Hebrews: The New Covenant Administration of Christ Max A Forsythe (c) Anno Domini 2005

From the Pulpit at Pilgrim's Rest Presbyterian Church in America

The Heavenly Country
For the Lord’s Day:  the 12^th of June 2005

 Hebrews 11: 13-22

Introduction:  “My Kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus told Pilate, when the Procurator of Rome questioned him on the night before Jesus was crucified.  That is a fact that any astute reader of scripture should be able to fathom from the clear references throughout all of scripture.  There has always been as St Augustine described it two realms in this old world.  The first is the well named:  city of man, symbolized by the Tower of Babel and the continued work of any and all who would raise up a utopian paradise here on earth in every time and place.  The second city is known variously as “the kingdom of heaven,” the “City of God” or as I like to describe it:  The Kingdom of the Spirit.

Our Apostle who wrote this letter to the Hebrew people is here arguing that it was this heavenly city to which the Patriarchs were really and truly looking forward to.  Yes, there was the land of Promise in Canaan where the history of their descendants was worked out on the worldly stage.   And even today, the Zionists believe that a historic restoration of their people and religion in that area of the world must become an actual realization of the ancient prophesies which we would better understand in and through the cause and kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

F.F. Bruce lays out the evidence for our proposition that “the kingdom of heaven” was indeed upon the minds of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  All three of these are noted as the pilgrim patriarchs who wandered in and through that land that would one day become the possession of their descendants.  We read in verse thirteen that those named previously, Abraham, Sarah – Isaac and Jacob, lived lives “regulated by the firm conviction that God would fulfil the promises He had given them, and in death they continued to look forward to the fulfillment of these promises.”

All three of the wanderers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob tented only in the promised land, even as Christ tented amongst us in the time of His visitation.  We have only to look forward to verses twenty and twenty-one to see the profound implications of the family blessings passed on from generation to generation.  “By faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau.  By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph.”  In Genesis 23: 4 Abraham admitted that he was a stranger and a sojourner, thus accepting his status as a pilgrim.  Jacob too, in Genesis 47: 9 accepted the days of the years of pilgrimage as well.  Yet still, the lived complete and fulfilled lives believing the promises of their heavenly Father.  F.F. Bruce argues that it is the satisfied attitude of the Patriarchs which makes it plain that Palestine was not their final home.  “Their ‘pilgrim’s progress’ through this world had as its goal a home elsewhere.”

Development:  Bruce also argues that it was equally clear that the land from which they came was not their true home.  When Abraham’s servant suggested to Abraham that Isaac himself should go home to seek a wife, Abraham charged him to not even consider it.  Jacob was the only one who ever returned to the land of his grandfather’s birth – and he remained their only twenty years before coming again to “the land of his fathers” where none ever had a settled home.

Like the Patriarchs who looked forward to the better country, we too should realize that “the earthly Canaan and the earthly Jerusalem were but temporary things pointing to the saints’ everlasting rest, the well-founded city of God.”  Think of it this way, in all of the countless passages from Europe to America – thousands of people died in route from sickness, ship wreck and hardship.  Where was their home?  Was it the Old World from which they had fled, or was it the New World which they never obtained.  For all those who were the spiritual seed of Abraham – their promised land was the heavenly city of God.

Even America is only an earthly paradise.  But still today, there are those who flee Cuba, Mexico and other islands in the stream – who die trying to get here.  Some years ago, a Cuban teenager barely made it on an inner tube.  He had gone down to the beach with the old worn out tire lining, a box of crackers and a jug of water.  The water he lost, and for many hours he almost became fish food when a curious shark stalked the strange object afloat in his territory.

