The Baton Of Faith Is Passed To Us
Hebrews 11:32-40
When disaster strikes and it’s time to evacuate, what valuables are you taking with you? One survey done back in 2024 found that the answer to that question often differs depending on your age — and not everyone makes wise decisions. The survey gave respondents just 60 seconds to select items from the standard Federal Emergency Management Agency emergency preparedness checklist, mixed with a few other household items to see what people would choose.
It turns out Americans are more likely to grab their cell phone than their Social Security card during an emergency evacuation. This survey of 2,000 adults revealed that in an emergency situation, Gen Zers – that’s people born between 1997 & 2012) are more likely to grab their laptop (35%) or a pair of shoes (35%) than their prescription medications (30%) if they only have five minutes to pack.
Gen X, that’s my generation, people born between 1965 and 1980, on the other hand, is the least likely to take clothing with them (33%) and would rather save their family photo albums (43%). So we’ll be out there naked but we’ll have our family photo albums. Baby boomers, on the other hand, people born between 1946 and 1964, are more likely to grab their jewelry, including engagement rings and wedding bands, than they are to take water (21%) or food (17%) during an emergency evacuation. So you’ll be dehydrated and starving, but you’ll have all the bling.[i]
When disaster strikes, and you have to grab a few things and evacuate quickly, what are you taking with you? Sadly, the thing we need the most is perhaps the thing we’re most likely to leave behind when life gets hard. I mean, if my faith in Christ isn’t necessarily going to keep me from suffering, from going through hard times and dealing with the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death, then what good is it?
That’s the question we wrestle with when we’re in the doctor’s office, or the emergency room, or the divorce attorney’s office, or the court room. Or when the amount of money going into our checking account isn’t enough to cover what we know needs to come out just so that we can live.
We wrestle with that question even more when the challenges we’re facing come BECAUSE we follow Jesus. When we’re ridiculed. When our friends leave us behind. When our families turn their backs on us. When we miss out on the promotion or are reviled in our community.
When, in some places of the world and perhaps one day here too, it becomes not just emotionally and mentally dangerous to follow Jesus but physically dangerous as well. Followers of Christ who have their possessions taken away, who are intimidated, imprisoned, beaten … and killed for Jesus’ sake. When I’m suffering … and when I’m suffering BECAUSE OF JESUS … am I willing to hold on to faith, regardless of the price, or will I take the safe way out? Go back to a way of life that offers less … resistance. That goes with the flow that cultures and societies create.
As we close out this series-within-a-series on Hebrews 11 – faith’s Hall of Fame, turn with me to Hebrews 11:32-40. Now, you’re probably tired of hearing me say this, but remember, Hebrews isn’t a letter or an epistle, like the letter Paul wrote. It’s actually a written sermon. A sermon written to a beleaguered, discouraged little group of Jewish expatriates, likely in Rome, facing persecution from the increasingly insane Caesar Nero. It was written to encourage them to hang in there with Jesus as the heat got turned up on them. To not turn their backs on their faith now.
And while we do live in a culture and society that is increasingly hostile to actually following Jesus – and that hostility can come from either end of the political spectrum when following Jesus doesn’t align with that side’s agenda – and although we’re all aware of incidents that have happened in churches and houses of worship – it is still, for the most part, physically safe to follow Jesus for us here today.
But the decisions we make when the heat gets turned up on us, just not all the way, will reflect how we’ll respond if and when the heat does get turned up all the way. If we can’t hang on to Jesus in the smaller storms we face now – how will we ever hang on to Jesus when society, or life, really turns up the heat. When we’re really threatened. Or when we’re sitting in the doctor’s office or the attorney’s office or our boss’s office hearing things that are hard to hear.
Will we hang on to Jesus when life gets really tough? Because there will be times when it seems like the cost of following Jesus really outweighs any possible benefit. Hebrews was written to remind us that looks can be, and in this case are, deceiving.
Our pastor starts by reminding us that the 12 or so examples of persevering faith that he, or she, has given us are just the tip of the iceberg. He or she basically says, “I don’t even have time to go into Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets … we’d be here all night.” It isn’t just a few who have lasted. There are too many to cover. Too many to count.
