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Last updated on
Oct. 5, 2004
Navigating by the Light of the Promise
Delivered August 8, 2004
by Pastor Werner De Jong
Text: Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-16
Main Idea: Living faithful, fruitful lives for God, as we journey through life on earth, requires fixing our eyes on heaven.
Purpose: To challenge the listeners to regulate their entire lives in the light of God's promised kingdom/heaven. To encourage the listeners that placing their hope in God's promise of heaven will transform their present living.
Introduction: One of the reasons we come to church every week is to help one another to live our Christian lives. We need each other's help because the journey is long, and no one can travel it alone, this lifelong journey in which we seek to live faithful, fruitful lives for God. As a local church we voyage together in the same boat as we strive to keep the vows we made in the waters of baptism, vows to die to self and to live for God, vows to follow Christ in daily life, vows to persevere in obedience until the end.
We sail together so we can help each other make progress by keeping our promises. In today's text from Hebrews the author speaks about the one essential principle which is necessary if the community of Christ is to make progress on its common journey. Unless this principle is kept in mind, the church may engage in a whole lot of activity, but it will probably find itself sailing in circles. What is this great, overriding principle which is necessary for the Christian journey? It is a simple truth, but if we fail to keep it in mind, we take a terrible risk of getting lost at sea. The principle is this, and it can be applied to every sort of journey: as you travel, you must never lose sight of your final destination. Why is this so important? Because knowing where you are going provides overall direction and guidance for your journey. If you begin at point A, and you know you will finish at point B, a general direction is laid out for you. Knowing where we are going as God's people will help guide our steps of obedience, it will provide an overall structure and sense of direction for our daily journey.
The Destination of our Journey: What is the final destination of the church? To where is our ship sailing? Hebrews reminds us that we don't belong to this world, that we are merely pilgrims here, pilgrims who are bound for the kingdom of God. God's promise to the church is that one day all the members of Christ's body will be in heaven with him. That is our true home, and keeping this destination in mind will provide a matchless source of encouragement for us. It will remind us that our lives are not static, but that we are going somewhere, somewhere wonderful. When the journey feels long, when we grow tired or discouraged, we can say to one another, "Don't give up, let's keep travelling this way of obedience, for a land of beauty and peace is waiting for us. The light of that land is the loving presence of God, there we will see our Lord face to face, there will be no pain or sorrow there, but endless joy and wonderful opportunities to use our gifts to serve and worship God."
In chapter 10 of Hebrews the author challenged his readers to remind themselves of this truth. Let me read verse 25: "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another–and all the more as you see the Day approaching." For our author, "the approaching day," the day of Christ's return, provided a wonderful basis of encouragement, the day when Jesus would return and make his kingdom complete. Hebrews addresses a community facing persecution, a community which would find it very difficult to stick with the Christian journey.
Navigating by the Light of the Promise: Therefore the author prods them to encourage one another with the thought of Christ's return, in order to sustain them with hope on their journey. If they neglected meeting together, they couldn't keep God's promise fresh. But as they met and encouraged one another they could maintain an unswerving loyalty to Christ. Don't forget where you are going, they said to one another, don't forget what life is all about–these are the things we also need to say to each other. It is often said that if you don't know where you come from, how can you know who you are? But it can equally well be said, if you don't know where you are going, how can you know who you are? As Christians we can know where we are going, we are going to be with God, and therefore we know that we are God's children. We know where the journey ends, for God's word promises it to us over and over again. Because the promise comes from God, we can safely navigate the course of our entire lives around it.
Before the days of satellites and global positioning systems, sailors used to navigate by the light of the stars. Some still do. For many centuries one star in particular was important–the North Star. Because it lies almost directly over the North Pole, it hardly wavers in the skies of the northern hemisphere. Sailors would therefore chart their course and set sail and record their progress all in reference to this single star. This was especially important for long journeys when oceans were crossed and the coast and familiar landmarks were left behind. In the same way, we as God's people can navigate by the light of God's promise. For God never wavers once he has given his word. His promise of heaven and the fulfilment of the kingdom is the sure reference point on our journey through life. We need to refer to it again and again, to keep us on track. The journey is long, and we are sometimes asked to leave familiar ways behind, but we will safely arrive if we continually steer our ship in the light of God's promise.
The Necessity of Faith: One concern may arise when we talk like this. If we are going to orient our entire lives around the promise of a land we have never seen, if we are going to allow that promise to guide our daily decisions and to inform our actions, then we want to be sure that the promised land is really there. We don't want to be like the thirsty, weary travellers in the desert who allow themselves to be guided by the sight of a lovely oasis, shimmering like a sunlit lake in the distance, and who spend all their strength to get there, only to discover with shattering disappointment that it was just a mirage. What proof do we have that heaven is real? What proof is there that God will usher in an eternal reign of peace and eternal goodness like he promised, and that we will inherit this kingdom and joyfully reign with Christ forever?
