VIII.
Faith (continued) ()
D.
Faith and Future (continued) ()
3.
(; ) Continued: Jacob looked forward to a day when the children would go to the land that had been promised to him, as it had been promised to his father Isaac and grandfather Abraham. When that happened, he wanted his bones taken and buried in the land of Canaan, “in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan” (). So clear and real was his vision that he knew even the place of his burial. () The Egyptians embalmed him over a period of forty days as was their custom and his final resting place was the land of promise. () He too was a futurist! And he lived 147 years!
4.
(; ) Joseph shared the dream of the future with his forebears. At his death, he faced his brothers in all the honesty of a healing encounter, not hesitating to bring up their dastardly deed in selling him to the Ishmaelites. “As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive. So therefore, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and your little ones … I am about to die; but God will surely take care of you and bring you up from this land to the land which He promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob … and you shall carry my bones up from here” (, ). He, too, like his father before him, trusted God for the promise of the future, for the land which they one day would inherit by the promise of God. Joseph was a futurist!
5.
(; ) Moses also was a futurist, not willing to trade off the ultimate promise for the advantages that would have been immediate and powerful in the land of Egypt. He sensed that he was to be identified with the people of his birth, even in their bondage and servitude. He saw no indication whatever that he was to be their victorious leader; he simply trusted God with the future of his life. In this example of Moses, our writer uses five illustrations of futuristic obedience. The first concerns his parents:
a.
(; , , ) For his mother there might have been an immediate advantage of keeping her son. Her mother’s instincts could well have overcome her faith in the future. For a mother to give up her child shortly after his birth, to take from her nurturing breast the child of love she had carried in her body for nine months and trust him to a frail basket on a mighty river, must have caused wrenching pain. Yet she trusted the future to the hands of God whose love she trusted at least as much as her own for her son. Moses’ parents refused to be cowered by the threats of Pharaoh; they defied the law of the land and set the pattern for their people for generations to come. The Pharaoh became Moses’ grandfather, who did not know the baby wasn’t Egyptian until much later.
b.
() Imagine being raised in the court of Pharaoh, with all the stimulating advantage of education in science, architecture, military tactics, mathematics, and government. During those formative years, he had drunk of the sophistication and power of the Egyptian empire. He had grown up with princes and intelligentsia, in a heady atmosphere of power and prestige. When and how he became aware of his true native identity we do not know. At some time, he must have seen the Hebrew people with eyes of belonging. Stories or cheap jokes about their fertility or customs would have become agonizing episodes that he buried inside. Dare he speak out or should he hold his tongue? So intense became this inward tension that he may have begun to stammer in his speech, the problem growing until he could scarcely be understood. All the sophistication, all the education, all the military prowess and brilliance of that mind and spirit were bound with thongs of inner tension — a tension between being a son of Pharaoh’s daughter or a son of Hebrew slaves. To identify himself with the Hebrews would mean letting go of all the advantages he had known and the possibility of helping his people through the power that he would eventually have. Perhaps he dreamed of the time when he could release them from their bondage and elevate them to a respected position among the nations of the earth. Instead, he gave all that over and chose to share the ill treatment with his own people.
c.
(; (already read), ) Then one day, when seeing an Egyptian slave master beating a Hebrew slave, he could not restrain himself. In actions learned all too well in the palace gymnasium of martial arts, he suddenly and quickly killed the Egyptian. The break with Pharaoh was complete! There was but one course of action — flee to the desert and be lost from the eyes and reach of Pharaoh’s justice. The resulting tension and anger he carried for years while keeping sheep on the backside of the desert of Sinai. Nevertheless, he saw there something worth more than the treasures of Egypt; our writer says, “he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen” (; ). The vision of God at the burning bush gave him the strength to make what many might feel was an unbelievable break. By faith Moses believed that God indeed would send the angel of death upon the first-born of Pharaoh’s land. () In the face of such imminent death, he must have truly trusted God to pass over the homes of faith whose only indication was a few swatches of blood over the lintel and on the doorposts. Such frail barriers to the awesome power of God!
d.
(, ; ) When crossing the Red Sea, anybody familiar with the circumstances would have known that once the strong east wind ceased that drew the water back to leave dry land in the bottom of the sea, the water would come rushing back to engulf anything or anyone present in that massive swirling tide. Yet, Moses had faith in the trustworthiness of God. The waters did come swirling back, but not until all the children of the Hebrews were safely through the dry land of the sea. Only when the armies of the Pharaoh tried to follow hard after, did those waters rush back as Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, claiming those who pursued as the “LORD overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea” ().
6.
