So we noticed in our study of Hebrews 11:32-38 that our author contrasts two groups of people. All of these people lived by faith, but for some of them God came through in spectacular ways and delivered them from their troubles, while for other people (whose faith was just as strong) God did not deliver them from pain and hardship and death.
So much for the prosperity gospel! Here are saints who are so holy and so full of faith that the world is not worthy to contain them, and yet they are called to persevere in persecution, deprivation, and death. Not only that, but the reason they are able to persevere is their great faith! Christians under the oppressive old paganism of Roman culture were to take note, and so must we in the darkening neo-paganism of our day.
Here is God’s resounding commendation, not of those whose faith enabled them to overcome, but for those whose faith helped them endure even the most devastating experiences: these were men “of whom the world was not worthy.”
Along with “Well done, thou good and faithful servant,” I don’t think there is any more valuable commendation that we could receive from God than, “This world was not worthy of you.” Why does God say that? Because despite the fact that they did not receive glorious deliverances or protection, but instead suffered through pain and persecution and even death, but did it all trusting in God and his promises, God is even more pleased with that kind of faith than in the faith that “gets it all.” I know most of us would rather have the triumphs, but it is our faith in the tragedies that really finds special commendation from God. We love it when our faith in God “gives”; but God loves it when He “takes away” and we still persistently trust Him.
One of my favorite chapters in C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters is his fifth chapter called The Law of Undulation. It expresses the reality that every one of us in life go through hills and valleys. We love the mountain top experience but lament slogging through the valley. Yet, there is something within all of us that longs, however inarticulately, for a life free from these undulations. Why do we experience these unwanted alternations in life?
For those who don’t know, Screwtape is a demon writing to an apprentice demon named Wormwood. Thus, all that is said is said from the perspective of the demon. When you hear the word “Enemy,” he is referring to God. So he starts off…
MY DEAR WORMWOOD,
So you “have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away”, have you? I always thought the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I am sure. Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?
Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal [by which he means we consist of body and soul}. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life—his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dulness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.
To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.
And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot “tempt” to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
This is why God is so proud of those whose faith doesn’t win the day, but still trusts Him as it goes through the long night of the soul. Let me read that last sentence again: “Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
But why would any follower of Jesus Christ pursue this? Because a true follower of Jesus Christ cares most about this “better life” (Heb. 11:34) which comes through a resurrection. That is what they are looking for—they are looking forward to God’s promises being fulfilled not in the here and now, but in eternity. Paul says it like this: “to live is Christ, to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). Faith endures the present pain for the sake of future glory.
Pastor and author John Piper, commenting on these verses, says, “The common feature of the faith that escapes suffering and the faith that endures suffering is this: both of them involve believing that God himself is better than what life can give to you now, and better than what death can take from you later. When you can have it all, faith says that God is better; and when you lose it all, faith says God is better…. What does faith believe in the moment of torture? That if God loved me, he would get me out of this? No. Faith believes that there is a resurrection for believers which is better than the miracle of escape. It’s better than the kind of resurrection experience by the widow’s son, who returned to life only to die again later.
Some of us feel like we’re living the nightmare rather than living the dream. We don’t seem to be conquering any kingdoms; rather, evil seems to have its way with us. The lions are devouring us; the fires are consuming us; the swords are cutting us to pieces. What does Hebrews 11 have to say to those living the nightmare? It says that the dream really is still alive! It says that the nightmare cannot kill the dream. It says that the heavenly dream is worth the earthly nightmare. It says the heavenly dream is better than the earthly dream by far. It says, for all those reasons, “Hang on to Jesus.”
All these people, whether in victory or defeat, had faith, what Piper calls “death-defying passion for God.” A modern example of one with such faith is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who in 1933 left his prestigious position as a professor at the University of Berlin to join the struggle against the Nazification of the church in Germany. The professor of systematic theology at the university deemed it foolish, saying, “It is a great pity that our best hope in the faculty is being wasted on the church struggle.” God chose for Bonhoeffer the route taken by those in Hebrews 11:35b-38. He was eventually arrested and hanged naked in the Flossenburg Concentration Camp. His body was tossed aside into a pile of corpses and burned just days before the end of World War II. Some quench the power of fire; some do not. As he faced the fury of the Third Reich, here is what Bonhoeffer said: “The ultimate responsible question is not how I can heroically make the best of a bad situation but rather how the coming generations can be enabled to live.” That’s faith. That’s death-defying passion for God!
Why did Bonhoeffer have to die and others to live? Look at verses 39-40 in Hebrews 11.
And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.
These verses are showing that by God’s mercy He allows all the believing to experience eternal reward. Some would not experience temporal victories and deliverances and blessings; but all those who exercise their faith in Jesus Christ will receive eternal reward.
