The book of Hebrews was written to those who’d “stood their ground in the face of suffering,” Hebrews 10:32 – but like their Israelite ancestors, suffering had become hard to take, and they were losing heart, which brought on a reminder from the author of Hebrews to watch out “that none of you (like those ancient Israelites) has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God” (3:7-12). 

But if suffering carries that risk, what is the purpose of it? And why should suffering exist at all, now that Jesus is king of the world? Instead, evil remains and it’s wrecking the lives of so many of Jesus’ followers. Which got those in Hebrews thinking that maybe following Jesus was a mistake, and following Moses was better, because under Moses’ administration life was structured and predictable, with its standardized system of laws, sabbaths and sacrifices, and suffering only happened when straying from that pattern, but that wasn’t the case when following Jesus, because even the best behaving Christians could suffer too.

So how did the author of Hebrews answer that? Well, since it was Moses they were wishfully thinking of returning to, then why did Moses “choose to be mistreated along with the people of God” in Hebrews 11:25? Rather than hang on to his life of no suffering as a privileged prince in Egypt, Moses chose suffering instead, by deciding to side with his own people and risk the anger and deadly danger of some very powerful people in Egypt. He’d deeply hurt his Egyptian stepmother too, totally lose out on financial security, miss the fun, friendship and respect of his peers, and deny himself a very promising career, maybe even a legacy of note in the history of Egypt, as well as a splendid tomb to preserve his reputation and fame.  

So why on earth would Moses have made that choice? And it was by thoughtful choice too, because in verse 26, “He regarded” – meaning he weighed up the consequences, just like Jesus telling people to “count the cost” – and to Moses the cost of “disgrace for the sake of Christ was of greater value than the treasures (and pleasures, verse 25) of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.” 

To those in Hebrews 10:35, then, who were losing heart because of their suffering and needed a boost to their confidence, the author of Hebrews reminds them of why Moses made the choice he did: it’s because of “The God who richly rewards”….(next blog)

In Hebrews 11:27, it was “By faith that Moses left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.”

So God must have revealed himself in such a way that Moses could carry on doing that God wanted him to do, no matter what the enraged leader of the most powerful nation in the world at that time threw at him. But how did God get that across to Moses?

There’s a clue in Exodus 3:1, when Moses had moved his father-in-law’s sheep to Mount Horeb, and there God spoke to him from a burning bush saying, “I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (6), and “I’m sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt” (10) and to “this (same) mountain” (12).

Moses wonders how the Israelites will react, to which God replies in verse 14, “Tell them: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” – ‘I AM’ is the same as “The Lord” (16) – and this was to be his “name throughout the generations” (15). Which to the Israelites would be a new way of seeing God, because as God himself said in Exodus 6:3, “by my name ‘the Lord’ I did not make myself known to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

Instead, he’d made himself known to them as El Shaddai, “God Almighty” (3), because in making a “covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan” (4), it got the point across that he had the power to make such a promise. But in making the promise come to pass, it would be by his name YHWH, “the Lord,” the ever-present one, to also get the point across that “I have watched over you and seen what’s been done to you in Egypt” (3:16), and “I will rescue you from your slavery, redeem you by mighty acts of judgment, take you as my own people and be your God, and give you the land I promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (6:6-8). 

Because “Then you’ll know that I am the Lord your God” (7); now they’d see him who is invisible in his obvious awareness of their troubles and his committed presence to help them. And when that God became visible to Moses “he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger,” Hebrews 11:27, because no matter what the future held, the “I am the Lord” (Exodus 6:8) – that name of God – was the God who’d promised him “I will be with you” (3:12). 

And that same God in the same way would be with those in Hebrews too, which is just what they needed to hear, because they’d been “Losing heart because of suffering”….(next blog)

It was “by faith,” Hebrews 11:24, that “Moses, when grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.”

But why on earth would Moses do that – taking into account Acts 7:22, that he “was schooled and trained in all the wisdom of Egypt, maturing him into a superb speaker and a renowned man of action.” At age 40 (verse 23), Moses was at his peak. He was smart, respected, and headed for a rosy future as a privileged member of the Egyptian royal family – potentially becoming one of the great leaders of the most powerful, richest and wisest empire at the time. 

But God had other things in mind, which he’d predicted back in Genesis 15:13 when he’d told Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they’ll be enslaved and mistreated 400 years,” but, verse 16, “in the 4th generation your descendants will come back here (to Canaan).” This prophecy, then, had been humming along behind the scenes since the time of Abram, predicting the actual time when the Israelites would be freed from slavery and returned to Canaan. But Moses, it seems, was blissfully unaware of it.  

