I may bury my dead out of my sight.
Abraham understood he was a sojourner and forener, but he needed to place to bury his wife. And so he purchased a little plot. And then there's Jacob in Genesis 47 verse 9 when he came before Pharaoh, when Joseph was in Egypt and Pharaoh asked, how old was he? And Jacob began with, the days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years.
He thinks all 130 years of his life have been just a passing through. People that talk like that, the writer of Hebrews says, make it clear verse 14 that they are seeking a homeland. And the word he uses means fatherland. That is, it means country of origin.
It means where you're from. And yet, verse 15, they aren't looking to go back where they came from. Abraham never wanted to go back to Ur of the Calvary. At least we don't know that he did.
But if the place where they were seeking was the place where they could go back, well, the writer says they would have had an opportunity to do so. They could have done it. They could have packed up the tents and moved back home. But it wasn't their homeland where they came from.
So whatever it was they were looking for, it wasn't the country from which they had come. And so the writer then says in verse 16, know their homeland, their country of origin, he says, well, they desire a better country. That is a heavenly one. That is what was promised to them.
And they understood that they were citizens not of this world, but of that world, which is to come. They were looking for a better country, a heavenly one. They recognized it was their only home. And that helped them get their bearings in this world.
And so we have to ask ourselves, do we recognize our heavenly home? If we have the same kind of desire, then second Peter 3, 13 says, but according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Is that what we're waiting for? Is that what we're longing for?
If it is, it will keep us on track waiting in hope. Now there was a, well, Ray said, until it's a story of an elderly missionary couple working in Africa, the morrisons, they were coming home after a ministry in Africa. They were retiring, but they didn't have a pension. Their health was broken.
They felt defeated. And they were coming home, not knowing what awaited them in New York. They happened to book passage, which is how they traveled internationally in their day in the early 1900s by shift. They booked passage on a ship, which also had President Theodore Roosevelt on it.
Teddy Roosevelt was coming back from Africa from a big game hunting expedition. And so there was a large entourage of people and a lot of hoopla was being made over Teddy Roosevelt. Well, the husband told his wife, what kind of made him bitter? There was all this attention being given to the president when he came back from big game hunting.
But here we see to faithfully serve the Lord for years and years, and no one pays any attention to us. And see, she said, well, you not think that sort of way. He acknowledged that, but he said it was very difficult. When they got to New York, they came onto the dock.
They're all these dignitaries, the mayor, the big band, the big spread and the paper, all of that for Teddy Roosevelt and the missionary couple quietly left, went to the east side and rented a flat, hoping they could find some way to earn a living in their last years. And that night the man's spirit broke and he said to his wife, I just can't take it. God is it treating us fairly? And his wife said, you know, why don't you go into the bedroom and tell the Lord that?
And he did. And he came out a little later and there was a difference in his countenance and she said, what happened? And he said, well, the Lord dealt with me about that. He said, I told him that I didn't like the idea that we come home and the president comes in.
And there's this great welcome and sensational attention paid to him. But when we come home, there was not one person there to meet us. And then he said, it was as if the Lord played his hand on my shoulder and said, but you're not home yet. You see that?
You see your only home? Is that what you long for? Again, you know, maybe it won't help you with every problem in this world. In fact, it might be the root of some of your problems.
Well, it could be for you. Life is a series of ongoing problems and you agonize precisely because you don't belong here and you belong to a different home. And there can be a real feeling of restlessness in the human heart, the Christian heart, right? Because well, you want everything to work out here.
You want life to go well here. And sometimes it doesn't. And as Ralph Davis says, the root cause of that restlessness may be you're rootless. You don't have assurance.
You have a home. And so you need to recognize your true hope. Or maybe everything seems to be going well here. You're really starting to feel settled down and settled in.
And then life throws you a curveball. Well, why is that? Well, maybe it's because your father who is in heaven is loving you so well that he threw you a curveball so that you wouldn't settle for a second-rate imitation of the home that Jesus has truly prepared for you. So that he would actually wean your heart from the love of this world.
That your heart's affections would be in the love of the world which is yet to come. If we're going to make it all the way home on our journey, we need to recognize our true identity. We need to recognize our true home. Now, there's this photographer I've been seeing of late, his pictures on social media.
He takes photos of home run hitting batters from the perspective of somewhere down the third baseline and left field. As the batter is rounding third base and his teammates have all gathered behind home plate to cheer him on and to celebrate his arrival at home plate. And he says he does that precisely because he likes to think as he looks at those pictures of that runner, rounding third being welcomed by the crowd that that's what it's like for every saint who arrives home in heaven. Oh, maybe we have that perspective.
And then finally, we also need to recognize the high privilege we have. We'll look at that at the end of verse 16. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. That's our privilege.
He's not ashamed. I wish I'd read Isaiah the passage before I wrote this sermon. Did you notice how often God spoke of the shame of their sin of idolatry? Those who make idols and worship idols worship other gods.
It's shameful. But here his own people, he says he is not ashamed of his people. Therefore, God is not ashamed. What's the therefore, therefore?
Well, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Sarah and others, they clung to God's promises and God was not ashamed of them. And they're not going to be ashamed either. For he has, it says, prepared, past tense, a city. He has already prepared a city.
Now, notice this amazing statement again that God is not ashamed of them. Right? What's he saying? Well, he's not saying that there's any particular excellent or merit in them that, you know, have earned them some sort of brown points with God.