But there’s something we need to notice about this list of names he does bring up, but doesn’t flesh out. Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets. We cover three distinct periods of Israel’s history. The examples that are fleshed out, that we’ve journeyed through over the past several weeks, all come from the ancient history of the world and run up to Israel’s entrance into the promised land. Gideon, Barak, Samson, and Jephthah all come from the period of the Judges. From the entrance into the promised land up to the anointing of Saul, Israel’s first king.
Have you ever read the book of Judges? It was an extremely dark time in Israel’s history. There’s a dark and foreboding passage early in Judges. “And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them” (Jdg. 2:11-12).
So God raised up judges … not judges as we think of them, although they did mediate and decide conflicts between people. But they also led Israel to victory over those who sought to harm them. Men and women who were faithful to God and passionate about the glory of God. With a few notable exceptions.
But every time a leader, a judge, died, we hear this refrain. “And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” (Jdg. 3:7). In the 21 chapters of the book of Judges, that phrase or some version of it appears 7 times. It was a cycle of a return to faithfulness followed by victory and then the inevitable slide away from God and back into immorality. It happened over and over and over again. And then Judges ends with these words: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Jdg. 21:25).
By the way, Judges isn’t arguing for a king. Israel’s first king was a disaster and aside from most of David’s reign and part of Solomon’s reign and the reigns of just a handful of other kings, Israel’s experience with kings was a total disaster. The emphasis is on everyone doing what their own eyes, their own fallen, broken, hearts and minds told them was right, rather than what really was right. Gideon and Barak and most of the other judges were hung onto their faith in God in incredibly dark and dangerous times. Samson and Jephthah were very fallen, broken men who struggled to be faithful, but God used them for the sake of his people anyway.
The time of Israel’s kings, and then the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah weren’t really any better. Most of the kings were horrible people, and those who were faithful, including the prophets, were, like the judges, hanging on to God in the face of some incredibly difficult challenges. Why? Because the sinful human heart, MY sinful human heart, really wants to go its own way, really wants to ignore or outright reject God. We want to do what is right in our own eyes rather than what IS right. What IS righteous. What IS in alignment with the nature and character of God.
So what are the characteristics of the kind of faith that holds on to God through all of the storms of life?
First, it remembers that what is to come really is better than even the best times we have here. Our pastor gives us some tastes of eternal life, glimpses of heaven as God’s faithful held on to him during the dark times they faced. Look at Vv. 33-34.
The first glimpse is of God’s kingdom as a kingdom of perfect, unending justice and righteousness. The reign of Christ is perfect, just, and right wherever it is found.
Our pastor isn’t arguing that the goal is to establish a perfect – or imperfect – Christian nation or country here on earth. They’re saying that those few just and godly judges and kings in Israel’s past and their imperfect but relatively righteous reigns were glimmers, glimpses of the perfectly right and just reign of Christ. Even the best of human governments fall short – far short – of the righteousness and justice of Christ. In his kingdom, no one; not one person; is treated unjustly or unfairly.
Until then, there are glimmers of that perfect righteousness and justice in us, in our hearts and minds, as the Holy Spirit shapes and molds us, transforming us into the image of Christ as we grow in him. The reign of Christ is a reign of perfect righteousness and justice.
The second glimpse is of God’s kingdom bringing about the end of death. Look at V. 35a. Death is so much a part of the world we live in that we can’t even begin to imagine a world without it. But its coming. The two mothers in the Old Testament who received their children back from the dead, one raised by the prophet Elijah and the other by his successor Elisha, were glimmers of a coming kingdom in which death itself dies and exists no longer. Lazarus was a similar glimpse in the gospels, although technically still in Old Testament times because Jesus had not yet been crucified and risen from the dead.
And then Paul, in Colossians 1:18 says, “And he (Jesus) is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.” Firstborn assumes what? That there will be many to follow. He is the firstborn from the dead, and we will follow him in his resurrection.
The reign of Christ is perfectly just and right, and it brings about the death of death. Talk about an eternity that is better than even the best of what we experience here. Remember the definition of faith given in Hebrews 11:1. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for.” Not wished for. Hope is a stronger word than that. Faith is being sure in hope of what is to come.
AND it is “the conviction of things unseen.” The unseen power and strength of God at work in our lives even today.