Questions like that were vital for the original readers of Hebrews, as they were facing rejection from their former friends and family members because of their faith, and persecution as well. Why carry on with a life of obedience to Jesus Christ, in the face of suffering, if there was no proof that they would one day be rewarded for their efforts? Why not quit the journey and revert to their old way of living and live like everyone around them? We may ask similar questions: Why persist in the Christian journey when it means forsaking the attraction of money and pleasure and power that so many other people seek? Why give sacrificially of my hard-earned money to build up the church and to serve the poor when others spend it on themselves? Why strive for holiness when others seek pleasure instead? Why reject status and become a servant of my neighbours when I can use my skills to gain influence and power and become a somebody in the eyes of others? If there is no eternal kingdom or reign of God where values like generosity, service and humility flourish, then why not eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die? But what if the kingdom truly is coming? What if God's eternal realm will one day break into our temporary realm and make all things new, and bring healing and joy and glory? What if one day God will reverse the fortunes of people, so that those who seek personal gain now will lose it all, and those who lay down their lives for others will inherit the kingdom? What if the vision of the kingdom truly is the end-point of history? And so we naturally want to be sure that the promised land is really there. Is there any proof? No, not the kind of proof that will convince scientists, for we are talking about matters yet to come. But there is a promise, and for us everything boils down to the question: Do we believe the promise? Everything hinges on that question. And of course whether or not we believe the promise depends whether or not we trust the one who made it.
For the author of Hebrews, that is the all-important question. God's people do not grasp his promises on the basis of proof, but on the basis of faith. Hebrews chapter 11, our main text for today, opens with the classic definition of faith that has come to be associated with this letter: "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for" (Heb. 11:1-2, NIV). The rest of chapter 11 then lists a string of Old Testament characters who exercised just such a faith. They took God at his word and directed their lives accordingly. They regulated the whole course of their lives in light of the promises God made to them. Each person's action was guided by a promise concerning the future at a time when it was impossible to see the outcome. That, says the author of Hebrews, is the kind of faith that pleases God and which sustains his people. "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." In other words, faith is the ability to take God at his word and to anticipate the final outcome of what we believe. Just as with our physical eyes we are able to see the visible world, so with eyes of faith we are able to see the invisible world. This faith is not just a matter of belief. Rather, the conviction of God's promised future expresses itself in our actions today. That is how we know we have faith, when our belief in God's promises affects the way we live in the present.
The Example of Abraham: The classic example of a person having such faith in the Bible is Abraham. His story is highlighted in today's lectionary reading from Hebrews 11, beginning at verse 8, which reads like this: "By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going." All Abraham had to go on was the promise of God, the promise of a wonderful new land which would provide a home for the many descendants which God had also promised him. But in order to receive this new land, Abraham had to set out on a journey. For God asked him to leave behind his old life, including his home and his people and all that was familiar to him, and to make a pilgrimage to an unknown, distant land.
In order to receive the promise, Abraham needed to obey God. He needed to take the risk that there really was a promised land, and that God really would give him descendants, even though he was a very old man. And Abraham did it. He staked everything on the certainty of the promise. He chose to walk by faith, and not by sight. And notice how his faith in the promise affected his life in the present. The promise was his North Star and he navigated the rest of his life in its light.
Abraham's faith was not only expressed in his initial willingness to undertake the journey. The promise of a land for his descendants regulated his behaviour throughout his entire life. For example, once Abraham arrived in Canaan, he lived there, not as a landowner, but as a stranger. Listen again to Hebrews: "By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise" (11:9, NIV). Abraham, Isaac and Jacob never lived to see the day when their descendants would actually come to possess the promised land as their own. For their entire lives, the promised land always belonged to someone else. They lived there as nomads, pitching their tents first here and then there. They could not settle down, for the land was not their own. Nonetheless, they didn't return back to Ur, back to Abraham's original home. As tempting as it would be to go back to the familiarity and certainty of the old way of life, they chose to stay put because they continued to place their faith in God's promise. They continued to believe that one day their descendants would in fact own this land, that God would one day completely fulfill his promise. In fact, so strongly did they believe, writes Hebrews, that they were "still living by faith when they died" (v. 13). Until the end of their lives their faith regulated their behaviour. . The vantage point of history lets us know that their faith was not in vain, for their descendants did come into full possession of the land, when Moses and Joshua led the people of Israel out of Egypt and into the land of promise.
