The lamb sacrificed for the house. Strengthened by the LORD, may you abound in all things in Christ to the glory and the praise and the honor of our God, our Savior, and our Lord. To Abraham God's promise never came fully true; and yet he never abandoned his faith. James was beheaded by Herod. There can be no such thing as religion without that belief. At the back of this story lie two great truths. True faith draws forth sincere and fervent desires; and the stronger faith is the more fervent those desires will be. It often means one who arranged or disposed of property, or anything else, such as a treaty or covenant. The fulfilment of the Melchisedec Order is found in Christ, and in Him alone. Worse was to come. Lastly, he points "to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better than Abel:" the assurance that the earth shall be delivered from its long sorrow and slavery. Moses had the faith he had because he knew God in the way he did. J. P. Struthers was the minister of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Greenock, a little congregation, which, it is neither false nor unkind to say, had a great past but no future. As ever we expect to be justified and saved in the great and terrible day of the Lord, let us now prepare an ark, secure an interest in Christ, and in the ark of the covenant, and do it speedily, before the door be shut, for there is not salvation in any other. He grew to be so beautiful that people turned in the street, and even ceased their work, to took at him. More than that, it caused him to remain patient when he did not experience the fulfilment of the promise in his lifetime. How Canaan is called the land of promise, because yet only promised, not possessed. Abraham was the man who would sacrifice even the dearest thing in life for God. He was said to be the first to put pen to paper and instruct men from books. Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence he also received him in a figure ( Hebrews 11:17-19 ). And so Abraham said to the servants, "You wait here. A strong and hale man of seventy came in. And we go to the story of Abraham, where God said unto Abraham, "Abraham," and he said, "Here am I." But mark another striking and instructive feature of this chapter. (ii) Abraham is the pattern of the man who accepts what he cannot understand. Then, consequent on the fall, comes the ground of the believer's acceptance; then his walk with God, and deliverance from His judgment of the whole scene, in the midst of which we actually are. It was a shattering humiliation for a king. The story of Barak is in Judges 4:1-24; Judges 5:1-31. And, amazingly, she is one of the names which appear in the genealogy of Jesus ( Matthew 1:5). Take each of you offerings in your hand and go, sacrifice to the Lord and he will decide." God has prescribed means and ways wherein he may be found; to with, a strict attention to his oracles, attendance on his ordinances, and ministers duly discharging their office and associating with his people, observing his providential guidance, and in all things humbly waiting his gracious presence. I like two steps or three or four. The ground of Noah's faitha warning he had received from God of things as yet not seen. In the beginning ofHebrews 11:1-40; Hebrews 11:1-40 we are told what faith is. They lashed him with whips and tied him to the wheel until he was dislocated and fractured in every limb. Which in this particular case was forty years old. A. They, without the finished work of Christ, could not enter in to the kingdom of God. The writer to the Hebrews has been citing as examples of faith the great figures of the time before Israel entered into the Promised Land. He lives in it and he dies in it; and it is the possession of it which makes him act as he does. Isaac was willingly submissive to the father's will.For three days they journeyed from Hebron, and in the mind of Abraham, for those three days his son Isaac was dead, because he knew that God had required that he offer him as a sacrifice in the place that He would show him. 3. He tried to introduce this into Palestine. Holy Scripture then demanded that a man should sit down at the right hand of God. from weakness were made strong, showed themselves strong in warfare, routed the ranks of aliens. It was not so of old, when the Israelite brought his goat or calf. He was possessed of a true justifying righteousness; he was heir to it: and, [2.] I'm just a transient here. God is able to raise this boy up from the dead if necessary to keep His promise to me, "Through Isaac shall thy seed be called. Then, very gently, Popilius told Antiochus that Rome did not wish him to proceed with the campaign but wished him to go home. By faith we may see this invisible God. But another Jew, seeking to curry favour and to save his own life, came forward and was about to sacrifice. SOJOURNERS AND STRANGERS ( Hebrews 11:13-16 ). Would he give up Isaac? By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about for seven days ( Hebrews 11:30 ). That he preferred a significant burial in Canaan before a magnificent one in Egypt. The intention here was not to dwell either on the scene in which their waiting was put to the test, the wilderness, or on anything that could insinuate the settled position of Israel in the land. (2.) Accordingly we have the third use of the seat Christ has taken. In this phrase there is no allusion whatever to the church; nor indeed anywhere in the Hebrews is there any reference to its distinctive portion in union with its Head. 3. Of the faith of Enoch, Hebrews 11:5. Because he lives, he has a permanent priesthood, always interceding for his own, and thus he is able completely to save those who trust in him. He had to pay an alien tax. 2. It may not be given to every man to enter into the fullness of the promises or God, but it is given to him to live with such fidelity as to bring nearer the day when others will enter into it. Legend tells how Amram and Jochebed, the parents of Moses ( Exodus 6:20), were troubled by the decree of Pharaoh. No other seat was suitable