We cannot always SEE the work of God in our lives in the present. We can look back, and see him strengthening us, sustaining us, empowering us, and transforming us. But we can’t always see it in the present, especially when life is tough and the outlook is dark and stormy and foreboding. But we have this promise, “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).
Because of the assurance in hope of that future that we look forward too, we can live in this present world, with all of it flaws and darkness and brokenness and sin, and also its beauty and it’s peaceful and fulfilling times, with strength and confidence. Strength and confidence that are gifts to us from Christ. Look at Vv. 35b-38.
If you were imprisoned and being tortured daily, and one of the officers in charge came to your cell and said, “We’ll let you go, and restore your job and all of your property. We won’t touch you again … if you’ll just renounce Jesus,” what would you do? Imagine yourself in that position for a moment. What would you do? Would you renounce him outright? Would you think to yourself, “I’ll just pretend to renounce Jesus. I’ll renounce him externally, but internally I’ll still be faithful”? Or would you say, “No, I will not do that”?
That was a very real question for the first recipients of this letter. Nero was emperor in Rome, he was becoming increasingly deranged and erratic, and he really didn’t like Jesus or those who now followed him at all. For us, right now, it’s more of a mental and spiritual exercise – an opportunity for us to take stock. To consider the state of our hearts. Just how deep does our commitment to Christ go? How often do we try set it aside, or put it on the backburner, because we’re uncomfortable, or we want to go our own way, do our own thing?
Now, look at Vv. 39-40. If we are certain of our future hope in Christ and live with conviction on the foundation of God’s work in us and through us and for us, what is the promise that WASN’T received by the people our pastor has mentioned in this great Hall of Faith? Jesus. They lived in the light of God’s future redemption of his people through a messiah, but they never saw the promise come to be.
They were faithful, in the face of extremely harsh obstacles, BEFORE JESUS CAME. We cannot say that. We live in the time after the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. We have seen the fulfillment of God’s promise of a messiah and full salvation, even as we await it’s final consummation in Christ’s return.
We have a foundation, a long-awaited, fulfilled promise, that they did not live to see. So let me ask you again, how deep does our commitment to Christ go? When it goes against the prevailing winds of culture? When it moves away from our core political and social beliefs? When it costs us something real?
Michael Nnadi was a Nigerian, whose face projected a nearly supernatural joy. Michael was one of 270 students studying at the Good Shepherd Seminary in Kaduna State. On the evening of January 8, 2020, his world was upended when an armed gang, disguised in military fatigues, breached the gate of the school. They snagged four seminarians, including Michael, and made their escape.
By the end of the month, three of the four boys had been freed, but not Michael. A few days later he was found dead, his body dumped on the side of a road, massacred by his kidnappers. Michael’s twin brother, Raphael, spoke to the Nigerian press the week he and his brother would have turned 19. He saluted the path of faith and service that his brother had selected. “Michael was so much committed and loved the things of God. … My consolation is that he did not die in vain, pursuing things of the world, but rather he died in the service to God, training for the [ministry].”
It remained a mystery why Michael had been killed while the others had been freed. The same negotiators had been working on behalf of all four abductees. Some Nigerians, as well as local and international authorities, thought that he may have been disposed of as a negotiating tool to increase the ransom for the others, but no one knew for sure—until April 30, 2020.
That’s the day the murderer, Mustapha Mohammed, was interviewed in prison by Nigeria’s newspaper. So why did Mustapha kill Michael? He openly and even brazenly told the press, “He did not allow me any peace; he just kept preaching to me his gospel. I did not like the confidence he displayed [in his faith], and I decided to send him to an early grave.”[ii]
The baton of faith was passed through this chapter from Abel to Enoch to Noah to Abraham and Sarah to Isaac and Jacob and Joseph to Moses to Joshua to Rahab, to Gideon, to David, to the prophets, with countless others in between and after. And now, it has been passed to us. Will we drop it, or refuse to take it up altogether, or will we take it and run boldly and courageously with it? Let’s pray.
[i] Staff, “‘Go bag’ blunders? The surprising items people pack when disaster strikes,” Study Finds (9-10-24)
[ii] Rabbi Abraham Cooper & Rev. Johnnie Moore, “The Mass Murder of Nigerian Christians,” The Tablet (11-20-20)
