Faith: Unseen Realities

Hebrews 10:32-11:40 I want to invite you to join my club. If you join, life will be a struggle. You may not get to keep anything that’s yours right now. You will be insulted, mistreated, misunderstood, and misrepresented. You will be asked to believe and learn to know a person you cannot see. You will be asked to live a life of humility, generosity, sacrifice, and affliction. You will give up your rights as you think of them. And there is a great reward. This reward is the praise of the Person in whom you believe, but cannot see. This reward will not come to you during your life on earth. Would you sign up? Why would anyone? Seen from a certain perspective, the invitation to follow Jesus is a big stretch. This is where our passage comes in. Today, we’ll see that faith in Jesus is the ability to see the reality of the unseen homeland God is preparing for believers in a way that gives us compassion, joy, confidence, and endurance.

Enlightenment, Confidence, Endurance, Reward

In Hebrews 10:32-39, the writer describes his readers as people who have been enlightened. Doesn’t that sound nice? What does it mean? The writer is contrasting these people who have been enlightened with the passage just before, about people who have received a knowledge of the truth of the gospel but go on living in their sin. The enlightened are those who have seen Jesus for who he is and believe in Him.

We don’t see a world as it should be. We were created in God’s image, and we have traded that glory for sin and shame. But Jesus restores us as our high priest, who has offered the perfect sacrifice for sin so that we can draw near to God and be made complete, whole, purified in our conscience.

This changes our perspective on everything. If I can be made complete in Christ, I do not need the things of this world to become complete. Take them if you wish. Take my affluence, my reputation, my comfort, my liberties, my property, even my life in this body. I don’t need it.

In verses 32, we find out that these people, once enlightened to the truth of Jesus, endured hard struggle with sufferings, they were insulted and mistreated. They grew in their compassion for others who had lost their liberty and were willing to lose theirs. They even “joyfully accepted the plundering of [their] property (verse 34).” Truthfully, how many people do you know like this? Is it possible we need to see Jesus with fresh vision?

This is counter-cultural. It is anti-American. People like this are powerful and dangerous to the status quo. They cannot be manipulated or controlled. They are fearless, generous, compassionate, and confident.

These believers accepted all this hardship and loss because they “knew that [they] had a better possession and an abiding one (verse 34)”. What is that? We find out in the passage that follows. The writer will speak of a great reward that is promised to those that endure in confidence and faith in Jesus and seek God and do His will. Don’t give up your faith-empowered obedience. What is the reward?

Jesus Christ. In verse 37, the first promise is the coming of the “coming one”. This is a paraphrase of the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, the promise that the suffering of God’s people in exile would end when Messiah comes. Their hope was not in their own ability to make the world better or escape trouble. Their hope was in the Messiah who would restore the kingdom of God and reward the righteous. There is a reward for those who live by faith in Messiah, who look forward to His coming. Is the presence of Jesus, the chance to see Him face-to-face, enough of a reward for you? Wait, there’s more

The second reward our passage mentions is Your Soul. When Jesus comes, He will judge humanity. He will destroy the faithless and save the faithful. Those who have looked forward to His coming in faith will “preserve their souls (verse 39)”. This seems a little troubling. It’s one thing to lose our bodies, as long as there is life on the other side of the grave. But is it possible to lose our soul too? This is a longer sermon for another time, but for now, let’s remember how Jesus warned us about the same thing.

Matthew 16:24–27 (ESV)

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.

When your soul finds satisfaction in things we gain in this world: property, our accomplishments, the applause of others, what happens when all these are lost over time? Your soul will pass into the next world forever as a dissatisfied person, disconnected from all pleasure. You’ve lost everything. If your soul has found its satisfaction in doing the will of God by faith in the finished work of Jesus, when Jesus returns, your soul will be fully satisfied. Jesus said He will repay you according to what you have done. If you have done the will of God (Hebrews 10:36), your soul, filled with the pleasure of God, will be enlarged and preserved. Which brings us to the next reward.