Not for long though, because at age 40 Moses “decided to visit his fellow Israelites” (Acts 7:23), which set in motion a staggering decision on his part – to turn his back on his Egyptian family, renounce his royal office, and throw in his lot with his fellow Israelites. And why did he do that? There’s a clue in Psalm 103:7, that “The Lord made known his ways to Moses” – and especially his “justice for the oppressed” (6). But here was Moses on the side of the Egyptian oppressors who were viciously exploiting his fellow Israelites to boost their own wealth and “the pleasures of sin” – and that hit Moses hard (Hebrews 11:25-26).

It was seeing the difference between God’s ways and the Egyptian ways that ripped Moses out of his blissful ignorance. And isn’t that how God helps us today? “The Lord makes known his ways” to us as well, in the obvious difference between his ways and the world that we too have blissfully gone along with. And it hits us just like it hit Moses. But that too is one of the great blessings in God’s plan of salvation, that he gives us the eyes to see. The time came for us – just as it did for Moses, and for those in Hebrews 10:32 – when we “first saw the light” as well.

And for Moses it came because – as Hebrews 11:27 phrases it – “He saw him who is invisible”….(next blog)

In Hebrews 11:23 it was “By faith that Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the Pharaoh’s edict” – the edict being that when an Israelite boy child was born he should immediately be thrown into the Nile (Exodus 1:22). 

But Amram and Jochebed, Moses’ father and mother (Exodus 6:20), decided that disobedience was totally called for against this monstrous mandate – based on two points: first of all, that they and their children were descendants of Abraham through whom God was continuing to play out his promise to bless all nations, so the genocide of the Israelites was totally against God’s will.

And secondly, at the birth of their second son and younger brother of Aaron, Amram and Jochebed believed that God wanted this boy alive. They could see “he was no ordinary child” (Hebrews 11:23). Jochebed called him “a fine child” in Exodus 2:2, and in Acts 7:20 Stephen described him as “beautiful before God.” In some way, then, they knew that in this little boy, God had a special purpose.

And notably it was his parents’ faith in both these points that removed all fear in what they were doing. Hebrews 11:23 states, “they were not afraid of the Pharaoh’s edict.” That’s amazing, because they were defying the greatest superpower in existence at the time, but it didn’t scare them one bit. If only Adam and Eve had done that when confronted by the devil into disobeying God. But even Abraham was scared of the powers that be (Genesis 20). So was Isaac (Genesis 26). Jacob was scared stiff about meeting with his brother Esau (Genesis 32-33). And Joseph was never called upon to resist under threat of death.

So the first mention in Hebrews of descendants of Abraham being so fearless were these two unnamed people in Hebrews 11. But their purpose, like all the named people of faith in Hebrews 11 was exactly the same, to illustrate some aspect of God’s salvation, the knowledge and experience of which he blesses us with on our faith in him.

And for Amram and Jochebed that blessing was being utterly fearless, just as it was for those in Hebrews 10:32 who “stood their ground when things got really tough” for them too. And why were they so fearless? Because they were “Given the eyes to see” ….(next blog)

To Joseph, who “By faith – when he was on his deathbed – spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones,” Hebrews 11:22. 

But how on earth could Joseph speak about an exodus from Egypt when the Israelites had no reason to leave? They’d flourished in the land and been held in high regard by the Egyptian hierarchy. And what’s more, how could Joseph have known there’d be an exodus in the first place, when it wouldn’t happen for at least 140 years after his death? 

There’s a clue in Genesis 50:24, when Joseph told his brothers, “I’m 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, Isaac and Jacob.” Central to Joseph’s life and confidence was God’s promise to give Abraham and his family line “The whole land of Canaan as an everlasting possession” (17:8).

A land, however, that Joseph realized he would not see himself, because God had wanted him in Egypt instead, in a position of such enormous influence and respect that God could build Israel into a nation because of him. So Joseph was stuck in this distant land, but his faith in God’s promise to get Israel back to Canaan never wavered. And nor had his longing for the land he’d never see too – his faith and longing being so strong that he made sure his bones would be taken back to Canaan (Genesis 50:25), because in his heart that was home.

God had given him a major part in the creation of that home too. Like his father Jacob, Joseph had been the next link in the chain of God’s promise to Abraham to bless all nations. And Joseph only had to look back on his life, as his father had, to see how God had made him into such an effective link, directing his life through all kinds of trials that at the time seemed to have no purpose at all.

But we can see the purpose in Joseph’s life, that like him – no matter where we live, or what world we’re stuck in that shows no indication of God’s promise being fulfilled in our lifetime – God will get our “bones” to our promised home too. He made sure Joseph’s bones got home through Moses (Exodus 13:19), and now through Jesus he’s doing the same for us (John 14:3). No wonder, then, that “Faith makes us fearless” ….(next blog)

In Hebrews 11:21 “Jacob, as death approached, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, humbly bowing his head to God while leaning on his staff (in his old age).” 