(; ; ; , ; ) The powerful walls of Jericho collapsed miraculously after the Israeli troops circled the city one time for six days and seven times for the seventh day. Rahab, by acknowledging the past actions of the God of Israel, could see what lay ahead. As a futurist she asked the spies to spare her and her family when they came into the land. She said in simple faith, “I know that the LORD has given you the land … for the LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath” (). She lived in faith in the future and so became part of the bloodline of Christ.
7.
(; ) The passage of verses 32-40 is one of the most passionate and dramatic statements in all of Christian literature. The rise of emotion in our exhorter becomes a swelling tide of rhetorical brilliance with the opening words, “What more shall I say?” He longed for enough time to flesh out the stories of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, and Samuel. One can sense a flood of emotion aching for expression, but he must satisfy himself with a few closing paragraphs on one of his most fervent subjects — faith. His heroes fall into two categories, those who knew victory before their deaths and those whose faith had to be futuristic because all the tragedy of life they endured in faith had its reward in later generations. Through faith, some subdued kingdoms. David, amidst great obstacles, faced a paranoid king who sought his life and a son who sought his throne. David endured. He endured until the stretch of Israel’s might stretched across expanses of land.
a.
() One of his court members struggled with the price of justice. Nathan had to tell the powerful and beloved king, popular and on a high roll, that he was guilty of adultery and murder. He could have lost his head, but his call for justice was heard by a penitent David. Fortunately, Nathan lived to see the result ().
b.
() Daniel, in a determination some might call religious fanaticism, refused to bow to an ego-saturated King Darius. Full of remorse at the interdict he had signed in a moment of arrogant delusion and having attempted all day to circumvent his own law, Darius poignantly expresses his hope that Daniel’s God will deliver him. The courageous believer is sealed in the den of lions by the anguish-struck king. Darius then fasts all night, sleeplessly enduring the endless hours. () When the first signs of dawn light the sky he scurries out of the palace, shattering all protocol by hurrying to the den. Every step on his dim path intensifies the rising surge of feeling within him. Letting go all his noble, kingly behavior, he cries out in a tone of anguish, “Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you constantly serve, been able to deliver you from the lions?” (). Is God able? Immensely! Daniel was saved and Darius converted. Just read the song of praise Darius raises to God in . If your soul languishes in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, read it and trust in a great God!
c.
(, ) Gideon saw the power of God without the power of the human sword. Elijah (, , ) and Elisha () saw victory without the bloodshed. Not all men and women of faith had the rewards of faith in their grasp during their lifetimes, however. “Others were tortured, not accepting their release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection” ().
d.
These latter Christians died without having possessed the promise. In spite of their emptyhandedness, they persevered in faith, knowing that faith’s reward is not always given now. Revolutionaries over the world have died for future generations. Is that any less true of the saints? Theirs was a foundational faith, faith upon which others built. Their perfection, their completedness, is not in their own experience but in ours. In , Paul states that God used an accountant’s word, “faith was credited.” What was credited? Righteousness was credited to Abraham when he was uncircumcised. At times, we are credited with resources that cannot be withdrawn until a deposit is made. When these saints see us walking into the bank of God and coming out with our hands full of the abundance of God’s grace in Jesus Christ, they know that their completion has come as well. They rejoice to see our day, for our day becomes their day of rejoicing in the appropriation of the grace of Jesus Christ.
e.
(; ) “Others were tortured, not accepting their release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection” (). Here, I cannot help thinking that our author has in mind the martyrdom of Paul, which probably took place just a few months before the writing of this epistle. If, as tradition has it, Paul was beheaded in A.D. 67 or 68 and this epistle was written in A.D. 67 or 68, then the memory of his death still burned as a fresh, hot fire on the hearth of the author’s mind. The persecution may well have been going on in the empire since A.D. 64 when Nero proclaimed holding the Christian faith a crime worthy of death and falsely accused and imprisoned Christians. He killed them in all sorts of imaginative ways in the circuses of Rome, even dressing them in animal skins to be ravaged by hungry lions. Gawking, shouting mobs crowded the arenas to watch the carnage. With their almost insatiable appetites for violence, they were not worthy of these simple believers, who in their destitution appeared so frail and powerless. Yet these martyrs turned not only stomachs but the souls of Rome. Believers fled to the caves of the wilderness and wandered across the deserts on their way to distant lands to preach and find safety (vss. 35-37).
f.
This futuristic faith has been more than any persecuting power could control, superior to any pompous ideology that has claimed the right to rule the world. Long after such demagogues have been defeated, humiliated, broken, and forgotten, the lives of the believing saints have been remembered in the songs, histories, pageants, and hearts of one generation after another.