to such a One. A new covenant shows that the other must have thereby become old, and therefore is decaying and ready to vanish away. His birth was long beyond any natural possibility for birth, and so he was in a sense received from the dead, a miracle child to begin with. (3.) We must bear in mind that Melchisedec was a man like any other. The accommodation of this type is not difficult. The circumstance of time is taken notice of, when Moses by his faith gained this victory over the world, in all its honours, pleasures, and treasures: When he had come to years (Hebrews 11:24); not only to years of discretion, but of experience, to the age of forty yearswhen he was great, or had come to maturity. Someone asked him if he never got tired of it all. Were it a question of the mystery of Christ the Head, and of the church His body, this would not be proved from the Old Testament, which does not reveal it at all. The Romans will do the last sad offices. The only thing they would offer was a broken toy they could well do without. The faith of Joseph, then, was simple confidence in God; and its strength was seen in his firm conviction that what had been promised would be fulfilled, even when there were no appearances that to human view justified it. I am not going to enter into any statement of facts as to this now, but there is no truth in its own place more important than that with which the apostle commences in this chapter, namely, that "through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God." It did not matter whether it was a priest or an Israelite. Force and violence had not yet been used. So Abel, who was a shepherd, took his best lamb to the place of sacrifice; but Cain, who was a tiller of the ground, took the poorest sheaf of corn he could find and laid it on the altar. It was on Mount Moriah where the cross was placed upon which Jesus died. Samuel is listed after David and so that's the only break in the chronology. [1.] (ii) In spite of everything these men never lost their vision and their hope. If the one figured the imposed measure of man's responsibility, which can only but most justly condemn him, in the other we behold the mountain of God's grace after all was lost. Swinburne best of all caught this mood of world-weariness in The Garden of Proserpine: There are those for whom death is good because it is the end of life. If we can grip that fact, two things follow. On the other hand, the priests, Aaron's family, among the sons of Levi, "have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is of their brethren, though they come out of the loins of Abraham." Remembered is appropriate here. Two Horizons Commentary Sale. But a test was proposed; they set before the child a bowl of precious stones and a bowl of live coals. One day Abel was asleep upon a mountain; and Cain came upon him and took a stone and crushed his head. Demosthenes said: "Envy is the sign of a nature that is altogether evil." It remained for a brief season; but even then it soon began to show rents down. "And unto the city of the living God, (not of dying David,) the heavenly Jerusalem" (not the earthly capital of Palestine). Upon his mind; it impressed his soul with a fear of God's judgment: he was moved with fear. He prophesied that they should be blessed; but, as Isaac did before, so now Jacob prefers the younger, Ephraim; and though Joseph had placed them so, that the right hand of his father should be laid on Manasseh, the elder, Jacob wittingly laid it on Ephraim, and this by divine direction, for he could not see, to show that the Gentile church, the younger, should have a more abundant blessing than the Jewish church, the elder. Note, Those that are once effectually and savingly called out of a sinful state have no mind to return into it again; they now know better things. He argues that the word "new" puts the other out of date, and this to make room for a better. God's message might look foolishness at the moment; but Noah believed it and staked everything on it. If in these two verses we bear in mind that it really means "testament," growing out of the previous mention of the "inheritance," I am persuaded that you will have better understanding of the argument. Above all things, he is the God of the gallant adventurer. We have another instance of the faith of Moses, namely, in forsaking Egypt: By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, ; Hebrews 11:27. But the Holy Ghost's testimony is not forgotten. Nimrod sought to murder the infant but Abraham was concealed in a cave and his life saved. But he was as a stranger and a pilgrim there. As the writer to the Hebrews put it, we must believe that God is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him. And as he starts towell, before he gets into it, he starts with just the creation of the world itself. This is the fallacy of this "Faith" teaching today. Observe. He may feel called by God to a task in a sphere which is difficult and in a place that is unattractive and it may be that the girl he is to marry will not face it with him. Their acknowledgment of this their condition: they were not ashamed to own it; both their lips and their lives confessed their present condition. The Lord commands him to leave this marvelous move of the Spirit and go down to this desert place, go down to Gaza. The twenty-four elders fall on their faces before the throne and take their crowns and cast them on the glassy sea and they say, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor; for You have created all things, and for Your pleasure they are and were created" ( Revelation 4:11 ). (2.) It is interesting how that a person living for their own pleasure is constantly pursuing pleasure, constantly trying to find something new, something different, some new sensation. We may put it in another way--Noah was the man who heeded the warning of God; and because he heeded he was saved from disaster. . Our being brought to God supposes, and is founded on the fact, that our sins are gone perfectly by His one offering; otherwise no madness is greater than indulging such a thought. It is easy to see how this passage can be read against the terrible happenings of these days. What should we learn from it? The first is the story of Eleazar, the aged priest ( 4Ma_5:1-38 ; 4Ma_6:1-35 ; 4Ma_7:1-23 ). Then he adds: "And to myriads of angels, the general assembly" for such is the true way to divide the verse "and to the church of the firstborn," etc. He had good company with him, and they were a great comfort to him in his sojourning state. He goes out, deliberately and knowingly, just at the time of life when a man is most sensitive to the value of a grand sphere of influence, as well as exercise of his powers, wherein, too, he could have ordinarily exerted all in favour of his people. 