2. He points them to people. But if the past can be painfully instructive, it can also be powerfully inspiring. The writer’s history lesson isn’t about the average rainfall in the Mediterranean, the political structure they lived under, or the leading export. He wants to tell them about people.
But not just any people. People like them. People who had committed themselves to live for God—come what may. Everything didn’t start with us. History is full of men and women who were committed to living His story out before their culture. We impoverish ourselves if we fail to familiarize ourselves with their stories.
The people he writes about are heroes. Heroes are always helpful to us, but especially when we’re up against the wall—when we’re tempted to “shrink back.” James Thompson writes, “Struggling people need heroes . . . The author of Hebrews knows the value of heroes for discouraged people.” They help us to see beyond our problems to our possibilities.
When Abraham Lincoln was elected president, the present-day Capitol dome and other parts of the building were under construction. Then came the Civil War and some protested that the work should stop. Lincoln was adamant about it continuing. “If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union to go on.” And indeed, Lincoln’s attitude, along with the sight of the ongoing construction inspired the residents of Washington with hope and optimism for the future.
3. He points them to principles. Our greatest heroes are those whose lives are characterized by a deep and abiding faith. They don’t just talk about it—they live it. In Hebrews 11, they lived by certain principles. One was that through their faith, they saw the unseen. There’s Noah the boat-builder, Abraham the person who takes off when God tells him to go and doesn’t tell him where, and Sarah who is going to have a child in her old age. The journey of faith that we’re called to is predicated upon seeing the unseen. We haven’t physically seen Jesus. Or God. Or any of the people we read about in Scripture for that matter. But we see them through the eyes of faith.
Because they saw the unseen, the people of Hebrews 11 endured. Moses’ parents hide him for three months after he was born. Can you imagine how hard it would be to hide a baby for three months? Moses grows up in Pharaoh’s palace but refuses that identity and chooses to suffer with the people of God. And Abraham endures three of the longest days ever as he takes Isaac to Mt. Moriah to sacrifice him there.
Because they saw the unseen, the people of Hebrews 11 triumphed. Israel passes through the Red Sea while Pharaoh and his army drown in it. The walls of Jericho fall down before the army of Israel. Three young Hebrew men emerge alive out of a furnace so hot the people who threw them in it were burned to death. But here’s the real truth we need to see—some of them triumphed in life, but they all triumphed in death. It may or may not be that we’ll experience triumph in this life, but there’s no doubt it’s coming when this life is over.
Hebrews 11 is an amazing chapter! No matter how many times we read it, we always find something to speaks to wherever we are on our journey. It provides a wonderful lesson for us to look to people from the past who lived by godly principles and live not as people who shrink back and are destroyed but as those who faith and are saved.
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 