It was no doubt “humbly” that Jacob did the blessing, because who was he to pass on any sort of blessing after the kind of life he’d led? But, like Isaac his father, it concerned Jacob as he neared death that a blessing on the next in line in the family be given, since in their own lifetimes the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abram in Genesis 12:3 hadn’t happened. The next generation, therefore, needed to know the promise was still active and certain.

But what made Jacob so certain? There’s a clue in his blessing on his own son Joseph in Genesis 48:15-16 – “May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my Shepherd all my life to this day….may he bless these boys (Joseph’s sons) and increase them greatly upon the earth.” 

Jacob spoke as an old man looking back over his life from that special moment in Genesis 28:12 when God had told him in a dream that “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring” (14), along with God’s personal promise to Jacob to “watch over you wherever you go,” and “never will I leave you until I’ve done what I promised you” (15). What an amazing promise – but how undeserving Jacob had been for such a promise, having just conspired with his mother to steal Isaac’s blessing meant for Esau (27:5-17). How deceitful and unaware of God the young Jacob had been.

But in Jacob God was also revealing his plan of salvation, in the assurance we can have of that salvation – no matter the mess of our lives we may have made – because in Jacob’s life we see – as he saw – that God has the heart of a shepherd. Lost, clueless, undeserving, messed up sheep like Jacob are the perfect example of that, and Jacob being a shepherd himself was the perfect one to understand it. So was the future king David, who’d also been a shepherd, and recognizing from that experience – and his life experience since then – that “The Lord is my Shepherd,” whose heart, like that of Jesus, is totally intent on assuring his sheep that we’re safe in his hands (John 10:27-29). 

So what part in God’s salvation process did Jacob’s son Joseph then play? It was the hope and assurance that “God gets our bones home”….(next blog)

In Hebrews 11:20, it was “By faith that Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.” And he blessed them knowing what his two boys were like too, because neither of them deserved any sort of blessing. They were fighting each other before they were born (Genesis 25:22), and swiping at each other after that, causing much upset along the way.  

But by faith Isaac blessed them, because it was his turn now, just like his father, to “live by faith in the things promised” in Hebrews 11:13. And what God had personally promised Isaac was continuing in him the exact same blessing he’d given to Abram, that “all nations on earth will be blessed” through their family line (Genesis 26:3-4). On that point alone, therefore, Isaac had total confidence in the future.  

He had further reason to be confident too, because if it wasn’t for God enabling his mother Sarah to bear children when naturally she couldn’t (Genesis 16:1), Isaac wouldn’t have been born. And topping that off, if it wasn’t for God miraculously enabling his wife Rebekah to bear children when she couldn’t naturally either (Genesis 25:21), Jacob and Esau wouldn’t have been born. So, with two “resurrections” from the dead already – in life being given to two dead wombs – God was making it abundantly clear that the future of his promise through Isaac and his family was utterly secure.

And according to Hebrews 11:19, Isaac himself was “figuratively” a resurrection from the dead too, because his father Abraham had been ordered by God to sacrifice him, but at the last minute God intervened and saved his life. So with three “resurrections” from the dead under his belt, no wonder Isaac had total confidence in the future for his two kids too, since they were next in line for God to fulfill his promise through. 

And isn’t it amazing that Isaac willingly submitted to being sacrificed? – taking into account that he was old enough to carry all the wood required for the sacrifice (Genesis 22:6), and strong enough too, therefore, to resist Abraham who was well over a hundred years old. But living by faith in God’s promise being continued through him, as well as the evidence that God could resurrect from the dead, would have given Isaac the confidence to submit to being killed. Through Isaac too, then, God was revealing his salvation process, that we can all have total confidence in the future too, because of God’s power to resurrect.

So how was God revealing his salvation process through Isaac’s son Jacob next? It’s in Jacob realizing “In God we have a Shepherd”….(next blog)

In Hebrews 11:17, it was “By faith that Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice.” Which in itself makes one wonder about God – but what thoughts were going through Abraham’s head? God had miraculously enabled Isaac to be born to him and Sarah in their old age, so that God’s promises could be passed on down through their son (18). Why on earth, then, would God want the boy killed?

Abraham was already familiar with God working in mysterious ways, but this time it looked like God was going against his promises. He’d never done that before. And how could he too? God was God, and he’d made a personal covenant with Abram back in Genesis 15, getting the point across in dramatic fashion (9-12, 17), that Canaan would belong to Abram’s descendants (18); no ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ – it was totally guaranteed. 

And Abram got the point. He believed that God would stick to his promises. So, if God wanted Isaac killed, there was only one solution to God continuing both his promise and his covenant through Isaac, and that would be “raising the dead boy back to life again,” Hebrews 11:19. 