If we can accept that there are many Americans in Spirit whose life long desire is to get here, it should not be too difficult to raise the bar, so to speak – and accept the fact that the Creator God has chosen His people and instilled in them a desire for a better world even than our own fair land.  Surveys taken around the world indicate that fully one-third of the informed population of the world would come here if it were at all possible.  By some estimates, the people of God are a similar percentage of the whole earth.  That does not mean that those populations are one and the same however!  The families of God are dispersed in every tribe and nation and will only be united when the Lord Jesus Christ comes again at the end of the age to establish the everlasting kingdom of heaven.

The Apostle Paul captured the essential doctrine that we must teach from these few verses.  In the letter to the Philippians, he writes:  “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” (Philippians 3: 20-21) 

Now, as we move into the last few verses, there is an interesting fact about the faith of Abraham in the sacrifice scene that must be considered.  Remember, that Isaac was his only begotten son.  And when he is ordered to lay him on an altar, thereby was the whole future of God’s Old Covenant people placed in jeopardy.  Much has been made over the years of the turmoil that should have been in Abraham’s heart.  However, if we look back to Genesis 22: 5 we read an absolutely stunning affirmation of Abraham’s trust.  Listen:  “Then Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.”  In plain English as well as plain Hebrew the implicit fact is that “we will go and we will return.”

Abraham trusted in the Lord, and even while walking to the sacrificial place, he assured Isaac that the Lord would provide the proper sacrifice.  What a lesson the young Isaac was to learn – his life was safe in the hands of the Lord God even in the midst of what Abraham intended to do.  The Apostle gives us this analysis:  “[Abraham] considered that God was able even to raise [Isaac] from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.”

Application:  It remained for God to show the elect what was truly on His mind two millennia later.  We can all figure it out simply enough.  The true Lamb of God, the only begotten Son of God would be sacrificed on the cross – not only in Isaac’s place but also in our own as well.  In John 8: 56 we hear the words of Christ echo the joyous salvation realized by Isaac and Abraham:  “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day.  He saw it and was glad.”

In all ways, the faith of the Patriarchs was an “assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen.”  Joseph too, who lived all of his adult life in Egypt desired another, a better country and thus he made all the arrangements that even his bones would be carried back and interred in the family tomb in Palestine.  Now what more can we say about such things.  There is a profound hope in the hearts of these saints for a better life than the ordinary days we live on this old world.  Their hope was in heaven.  Yes, of course, the knowledge of Christ brings us into the eternal kingdom and while we still live, we have a foot in both realms.  During the week – as we labor amongst the worldly – we live in the city of man.  But, on the Lord’s Day, today our true affections can be displayed, here in the sanctuary of God, we have one foot in heaven until He comes to take us to be with Him.  And it is the spiritual blessings of this day, the hearing of the word, the stirrings of the Spirit and our worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that sets us apart from those who do not know these things.  We too are pilgrims in a strange world.  And Peter did once admonish the church in these words:  “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.”  (1 Peter 2: 11) 

We know that Jacob, the third of the Patriarchs, was a liar and a cheat.  Only his uncle Laban could do him one better when it came to deception.  And when he finally returned to the promised land, the Lord God did wrestle with him until he was finally defeated.  God does take the lives of His people seriously.  And He contends with our selfish spirits until we submit to the rule of His revealed word.  This is what the elect of every age are required to do – to finally once and for all accept the premise that “His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  For all of those who will not bow their knee, there minds and hearts – on the last day the Lord God will condemn them to “have it their way.”  And they will finish eternity in their own hellish delights, apart from the eternal God of heaven.

Thanks be to God, that He has called us in the same manner as He did the ancient Patriarchs.  The long recitation of saints here in this chapter of Hebrews is for our own spiritual benefit.  So that we can see what God was doing down through the ages – and thereby we may learn what He would have us to believe and do today.  May we learn to trust the revelations and promises of God, even as the saints of old did with much less information than we have been given.  Amen.

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PREACHING RESOURCES

Brown, John.  A Geneva Series Commentary:  Hebrews.
Bruce, F.F.  The Epistle to the Hebrews.
The Holy Bible:  English Standard Version.

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