4. This He has done, and done with. None but the Old Testament saints, as a class, can all be in the separate state: not the church, or New Testament saints, for we shall not all sleep; nor the millennial saints, for none of them will die. The writer to the Hebrews reads into the simple statement of the Old Testament passage the idea that Enoch did not die at all but that in some mystic way God took him to himself. Search Results in Other Versions. When other men broke God's commandments, Noah kept them; when other men were deaf to God's warnings, Noah listened to them; when other men laughed at God, Noah reverenced him. "What kind of God is He that would require a man to offer his son as a human sacrifice?" How Canaan is called the land of promise, because yet only promised, not possessed. He was willing to take his lot with the people of God here, though it was a suffering lot, that he might have his portion with them hereafter, rather than to enjoy all the sensual sinful pleasures of Pharaoh's court, which would be but for a season, and would then be punished with everlasting misery. Here observe, [1.] At the moment when she was speaking, there seemed not one chance in a million that the children of Israel could capture Jericho. "With all three the significant thing was their firm conviction that death cannot frustrate Gods purposes." It may mean the worlds governed by dispensations; but still that the idea of the whole universe is in it cannot be fairly contested by competent minds. We say, "Oh, that's a cold, biting wind," or we say, "Oh, that's one of those warm Santa Anas." Noah's life was one continued and concentrated preparation for what God had said would come. He worshipped, leaning on his staff; that is, he praised God for what he had done for him, and for the prospect he had of approaching blessedness; and he prayed for those he was leaving behind him, that religion might live in his family when he was gone. No doubt that is true; but, if we want to see this story at its greatest and as the writer to the Hebrews saw it, we must take it at its face value. the matter came to boiling-point. Cavour said that the first essential of a statesman is "the sense of the possible." That this Isaac was his only-begotten son by his wife Sarah, the only one he was to have by her, and the only one that was to be the child and heir of the promise. The Pharaoh had commanded that all of the Hebrew boys be thrown into the Nile River--drowned. Long ago Epicurus said the chief end of life was pleasure. Hence the apostle applies the type distinctly now, as far as the "order" of the priesthood goes. [2.] She offered him a way into Jerusalem by stealth; and then, having gained his confidence, she slew him in his drunken sleep with his own dagger, cut off his head and carried it back to her people. But works cannot produce faith, nor can they substitute for faith. And the apostle would that their work of watching might be done with joy, and not groaning for this would be unprofitable for the saints. In this passage the writer to the Hebrews has done as before. First of all, as has been hinted, that which suggests "testament" is the end of verse 15 "They which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance." Then he shows us others higher than these, by a divine call "and to the church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven." The Christian stands between the cross and the glory of the Lord Jesus. I may not live to see it, death may come to me before that promise becomes a fact; but I am a link in its fulfilment. He, like Abraham, Isaac, and his father, Jacob, was also a man of great faith. 2. Nor is it pleasant to nature. Josephs instructions to his sons proved he trusted God and was convinced God would keep His word about their return to Canaan. He knew that in Isaac his seed was to be called. The meal offering it was called. "You mean you're moving your whole family and you don't know where you are going?" Nothing could be more tender and moving than those words of Isaac: My father, here is the wood, here is the fire; but where is the lamb for the burnt-offering? A true believer is desirous, not only to be in covenant with God, but in communion with the people of God; and is willing to fare as they fare. How did he please God? His mother bade him be quiet and not push questions too far; but already Abraham's thoughts were reaching out to him who is the God of all. There is something very convincing in a life of strict holiness and regard to God; it commends itself to every man's conscience in the sight of God, and they are judged by it. "Now of the things that are being spoken of this is a summary: We have such an high priest, who is set down on [the] right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a minister of the holies, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man." . Men have called God The First Principle, The First Cause, The Creative Energy, The Life Force. I'm looking for my dwelling with God in His eternal kingdom. (1.) 2. It was taken by men who thought not of what they could do but of what God could do for them. He was tried by preferment and power in the court of Pharaoh, and yet his faith held out and carried him through to the last. Isaiah 53 , "numbered with the transgressors in His death." 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