Application: Abraham's example teaches us a profound truth about the life of faith as we journey toward our promised home, toward the complete fulfilment of God's promised kingdom. For Abraham teaches us that a promise can be enough to sustain a person for a lifetime. If the promise has a grand enough vision, and if the one who promised it is true, it can provide us with a reference point around which we can orient our entire lives. We don't have to drift through life feeling lost and aimless. We don't have to succumb to the contemporary plague of living scattered lives, of being pulled in this direction and that, and not knowing which way to go. For the reality of God's promise sets his church on a journey. We are a pilgrim people called to walk through this world with a constant eye on our true home. We are bound for the Kingdom of God.
Now it is sometimes said that if Christians focus too much on the promise of heaven they will become too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use. But the exact opposite is true, for as Abraham's example demonstrates, hope in God's promise transforms present living. The principle is this: When we live as a people of the promise, we live as people full of hope. And it is hope that gives us strength and energy to serve others and obey God. Hebrews 12 opens with the supreme example of this principle, when it speaks of Jesus, "the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God" (v.2, NRSV). Jesus our Lord kept his mind set on the joy that awaited him at the end of his journey on earth, even though he knew that his journey would involve terrible suffering. And notice how it was his very hope which sustained him, and enabled him to be of infinite earthly good. No one has ever lived a more useful life on earth than Jesus, and no one has ever fixed their gaze on the joy of God's promise more than Jesus.
Therefore, as Alister McGrath has written, "we need to lock our hopes onto the future rather than allow them to become too heavily entangled with the temporary realities of this fading world" (The Journey, p. 127).
Printed on today's bulletin cover is a saying of Jesus: "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Jesus spoke these words immediately after saying, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, which are only temporary and subject to decay, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven." If we believe the promise of heaven, we will be motivated to obey Jesus' command. If we believe that this life is temporary and that we have an eternal home, we won't be seduced by the temporary treasures of this world. Rather, we will obey Jesus by not seeking them. We will not be caught up in the pursuit of money and pleasure and power and prestige. To the contrary, we will obey Jesus by seeking the treasures of the kingdom, treasures like peace and justice and healing and love and forgiveness. All of history is headed to its consummation in God's kingdom, and believing that now will help us line up our values accordingly.
But the flip-side is this. If we don't allow God's heavenly promise to be our reference point, by default we will regulate our lives around worldly values. Many churchgoers, perhaps without realizing it, have failed to allow the hope of glory to grip them and to mould their thinking. As a consequence, they have taken on board worldly values instead. That is abundantly evident in the western church, where there is more money and free time available than anywhere else. Because of this there is no harder place to be a committed Christian, for the world seems to hold so many wonderful attractions. It presents us with an alternate vision to the promise of God. Rather than waiting for the fulfilment of God's promise, it holds out the promise of instant gratification. It is therefore so tempting and easy for us to adopt the ways of our culture and to orient our lives around money, and our free time around entertainment. For we don't have to wait to enjoy these pleasures. But as soon as we do that, as soon as we are seduced by the things this world has to offer, we take our eyes off of our journey, and we make this world our home. Nothing is deadlier to true Christian faith than that. People who are too earthly minded are not any heavenly use. Living faithful, fruitful lives for God, as we journey through life on earth, requires fixing our eyes steadfastly on heaven.
The crying need of the hour in the western church is therefore that of an alternate vision, a vision so beautiful and glorious and attractive that the light this world has to offer will be seen for what it is–dim and fading. But the light of God's kingdom is eternal. It holds out the vision and sure hope of healing for the nations, of peace and well-being for all who embrace it, of a reversal of fortune for the poor and the oppressed, and of an indescribable and glorious joy that never ends, as we live eternally in the full presence of our loving God. If we truly want to be of lifelong service to God and make our lives count for something, and if we want to keep our baptismal promise to follow Christ and to persevere to the end, then we need to dare to imagine what the fullness of God's kingdom will mean. We need to get our hopes us, for we impoverish our faith terribly if we do not allow our hearts and minds to anticipate the wonder of entering the kingdom. For such activity is essential if we are to gain the right perspective on where we are, and keep on going.
Conclusion: In conclusion, therefore, let us allow ourselves to dwell on our future destiny. Not just as individuals, but as a church. For as brothers and sisters we voyage in the same boat. And we will sail the best when we dream the same dreams, and support each other along the way. So like Abraham and his family let us embrace the adventure of faith, and hoist our sails for the promised land, navigating by the light of the promise. As people bound for the kingdom of God, let us work even now to bring forth the kingdom. The journey will not always be smooth sailing, storms will at times arise and threaten us, but we can be sure of this one thing: the God who has promised us the kingdom is faithful and true. If we answer his call, he will see us safely through to journey's end. Amen.