Notice that verse 39 says “these were ALL commended for their faith.” All the people mentioned in Hebrews 11, both those who experienced God coming through for them in spectacular ways and those for whom God seemed to be silent at times, all of them had real faith and all of them will receive the promises.
A lack of faith is not what brought on suffering. All those in chapter 11 expressed faith in God. Some won in this life, some lost in this life; both will win in the life to come.
What, then determines whether one escapes the sword or dies by the sword? The answer is not really a “what” but a “Who.” God determines it and we don’t always know why. He doesn’t tell us why here.
In the midst of the deliverances and the non-deliverances, there is something that God is looking for. The people of Hebrews 11, literally, were “commended” because of their faith. They were noticed by God (10:15; 11:4) that they were righteous (11:4, 7) and pleasing to Him (11:5-6).
The facts that God shares his witness of these people with us in the Scriptures (7:8, 17; 10:15), but specifically in Hebrews 11, shows that he wants the world to realize the value of faith. People of faith, then, become God’s witness to the world regarding the validity of faith. For some, that witness will come with triumph. For others, their witness will arrive in defeat. For most of us, our witness will come in both. For all of us, eternal reward is coming!
Why God chooses some for one kind of witness and others for another kind of witness is a mystery. He must know what will make a good witness in a certain person’s life. The disposition of God, though is not a mystery. He is good, and faith believers that he is good even in the face of mystery.
Despite the fact that the people of Hebrews 11 were pleasing to God because of their faith, they “did not receive what was promised” in their lifetime. God had promised a new and better country for people of faith (11:13-16), but none of these people experienced the fulfillment of that promise. The reason that they didn’t is given in verse 40, and that reason, believe it or not, is “us” (the author and readers of this epistle, including you and I today)!
Although many promises had been given and fulfilled in their lifetimes, they did not receive the great promise—namely, the coming of the Messiah and salvation in him. Every one of the faithful in Old Testament times died before Jesus appeared.
As Leon Morris says:
Salvation is social. It concerns the whole people of God. We can experience it only as part of the whole people of God. As long as the believers in Old Testament times were without those who are in Christ, it was impossible for them to experience the fullness of salvation. Furthermore, it is what Christ has done that opens the way into the very presence of God for them as for us. Only the work of Christ brings those of Old Testament times and those of the new and living way alike into the presence of God (Morris, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary , vol. 12, pp. 132, 133).
Their faithfulness makes our faith a little easier. The writer to the Hebrews began this chapter speaking of faith in the present tense: Now faith is… By faith we understand (Hebrews 11:1 and 11:3). The end of the chapter reminds us that faith is and it is for we who follow in the footsteps of the faithful men and women of previous ages.
God literally “foresaw” something better for “us.” And the “something better” that God provides for us is connected to the “better resurrection,” which is equivalent to being “made perfect,” God completing the process of making us conformed to the image of His Son. Our new bodies and hearts will be perfectly suited to this new life in a new world, unlike our present bodies and hearts (which aren’t even that well suited for this world because of the curse!)
Do you see what the writer of Hebrews is saying? He saying that this story—God’s great story of faith—is not complete without you and me today. We are the final chapter of God’s story of faith.
Long ago God foresaw our lives as the final chapter, the climax of this book of faith. We, too, are commended by God for our faith, and it will be shown to all creation that we who have followed Jesus faithfully are pleasing to God. God is now adding the storyline of our lives, our faith, our triumphs and our sufferings to His record.
The author’s point is that if the Old Testament saints were faithful through all of these trials, even though they didn’t receive the promise of Christ in the flesh, how much more should we be faithful, since we have Christ! John Calvin (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], p. 308) put it, “A small spark of light led them to heaven; when the sun of righteousness shines over us, with what pretence can we excuse ourselves if we still cleave to the earth?”
What are some of the lessons we have learned from Hebrews 11?
First, biblical faith is not limited to any one personality type, gender, age, status, or race. Even ordinary, different people with faith are being added to God’s Hall of Faith today.
Second, biblical faith is not limited to those who have are consistent moral or spiritual giants in their walk with the Lord. And I thank God for that! George Guthrie discusses a common danger we face in thinking that these people are all different from us. “After all, they are in the Bible.” However, our author’s point is that even imperfect, inconsistent people are commended for their faith.
Third, biblical faith is willing to believe God against the odds. From universal floods, to having children at age 90 to walls falling down, people believed God could do the impossible.
Fourth, biblical faith may be present in a variety of outcomes, both positive and negative. Faith can result in triumphs; faith can be present in tragedy.
Finally, biblical faith will always be rewarded by God. Perhaps now; perhaps not now, but definitely in eternity. Friends, the books will be balanced.
So what is faith? Faith is confidence in God’s promises that results in obedient action carried out in a variety of situations by ordinary, fallible people, with various earthly outcomes either good or bad, but always with the ultimate outcome of God’s commendation and reward.
Grace Still Amazes 