It wasn’t an unreasonable thought either, because hadn’t Isaac already been brought miraculously to life from the dead, when born to two people whose bodies could no longer conceive a child? Abram already knew, then, that God could produce life from death.

When it came to Abram’s turn, then, to “live by faith in the things promised” in Hebrews 11:13, the thing Abraham saw promised was God’s ability to raise a human being from death to life. Which also ties in with the salvation theme running through Hebrews 11. In Abel, Enoch and Noah we see the process of salvation unfolding (redemption through sacrifice, walking with God, and resisting evil); in Abraham we see the end goal of salvation, raising humans to a deathless life. 

And that’s what Abraham was commended for in Romans 4:17 too – for believing in “the God who gives life to the dead.” Because that’s the ultimate thing God promises, which we pick up from Abraham in our belief now in “God raising Jesus our Lord from the dead” (24) as his means of raising us from death to life too (Romans 6:4-5). 

But what of Isaac? He went through all this too, so what effect did it have on him? According to Hebrews, it gave him “Total confidence in the future”….(next blog)

In Hebrews 11:13, the author of Hebrews slips in a summary of what he’s covered so far in the lives of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah. His summary being: “All these people were still living by faith when they died” – or in Enoch’s case, when “God took him away” (7).

But what were they “living by faith” in? According to verse 13, it was faith in “the things promised.” So they knew that something had been promised, which they could “see” and “welcome from a distance,” giving them a “longing for a better country – a heavenly one” (16). And even though they couldn’t see it in their lifetimes, they were “sure of what they hoped for and certain of what they hadn’t yet seen in reality” (1) – of something much better than the world they were living in.

But how did they come to that realization? Well, they were all alive for a start. Which meant something was up, because they knew what had happened in the Garden of Eden, and God’s promise of death for eating off the wrong tree. But here they all were experiencing life instead, which had to mean that God still had some purpose in mind for humans.

A purpose that God first made clear in Genesis 4:3-5 too, in the giving of offerings to him, and Abel grasping why, as seen in his offering being the best portions from some of his firstborn sheep, picturing the sacrifice needed for the redemption of humanity from the death caused by Adam and Eve. Redemption, the first step in our salvation, therefore, was “the thing promised” that Abel saw. 

Enoch saw the next step in the salvation God was offering humans, that having accepted sacrifice as the first step, “walking with God” was now possible again, restoring the open, guilt-free relationship with God that Adam and Eve had lost. This was “the thing promised” that Enoch saw. 

Noah pictured the third step. Not only did he “walk with God,” he was also “blameless among the people of his time” (9). He did what Adam and Eve didn’t do: resist evil’s alternative world. This, then, was “the thing promised” that Noah saw, a better world where evil would not rule.

But it was Abraham who saw the ultimate thing promised that would make all these other promises possible, the clear proof that “God raises the dead”….(next blog)

According to Hebrews 11:11, “It was by faith that Sarah, who couldn’t bear children, was able to conceive a child, and way beyond her child-bearing age too. Because, like her husband, she believed that God had promised; enough said.” So from two old folks, both incapable of having children, “were born so many descendants they were like the stars in multitude, and beyond count like sand on a seashore” (12). 

That’s the short version of what happened. In the longer version in Genesis 18, however, Sarah’s faith wasn’t quite that brilliant or instant when she first overheard the news she was going to have a son. She reacted as any woman at the ripe old age of ninety would likely react to hearing that she and her “worn out” centenarian husband could have a child of their own. She “laughed to herself” at the very thought of it (12).

She wasn’t alone either, because her husband had reacted in exactly the same way (17:17). So when reading about faith in Hebrews 11, we get the rosy short version of these giants of faith who – apparently – always stood firm against all odds, who never doubted for a second in God’s promises or directions, who kept their emotions and reactions totally under control, no matter what pressures they were under from the world around them. But the longer version back in Genesis isn’t so rosy. 

In Genesis 12:1, for instance, God told Abram to “leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” But against God’s orders, Abram took “his people and members of his family” with him, including Lot his nephew (5), who turned out to be nothing but a problem. And rather than trust God to provide him with “offspring” as promised (15:4-5), Abram conceived a child with his wife’s maidservant instead (16:1-4). And he lied about Sarai being his sister to protect his own skin too, rather than trust God to protect them. 

And yet in Romans 4:19-21, in response to God telling him that he and Sarai were going to have a child in their long gone child-bearing age, Abram’s response was, “God promised, enough said.” So what changed in Abram’s life that enabled him to trust God with a totally impossible sounding promise? According to verse 20, “God strengthened his faith” so that Abram was “fully persuaded God had the power to do what he’d promised” (21). 

In other words, through testing God had grown Abram’s faith. Because what God was bringing all these people in Hebrews 11 to, was “Living by faith”….(next blog)