Hebrews Series:Resurrection trumps Religion

Part 7: Faith & the End Game

Where we began…

• A literary approach to Hebrews (audience/context)• Problem Hebrews is addressing?

“Judaising of the faith”• Centrality of Temple/ritual – promise had

hardened into religion…

We also began with modern issues that are similar to the First century Jewish issues…

We also began with modern issues…

‘Religion’ as smokescreen to God“How can Christ become the Lord of the religionless as well? If religion is only a garment of Christianity – then what is religionless Christianity? ”

“How do we speak in a ‘secular’ way about God? In what way are we… not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view as specially favoured, but rather as belonging to the world? In that case, Christ is no longer an object of religion but something quite different, really the LORD of the world”

Where does Hebrews 11 fit into this story?

Replaces ‘law’ as modus operandi of OT – with Faith

Rewrites the entire OT as a progression of faith not the development of law/religionPositions Abraham as the archetype not Moses…

Context of faith was life/experiences not rituals

4 By faith Abel brought God a better offering ….5 By faith Enoch was taken from this life, 7 By faith Noah built an ark to save his family. 8 By faith Abraham, migrated, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob,. 10 . 11

And by faith even Sarah, was enabled to bear childrenBy faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. 20 By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.21 By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped22 By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones.23 By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, 24 By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25 He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26

27 By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. 28 By faith he kept the Passover and the application of blood, By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days.31 By faith the prostitute Rahab, welcomed the spies, d]

32 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again.

Context of faith was life/experiences not rituals

Metaphysics Interiority

“Adding God, as reality, to reality”

Profane/visible

Sacred

“God” is relegated outside the world & public sphere of life

“God” is retained in the sphere of personal, intimate, private life

God limited to boundaries of human experience

“The religious man searches furiously to reserve a place for God and today this place is at the boundaries”

“Faith was a way of reading life, not a religious piety”

Faith Faith

Goal of faith was “a city whose builder and maker is God”

• Ie life has a meaning in its narrative that is transcendent• Beginning and end frames all meaning…

Creation Consummation

Redemption

“In my beginning is my end…” TS Eliot East Coker Four Quartets

The dynamics of faith

• Not a static attribute that some people have and others don’t - it is a verb not a noun

• Result of a conversation between God and humanity…

• On God’s side “Promise” initiates the cycle – a speech act – not “command” (which would initiate obedience/compliance)

• On our side “Believe that he is, and he rewards those who earnestly seek him”

• Faith is not intellectual assent to existence of God… • It is response to a word from God – ie a belief he intends good for me and us

and the planet… (the Rewarder)• Faith is optimistic

So you can work on faith – it grows - and this is our responsibility

Vision was the driver of faith

• Begins in the mind – and in a vision and imagination – led to interpretation of events/situations – ie seeing God in the narrative of life. Life is not an accident, but a providence with a purpose.

• But then evidenced in actions that were decisive but went against the grain of their times…

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. 9 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. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11 And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she[b] considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Faith is not a religious quality

• False opposition between ‘faith and reason’• Assumes faith is religious and reason is secular…

• Faith is not a religious construct, but a critical quality in human endeavour and success• The great innovators are led by faith not evidence… the ‘evidence’ is actually the vision in their

mind of what is possible • Faith is optimism and hope that life is good and meaningful – think Turnbull and his narrative

of hope

The climax of chapter 11 - Jesus and faith

• “let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us… fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith”

• ‘Faith’ not ‘our faith’… makes it a general quality not an exclusive quality – he is doing this on behalf of all humanity and all hope.

• What does this mean? Pioneer & Perfecter• Climax of all the stories in Hebrews 11

• “For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising its shame.”

• ‘Joy’ is the city whose builder and maker is God. • He was the ultimate believer in meaning of life – the beginning and end

But faith works in a contested space

• “Chastisement” is reframed here … • Not ‘punishment’ for wrong doing but contested environment• This environment can be hostile to faith & challenge to faith

• Psalm 74 captures this ‘positive’ meaning of ‘chastisement’ – seeing God’s sovereign hand behind ‘chastisement’ not as a punishment for sins but as vehicle of his rule.

O God, why have you rejected us forever? Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture?2 Remember the nation you purchased long ago, the people of your inheritance, whom you redeemed— Mount Zion, where you dwelt.3 Turn your steps toward these everlasting ruins,all this destruction the enemy has brought on the sanctuary.4 Your foes roared in the place where you met with us - they set up their standards as signs.5 They behaved like men wielding axes to cut through a thicket of trees.6 They smashed all the carved paneling with their axes and hatchets.7 They burned your sanctuary to the ground; they defiled the dwelling place of your Name.8 They said in their hearts, “We will crush them completely!” They burned every place where God was worshiped in the land.9 We are given no signs from God; no prophets are left and none of us knows how long this will be.

How long will the enemy mock you, God? Will the foe revile your name forever?11 Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand? Take it from the folds of your garment and destroy them!12 But God is my King from long ago; he brings salvation on the earth.

It was you who split open the sea by your power; you broke the heads of the monster in the waters.14 It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan and gave it as food to the creatures of the desert.15 It was you who opened up springs and streams; you dried up the ever-flowing rivers.16 The day is yours, and yours also the night; you established the sun and moon.17 It was you who set all the boundaries of the earth; you made both summer and winter.

The outcome of contest is growth

• Word of encouragement as ‘father addresses his son’• “Endure hardship as discipline’ is a key phrase… see God’s hand behind

hardship• To what end? Not punishment, not arbitrary sadism on God’s behalf (“as

flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods – they kill us for their sport”)

• ‘In order that we may share his holiness…’ • It produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those trained by it.

This ‘holiness’ is not the purifying of sins – excoriating imperfections like a scrubbing brush to get rid of stains,

It is participating in the kingdom-secrets of how God will bring salvation to the earth and the nature of his rule in the created order…

The final act – the coming of the city of God, order in the cosmos at last!

• You have not come to a mountain of darkness, gloom and storm… • Ie contested space will end, contest is ephemeral not eternal

• You have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem

• You have come to the joyful assembly

Therefore since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful and so worship God acceptably with

reverence and awe

The Chiastic Architecture The Son was always

there, always implied in the old

journey So his purpose is

unchanging & continuous

It is in fact the same story

This is the new order inaugurated by the resurrection

Era of the spirit working in hearts

and mindsBut a public reality

(City) is being instituted in heaven

The Chiastic Architecture