Hebrews Chapter Eleven, Seeking A Better Country

 

Hebrews 11:16 But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

 

In the midst of discussing Abraham and Sarah with his Hebrew Christian audience, the author pauses to discuss how the patriarchs died in faith. The beginning of verse 16 contrasts with the opportunity each had in verse 15 of returning from whence they came. They rejected earthly delight and practiced patience, waiting for the fullness of God’s promises.

This verse appears to connect to Jesus’ conversation with the apostles in the upper room, prior to His arrest, as recorded in John chapter 14. Jesus was comforting His disciples when He shared this incredible truth with them: “In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you,” John 14:2. The Greek word our Lord employed for “mansions,” is literally rendered “dwellings.” Compare our Lord’s words to Peter’s, when the apostle refers to our present, physical bodies as tents, 2 Peter 1:13, 14. In our current life we are wanderers on an earth that is not meant to permanently sustain us. Abraham was a sojourner, as ought we to be, wandering through this wilderness, seeking a homeland with foundations, where our God dwells and with Him, our all in all. I personally believe that the difference between Peter’s tent and Jesus’ mansion is the condition of the body thus prepared.

 

Deviating perhaps a little, what I mean is that the tent refers to our sin-cursed bodies, of which Peter was a resident, and of which he intimated that he would have to shortly lay down, as Jesus had already explained, John 21:18, 19. The mansion Jesus is readying for the saints in Heaven is our spiritual bodies, designed by God to house our eternal spirits, so that the flesh, now sinless and deathless, may endure all that the unfettered spirit, cleansed and enlivened by the Holy Spirit, wishes to do. The 15^th chapter of 1 Corinthians, the chapter that explains the gospel we must believe to be saved by, delves into the resurrection. This chapter, more than a gospel chapter, is an apologetic for the Christian resurrection. Paul uses simple terminology, stating, “All flesh is not the same flesh,” 1 Corinthians 15:39. Moving forward, he continues, “So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, (the temporal tent which dies) it is raised in incorruption (the eternal mansion, prepared by Jesus, to house our spirit forever). It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body,” 1 Corinthians 15:42, 44.

 

In the final verse of Hebrews chapter 11, we read that the Jewish patriarchs and saints who died in faith were still waiting, “that they should not be made perfect apart from us,” verse 40. This was the great change Abraham and the rest longed for and looked toward. “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed,” 1 Corinthians 15:51, 52. This is not solely the hope of the church age. The Old Testament saints looked for the resurrection of the flesh in the Last Days as well. Job tells his supposed comforters, “And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” Job 19:26, 27. 2000 years before Paul, Job understood the nature of the resurrection and God’s promise of eternal life, even to those who have long since perished. The angel Gabriel related the same message to Daniel, saying, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt…But you, go your way till the end, for you shall rest, and will arise to your inheritance at the end of the days,” Daniel 12:2, 13. That this concept was part of orthodox Jewish thinking in Jesus’ time is clear, when Martha spoke to our Lord about Lazarus, saying, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day,” John 11:24.