Hebrews 11:8-12 "Looking For a City" #1

Introduction

You may remember that when we began talking about the end times that I referenced Augustine who wrote his famous book: City of God.

This is where he parallels and contrast the city of man being represented in Scripture as the ancient city of Babylon; with the City of God being represented as Jerusalem.

The city of man is destroyed but the City of God is established for eternity in a new heavens and new earth.

One only has to go back to Genesis 11 and Genesis 12 to see the foundation of that contrast.

The tower of Babel is the beginning of man’s attempt to establish his own city in chapter 11.

The City of God has its beginning in the covenant promises that God made to Abraham the man of faith.

Our text this morning explains this covenant fulfillment in light of what these promises were actually pointing to.

You may remember how I have tried to remind us all of how our focus needs to be on eternity and our future inheritance. I didn’t just make it up as a new way of living the Christian life. Abraham lived this way as well. Look at your text to verses 8-10*

I. The Promised City (8-10).

If you have been following our Genesis study on our YouTube channel this will be review for you.

Abraham was originally called out by God to go to the land that God said that He would show Abraham. God also promised to give him that land (8).

Abraham believed God and he left Haran and followed by faith the Lord’s instructions not knowing where he was going.

This is the original GPS. God’s providential sovereignty directing Abraham where to go. And he lived as a foreigner in the land that God said He would give to him.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all lived in tents like Nomads and all were given the same promise. But they lived as foreigners in the land.

Abraham only owned one piece of land when He died and it was the tomb in which he and Sarah were buried and that was all.

Verse 10 tells us that Abraham was looking forward to a city that was designed and built by God.

The land that Abraham lived in when he was on earth was not Abraham’s primary focus. That was all the temporal and the experiential that was pointing him to something much greater and eternal in nature.

There are those Christians in our day who still put the focus of the current physical land of Israel as the hope of the inheritance of the Jewish people.

Abraham was not looking to that but to something greater. It wasn’t land in the general sense but a city built by God. The same city that we saw coming down out of heaven as a bride dressed for her husband in Revelation.

This city is the New Jerusalem that will be the eternal habitation of God’s people dwelling with Him as their God.

Abraham was on a journey of faith in this world and the fulfillment of those land promises never came to pass even though God promised him it would all be his one day.

But how does a dead man get to own land as his inheritance that is far as the eye can see in all directions. Especially when Romans 4:13 tells us that the promise really had global implications.

And when he dies all he holds the deed to is a tomb. If Abraham’s hope of covenant fulfillment was rooted in the temporal then God’s promises were a colossal failure.

Our dispensational brothers and sisters believe that God has to fulfill the land promises to Abraham by giving the physical land of Israel to the Jewish people in this dispensation (dispensation meaning period of time).

So their focus is currently on the physical land and the necessity of the Jewish people having it in order to fulfill the land promises to Abraham.

I believe it does belong to them because God gave it to them as a type or a metaphorical picture of something greater and far more glorious. Which is the city that Abraham himself looked forward to. And it is a city that will be full of his descendants. That was part of the promise too. Look at verses 11-12:

II. The Promised Descendants (11-12).

Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90 when Isaac was born. Sarah received power to conceive. God opened up her womb because she was barren and had had no children. At around 89 years of age, she overheard the Lord tell Abraham that about a year later she would give birth to a son.

She knew it would have to be a miracle of the Lord because she was barren.

God had told Abraham that through that offspring Abraham would have descendants numbering the stars in the heavens and the grains of sand on the seashore.

Boy that would be a lot of presents to buy around Christmas time wouldn’t it?

All from one man and him as good as dead in relation to his wife, all those people coming into existence.

Not only Hebrews but Galatians chapters 3-4 and Romans 4 fill us in on the spiritual implications of this language from the Abrahamic covenant. It is there where we learn just who these descendants are. They are the descendants of Abraham by faith from among the Jews as well as the Gentiles.

They are the elect of God for all time in history who were justified by faith in God’s promises that would ultimately find their fulfillment in Christ. From all the nations of the world a people redeemed by God, and for God, through Jesus Christ and His finished work on the Cross.

Abraham was good as dead but God made him alive again. So that he could have a seed to make biological heirs.

So it is that Christ was good as dead but God made Him alive again to be the seed in order to have spiritual heirs as numerous as the stars in the heavens and the sands on the shores.

Christian, Abraham’s faith saw beyond the limitations of a fallen world and he didn’t hope in some kind of temporal fulfillment but in what God would do in eternity. That is what living by faith is.

It is when the security of your well-being is rooted ultimately in God and in His fidelity to His covenant promises fulfilled through Jesus Christ.

And as we have seen that even though there may be temporal blessings in this physical world the ultimate fulfillment is in eternity.

The hope of eternity helps keep our focus on Christ even in the midst of the trials of this world. For we are a redeemed people and we were made for God and to be with Him. For this purpose He redeemed us.

The Abrahamic covenant fulfilled in Christ was laid down for this purpose. The closer we are to God the more alive we feel because we are more in tune with why we exist in the first place.

Being redeemed is not just a heaven versus hell scenario but it defines us in context to our relationship to God as His covenant people.

And it puts us in covenant relationship to one another as descendants of Abraham which in turn makes us equal heirs in Christ Jesus for all eternity. We have an eternal home in that new city.

The New City Catechism is a modern reformed catechism that was put out by the Gospel Coalition. Question #52 ask the question: What hope does everlasting life hold for us?

The Answer: It reminds us that this present fallen world is not all there is; soon we will live with and enjoy God forever in the new city, in the new heaven and the new earth, where we will be fully and forever freed from all sin and will inhabit renewed, resurrection bodies in a renewed, restored creation.

Conclusion:

Unbeliever where is your hope?

I had a good friend when I was in New Jersey who was a CEO of a local high end retirement community. We developed a friendship through one of his department heads because that department head was an elder in the church I was pastoring.

I was introduced to the CEO who eventually asked if he could take me to lunch. He would set and bite his nails while I ate and preached with my mouth full.

“I sure hope what you are saying is not true.”

That is the great dilemma of the human condition. Hope is inevitable everyone banks on hope in some form.

But the Bible tells us that Hope for eternal life is only found in Jesus Christ. You need a savior. Believe the gospel by faith alone in Christ alone.

Believer our Hope is not wishful thinking based upon a subjective idea that we create in our own heads. But it is undergirded with the covenant promises of God. They have been lived out as recorded in the Scriptures in the lives of people like Abraham and fulfilled in the person and work of Christ.

Our Hope has an Anchor that will never fail. We look to Christ alone and trust in His provision of grace to us.

We don’t have to chew our nails to the bone in the face of eternity we know it is all true. All our eggs are in one basket.

Let’s Pray!