Hebrews Series:
Resurrection trumps Religion
Part 7: Faith &
the End Game
Where we began…
• A literary approach to Hebrews
(audience/context)
• Problem Hebrews is addressing?
“Judaising of the faith”
• Centrality of Temple/ritual – promise had
hardened into religion…
We also began with modern issues that are
similar to the First century Jewish issues…
We also began with modern issues…
‘Religion’ as smokescreen to God
“How can Christ become the
Lord of the religionless as
well? If religion is only a
garment of Christianity – then
what is religionless
Christianity? ”
“How do we speak in a ‘secular’ way about God? In what way
are we… not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view
as specially favoured, but rather as belonging to the world? In
that case, Christ is no longer an object of religion but
something quite different, really the LORD of the world”
Where does Hebrews 11 fit into this story?
Replaces ‘law’ as modus operandi of OT – with Faith
Rewrites the entire OT as a progression of faith not
the development of law/religion
Positions Abraham as the archetype not Moses…
Context of faith was life/experiences not rituals
4 By
faith Abel brought God a better offering ….
faith Enoch was taken from this life,
7 By faith Noah built an ark to save his family.
8 By faith Abraham, migrated, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home; he
lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob,. 10 . 11
And by faith even Sarah, was enabled to bear children
By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice.
20 By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.
21 By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped
22 By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave
instructions concerning the burial of his bones.
23 By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born,
24 By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25 He chose to be
mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26
27 By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. 28 By faith
he kept the Passover and the application of blood,
By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land
30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days.
31 By faith the prostitute Rahab, welcomed the spies, d]
32 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David
and Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what
was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the
sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.
35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again.
5 By
Context of faith was life/experiences not rituals
“Faith was a way of reading life, not a religious piety”
Metaphysics
“Adding God, as reality, to reality”
Sacred
Faith
Profane/visible
Interiority
God limited to boundaries of human
experience
“God” is retained in the sphere of
personal, intimate, private life
Faith
“God” is relegated outside the world &
public sphere of life
“The religious man searches furiously to reserve a place for
God and today this place is at the boundaries”
Goal of faith was “a city whose builder
and maker is God”
• Ie life has a meaning in its narrative that is transcendent
• Beginning and end frames all meaning…
Redemption
Creation
Consummation
“In my beginning is my end…” TS Eliot East Coker Four Quartets
The dynamics of faith
• Not a static attribute that some people have and others don’t
- it is a verb not a noun
• Result of a conversation between God and humanity…
• On God’s side “Promise” initiates the cycle – a speech act – not
“command” (which would initiate obedience/compliance)
• On our side “Believe that he is, and he rewards those who earnestly
seek him”
• Faith is not intellectual assent to existence of God…
• It is response to a word from God – ie a belief he intends good for
me and us and the planet… (the Rewarder)
• Faith is optimistic
So you can work on faith – it grows - and this is our responsibility
Vision was the driver of faith
•
•
Begins in the mind – and in a vision and imagination – led to interpretation of events/situations –
ie seeing God in the narrative of life. Life is not an accident, but a providence with a purpose.
But then evidenced in actions that were decisive but went against the grain of their times…
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even
though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in
a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For
he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11 And by faith even
Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she[b] considered him faithful who
had made the promise. 12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as
the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
13 All
these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only
saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.
14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking
of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a
better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city
for them.
Faith is not a religious quality
• False opposition between ‘faith and reason’
• Assumes faith is religious and reason is secular…
•
•
•
Faith is not a religious construct, but a critical quality in human endeavour and success
The great innovators are led by faith not evidence… the ‘evidence’ is actually the vision
in their mind of what is possible
Faith is optimism and hope that life is good and meaningful – think Turnbull and his
narrative of hope
The climax of chapter 11 - Jesus and
faith
• “let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us… fixing our eyes
on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith”
• ‘Faith’ not ‘our faith’… makes it a general quality not an exclusive quality –
he is doing this on behalf of all humanity and all hope.
• What does this mean? Pioneer & Perfecter
• Climax of all the stories in Hebrews 11
• “For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising its
shame.”
• ‘Joy’ is the city whose builder and maker is God.
• He was the ultimate believer in meaning of life – the beginning and end
But faith works in a contested space
• “Chastisement” is reframed here …
• Not ‘punishment’ for wrong doing but contested environment
• This environment can be hostile to faith & challenge to faith
• Psalm 74 captures this ‘positive’ meaning of ‘chastisement’ –
seeing God’s sovereign hand behind ‘chastisement’ not as a
punishment for sins but as vehicle of his rule.
O God, why have you rejected us forever?
Why does your anger smolder against the
sheep of your pasture?
2 Remember the nation you purchased long ago,
It was you who split open the sea by your power;
the people of your inheritance, whom you
you broke the heads of the monster in the
redeemed— Mount Zion, where you dwelt.
waters.
3 Turn your steps toward these everlasting ruins,
14 It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan
all this destruction the enemy has brought on the
and gave it as food to the creatures of the
sanctuary.
desert.
4 Your foes roared in the place where you met
15 It was you who opened up springs and streams;
with us - they set up their standards as signs.
you dried up the ever-flowing rivers.
5 They behaved like men wielding axes to cut
16 The day is yours, and yours also the night;
through a thicket of trees.
you established the sun and moon.
6 They smashed all the carved paneling
17 It was you who set all the boundaries of the
with their axes and hatchets.
earth;
7 They burned your sanctuary to the ground;
you made both summer and winter.
they defiled the dwelling place of your Name.
8 They said in their hearts, “We will crush them
completely!” They burned every place where
God was worshiped in the land.
9 We are given no signs from God; no prophets
are left and none of us knows how long this will
be.
How long will the enemy mock you, God?
Will the foe revile your name forever?
11 Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand?
Take it from the folds of your garment and destroy them!
12 But God is my King from long ago;
he brings salvation on the earth.
The outcome of contest is growth
• Word of encouragement as ‘father addresses his son’
• “Endure hardship as discipline’ is a key phrase… see God’s hand behind
hardship
• To what end? Not punishment, not arbitrary sadism on God’s behalf (“as
flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods – they kill us for their sport”)
• ‘In order that we may share his holiness…’
• It produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those trained by it.
This ‘holiness’ is not the purifying of sins – excoriating imperfections like a
scrubbing brush to get rid of stains,
It is participating in the kingdom-secrets of how God will bring salvation to the
earth and the nature of his rule in the created order…
The final act – the coming of the city of
God, order in the cosmos at last!
• You have not come to a mountain of darkness, gloom and storm…
• Ie contested space will end, contest is ephemeral not eternal
• You have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly
Jerusalem
• You have come to the joyful assembly
Therefore since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be
shaken, let us be thankful and so worship God acceptably with
reverence and awe
The Chiastic Architecture
The Son was always
there, always
implied in the old
journey
So his purpose is
unchanging &
continuous
It is in fact the
same story
This is the new
order inaugurated
by the resurrection
But a public reality
(City) is being
instituted in heaven
Era of the spirit
working in hearts
and minds
The Chiastic Architecture