Hebrews 11:13-16 "Looking For a City" 2

Introduction:

It is believed that Hebrews is written to Jewish Christians of the dispersion. The dispersion is the term that is referring to a time in the first century when Christians had to flee Israel due to religious persecution.

The hope of covenant fulfillment being rooted in a physical land would appear to be a pipe dream for these early Jewish Christians.

But the argument from Hebrews that is put before them is a vision and perspective that is Christocentric. It is all about Christ and how He fulfills the covenant promises of God to His people.

We saw last Sunday that even Abraham understood some of these very implications. The promises were all pointing to a future time and a future place.

In our text this morning we see that this understanding is what contextualizes the status of God’s Covenant People on the earth. Look at verses 13-14*

I. The Status of God’s Covenant People (13-14).

“These all died in faith” is a reference to those Old Testament saints that Hebrews 11 has been talking about. Abraham and Sarah but also Isaac and Jacob.

They never received what God had promised them when it came to a title deed to the land that was promised. But God ratified His promise to them all at various times and they believed that God would deliver on His promise.

It was obvious that they were aliens in the land because they spent much of their time traveling in it. They lived as foreigners but they never owned the land. You see the land had inhabitants and owners in it already.

They knew they were strangers and exiles and they spoke that way of themselves.

When Abraham sought a tomb for Sarah to be buried he said to the Hittite’s, “I am a sojourner and foreigner among you” (Genesis 23:4).

When Jacob went to be with Joseph in Egypt, he went before Pharoah. Pharoah asked Jacob, “How many are the days of the years of your life?”

Jacob replied in Genesis 47:9. “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning.”

And we know that Jacob lived in Egypt for the rest of his earthly life. But he was buried in that same tomb that Abraham was buried in. They were sojourners or pilgrims in the land.

Hebrews refers to them as strangers and exiles on the earth. And they spoke this way because they were looking for a homeland and the nature of this homeland was reflected in their desire. Look back to Hebrews 11:15-16

II. The Desire of God’s Covenant People (15-16).

So if it was a piece of real estate that they were ultimately thinking of as a homeland they could have easily returned to it. This is the argument of verse 15.

God could have easily brought them back into the land and each of them could have lived their earthly lives in covenant fulfillment of God’s promises.

But that is not what they were ultimately looking to. They were looking to something better. They desired something more glorious.

Read their story, tune into our Genesis YouTube study and you will find out that life was difficult for them. They lived in a dysfunctional world and experience dysfunctional relationships and had dysfunctional families.

I read these stories and it makes me feel like me and my family are very normal.

But even so, all of us still long to be rid of our fallen nature and the difficulties of a fallen world. We all experience things that we know shouldn’t be in this world.

Whether it be in our lives or in the world we live in.

It is part of the Christian worldview to want to make this world a better place and to promote godliness in the world and in our life experiences.

Everything we do in promotion of the Kingdom of God in the world is reflecting that we know there is something better than the status quo.

This world in it’s current context could never bring about the ultimate fulfillment of whats coming. There will have to be a significant change that will take place.

We know this and so did the saints of old. They knew there was a restoration that was coming and where communion with God would be uninhibited.

A place and time where the barriers would be removed. God’s blessing would flow like a river with anything holding it back. The heavenly country with a city who’s maker and builder is God.

And Hebrews speaks of such people by describing them as those of whom: “God is not ashamed to be their God” and it shows in all that He has prepared for them in the New Jerusalem.

They are a people who are in love with Him and they long to be with Him. All the experiential blessing they encounter in this world just make them more hungry to be with Him.

Like an appetizer before the meal is to just stir the appetite for the main course. I have found that if I indulge in the appetizer it will leave me with no desire for the main main course. (Like Texas Roadhouse)

God doesn’t give the whole meal to us now Christian we just get the appetizer and we are so prone to try to make it the main course but I am here to tell you it is not.

The main course is coming though.

Conclusion:

But Christian are you hungry for it? Or are you content with eating the appetizer rooted in the here and now instead of living life through the eyes of faith by looking ahead for what is coming?

We have to keep the eternal focus in the good times and the bad times in life if we are going to stay hungry for what is coming.

C.S Lewis said it this way: “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”)

Christian I want to hunger more for eternity to the point that even when things are good in life I still desire to be with God more than anything.

The stuff of the world gets in the way. Confess and receive His grace today.

Unbeliever this is not all there is. There is more to come. Believe the gospel. Lets Pray!