They buy grace, believe his promises. Of course, you remember their faults, right? We've spoken of some of these things. Abraham had doubts.
He had to be constantly reassured of God's promises. And Sarah, she had doubts. And between them, Abraham and Sarah concocted some really bad plans. They laughed, both of them, at the promises of God that they would have in their old age, past menopause.
And he withered that they would actually have a child. They laughed. We got promised it. And yet Isaac was born, the child of promise.
And Isaac had, well, he had a thick head and thought plans should go. God's plans should go the way he wanted them. And then, of course, Jacob, the deceiver, right? He was always skeething.
And we could go on and on about the sins of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Jacob and all of any of the saints. I mean, not even to speak of David as we mentioned this morning. It's adultery and it was murder. But you know what Hebrews 11 doesn't do?
It doesn't speak a word about their faults. There's no debunking of them in Hebrews 11. We live in a day when most biographers debunk people. They do it in movies, they do it in history lessons.
It's almost like, I think, the way social media works and the tabloid magazines work, we enjoy hearing about the faults and failures of people. We take a little perverse delight in, well, not their well-doing, but their sins and miseries. And so often the effort is made to show that, well, this person in history isn't actually worth thinking about. We lead with how bad they are.
But when you get to the New Testament, you find God in Hebrews is not the great debunker. What's remembered in Hebrews 11 is not their mistakes, not their doubts, not their sins, but their faith in God's promises. And they belong to him. What an encouragement that ought to be to us, because he has a pastor and as a Christian.
And for myself, there's coming a day when I will have to face Christ and give an account for what I've done. And there will be in that day so many things that will give evidence. I have failed to do so many things I ought to do. And the things that I ought to do that I've done, I've not done the way that ought to have done them and not well and not righteously and perfectly.
With all kinds of mixed motives I'm not even aware of. Don't you know that about yourself too? There will be a whole host of things I wish I had never done, or things I wish I had done or done better. But there will be a single modern biographer standing with me and next to me at the final judgment.
Oh, Satan, the accuser of the brethren will be there, of course, as the Bible teaches us. But because of the blood of Christ, all those mistakes and faults and sins will be forgiven and remembered no more. It says, Dick Lucas. And that's true.
What will be recorded for you and I and all who are in Christ is the righteousness we have in Jesus through faith. The righteousness we have as a gift from God. And the good fruit of that righteousness born by the work of the Holy Spirit in us who works in us and through us that too will be remembered. So take heart.
God doesn't blush when he thinks of you. He doesn't get read in the face and feel ashamed of you. He doesn't turn his face away and say, they're they're not my people. I want nothing to do with that.
No, he's not like that. Sometimes in this world, that's exactly what we're like. When we discover one another sins, there's a situation in more I think it's called Mauritius, an island east of Madagascar. There are lots of slaves there.
The sign of a slave was you couldn't wear shoes. But there was a woman and her daughter who were slaves and this woman by saving nearly all that she had, being very careful with her body and her spending, had accumulated enough to purchase the freedom of one of them. And she purchased the freedom of her daughter. And her daughter really liked that.
She could walk around in shoes. And so on one occasion, not long after, the daughter was in a sitting room with some others and the affectionate loving mother came into the room and very easily and unselfconsciously and they're naturally sat down next to her daughter in a few moments. Her daughter turned and looked at her mother and went into a rage and said, how dare you sit down with me? I am a free woman.
You are a slave. Rise and leave the room. Now what's that? Well, she's a snob, of course.
Ungrateful, obviously. But also probably this, there was shame. She didn't want to be associated with the things of her past from when she had been a slave. She was ashamed of the very memory associated with the purchase of her freedom.
But by contrast, if anyone would have reason for shame to be known as our God, it would be God himself. But he assures us he is not ashamed to be called our God. He is willing and happy to identify with you and sustain you in his family as his children. Is that great privilege really sunk deeply into our hearts?
Only you can know how many times you've come to him and said, I believe Lord help my unbelief. He knows all about you. He doesn't turn his face away embarrassed by you. We could bring a lot out of one another's closets if we really knew one another well enough.
But he knows us thoroughly and he doesn't consider it beneath his own dignity to be identified with you. What a high privilege it is to be a son or daughter of God most high through faith in Christ our Savior. That will remember who you are and where is your home and the fact that he's not ashamed of you. What a privilege you have in Christ that will help you on your journey.
So keep on keeping on all the way to the end. And we'll close with this. Well, some of you will know if not his name, Henry Light the Poets and him writer, but perhaps the hinsey's left us that we sing around here a lot praise my soul the king of heaven and Jesus I my cross have taken and abide with me. Well, Henry Light died in 1847 of tuberculosis at the young age of 54 having suffered the last seven years of his life dying of it.
And here's what he wrote poetically about our pilgrimage. He said this, my rest is in heaven. My rest is not here. Then why should I murmur when trials are near?
Be hushed, my dark spirit. The worst that can come but shortens my journey and hastens me home. It is not for me to be seeking my bliss nor building my hopes in a region like this. I look for a city that hands have not piled.
I pant for a country by sin undiviled. Let doubt then and danger my progress oppose. They only make heaven more sweet at its close. Come joy or come sorrow whatever befall a home with my God will make up for them all.
May the saints know the hope of that. Let's pray Father Grant each in this room to know the hope of it. Oh bless us in Christ to know what are the riches of our glorious inheritance and the hope that we have in Christ and help us then. Carry us along we pray in Jesus name I ask it.
Amen. Amen. Let's hang together and sing.