3. Commendation. The writer of Hebrews begins talking about our reward in chapter 11 using the word “commendation”. Why is this a reward? Words seem like insignificant things. It has everything to do with the nature of faith, and the nature of words.

Faith and God’s Words

What is faith? Many of us have memorized Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith is the ability to see as real and substantial things that cannot be seen in the present.

The world around us takes the things that are seen as real. Things that can be touched, tasted, heard, can be measured scientifically. Things that cannot be measured in this way are taken to be of less value. But God does everything inside out from the way we do things. Let me give you some examples.

When we receive some visible reward that the world uses to measure success and satisfaction, we also derive a reward in our soul from that. So, if my parents give me a dollar for a good grade in school, I receive affirmation in my soul. If I inherit property, I receive greater security in my soul. If you were to prepare a meal for me, it would feed my body, but it would also feed my soul with your love and acceptance. Most people will see the dollar, the property, and the meal as the substantial thing, the real thing, and the result in my soul as the insubstantial or less-than-real. It’s unseen and can’t be measured scientifically.

But God works from the inside out. So, in His reality, the affirmation, the security, the love and acceptance are the real substantial things. They are the things that give form and shape to your soul in this life and in the next.

Faith is the quality of living according to the truth that the unseen things in this world will become seen and substantial in the next. God can use invisible things to form things that are seen in the physical world. The writer of Hebrews points out that this is what God did in the creation of the universe (11:3). Faith helps us understand this reality.

The gospel teaches us that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God (1 Corinthians 1:27-29).”

So, why is commendation from God a reward? God’s words, which are unseen, give form to everything that is seen, measured, touched, and tasted. So, a commendation from God holds promise to be more substantial to me than any physical reward (houses, land, money, food). Is it better to have one bottle of spring water (or a hundred), or to dwell by the spring? Apparently, the faith-filled saints of old knew this better than we do today. A good word from God was a greater reward, a greater inheritance in their eyes than gifts, land, applause, political position, and comfort. For Abraham, a promise from God was worth living in tents as a temporary resident in the land of promise, for “he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God (11:10).” For Moses, looking forward to the reward was worth giving up pleasure and treasure and choosing to be mistreated with the people of God, bearing the reproach of Christ (11:25-26).

Doing the will of God by faith in Jesus is not easy. It requires sacrifice and discipline. Denying yourself, taking up your cross, and following Jesus by faith is not a comfortable life. You will never be at home in this world. But your soul is formed through affliction. Believing the fact that you, in your sin, are hopelessly lost and incomplete, and only Jesus can save you and sanctify you is not an easy thing to accept. But the righteous will live by faith. Faith is the ability to see the distant promises of God as present realities. We “greet them from afar” (11:13).

The promise is that we see Jesus face to face one day, we will be greeted with a commendation, “Well done. I am pleased with you. Enter your rest.” And these words will become for us a dwelling place, a place to belong, a homeland, a better country than we have ever known, and a city inhabited by all those who have looked forward to this in faith.

God forms worlds with His words. God’s final word to us is Jesus. When He wanted us to know the reality of His love, righteousness, grace, restoration, He spoke a final word that became flesh. In His flesh, Jesus made the promises of God a reality. And He has fulfilled the hope of resurrection for all those who have believed. How do we become the kind of people who can joyfully accept our property being taken away? How do we become the kind of people who are fearless and filled with hope in a world ruled by fear and uncertainty? Can we in fact, become people “of whom the world is not worthy (11:38)”? What kind of an impact would we have if we were this kind of people? It comes be seeing the presence a greater reward than anything this world has to offer.

Discussion Questions

What is the best reward you have ever received?

What are ways this world rewards successful people? What values and hopes does this system form in people’s souls?

What does our passage say about people who have been enlightened by the truth of the gospel of Jesus? How does they differ from people living in the system our world uses?

What do we learn about God in this passage? What kind of reward does He give those who seek Him?

How would you define faith in your own words?

What is the “better possession and an abiding one” (10:34) that we have? How does it make any difference to our lives right now?