Hebrews Chapter Eleven, Seeking A Homeland

 

Hebrews 11:14 For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. [15] And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.

 

Later, the author under inspiration of the Holy Spirit relates that the world is unworthy of such people, Hebrews 11:38. Such people, of whom we are a part if we have confessed Jesus as the Christ and believed on Him for eternal life, do not want this present evil world as our home. Instead, we acknowledge that this life, in which we tent, is transient and evil, and we seek a country with foundations, and a kingdom wherein righteousness dwells.

But these aren’t merely platitudes, or polemics to wax elegant with. An enduring kingdom founded on true righteousness can only exist if founded by a Being that embodies these equalities. The world is fleeting, and its pleasures are barbed. It is a mingling of truth and lies, pleasure and pain, sorrow and joy.

 

Arthur Dent, from The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven, wrote: “The world is a sea of glass: a pageant of fond delight, a theatre of vanity, a labyrinth of error, a gulf of grief, a sty of filthiness, a vale of misery, a spectacle of woe, a river of tears, a stage of deceit, a cage full of devils, a den of scorpions, a wilderness of wolves, a cabin of bears, a whirlwind of passions, a fained comedy, a delectable frenzy; where is false delight, assured grief; certain sorrow, uncertain pleasure; lasting woe, fickle wealth; long heaviness, short joy.”

 

We crave something permanent. We want something that endures, is genuine, holds no painful consequence for taking hold of it, and doesn’t fail us when we ourselves fail. God alone can satisfy human need. We need love, but we need God to love us. We need forgiveness, but it must be from the lips of One who does not lie. We crave inclusion and invitation, but without hidden catches that ask of us more than we are capable of performing. God is just, holy, true, and loving. His kingdom will perfectly reflect these attributes, and those dwelling in it will receive them, and likewise reflect them like the moon reflects the brilliance of the sun. We are receivers; God’s love abounds in the saved through the Holy Spirit whom He has poured out on us abundantly. But when we receive, we relate. We are God’s radio, tuned in to His station, as it were, to broadcast the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those who see, and by grace discover, a homeland, are left on the frontlines for now, as time and Satan’s kingdom of temptation and grief wars with God’s kingdom. We are soldiers, but our weapons are not aimed at our fellow man (2 Corinthians 10:4, 5); they are already prisoners, destined to perish with the kingdom they cannot keep. We all, without exception, were like them once. So we must, without exception again, endeavor to live and preach Jesus Christ for the sake of their salvation, Jude 22, 23.

 

Jesus Christ said, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God,” Luke 9:62. Two verses prior, He told a prospective follower, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” Luke 9:60. While a believer is in this world, we are no longer to be part of it. Christ prayed that we not be removed from the world, but protected from the one who influences it, John 17:15. Paul cautioned not to be conformed to the world, but transformed by the second birth, to evidence God’s will for man while here, Romans 12:2.

 

So, what is the world? What is the country believers could go back to, should we recall it? The world in this instance is what Satan defined to our Lord when he challenged Him in the desert, claiming that he had authority over the kingdoms of this earth, Luke 4:6. God governs the earth, but mankind joined hands with Satan in rebellion, and he is the god of this world, or the world system that has arisen to defy God’s kingdom. We find human government and culture sanctifying abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, gender mutilation, and a hundred more deplorable things in the name of progress and open-mindedness. From this system, rife with philosophy and religion that practices self-deification, (including its newest tenet, psycho therapy), we see man enthroned as a mutinous monarch, preaching the same mantra Satan endorsed and advanced before his own fall, “I will be like the Most High,” Isaiah 14:14. It deluded him, and then he shared this delusionary endeavor to change objective reality with positive thinking with Adam and Eve, and they too died from it. One might say that Lucifer was the first to “identify” as something other than what he was, namely a cherubim created by God to stand at His throne. Satan wanted more; he wanted to BE God, so he campaigned to become so, deluding a full third of Heaven’s host and consigning them to exile from Heaven, the shaft of the abyss, and eventually the Lake of Fire.

 

Verse 15 recalls the finale of chapter 10, in which we read that, “we are not of those who draw back to perdition,” Hebrews 10:39. We are the opposite, or the antithesis, those who believe Christ, and are saved. The final verse of the last chapter presents a direct “us verses them,” contrast. There are those who draw back, and are destroyed like the Hebrews in the desert in Moses’ time. Then there are those who, rather than drawing back, believe to the saving of the soul. Note how the author does not say that those who drew back stop believing, or have lost their salvation; in fact, the verse intimates that the latter were never saved, while the former certainly are because we are clearly told that. So God the Father draws all mankind to Christ, but like the Sanhedrin in Stephen’s time, or the Jews during the kingdom years prior to its collapse, many drew back and were destroyed. Why? “The word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it,” Hebrews 4:2.

 

Those who drew back heard, Hebrews 10:39. They could not have drawn back from something they did not know. They were the “once enlightened,” from Hebrews 6:4. They were in the church. They knew true believers, listened to Godly preaching, sang the hymns, partook of the bread and wine, but their hearing NEVER mingled with faith. If one hears and does not believe the message, one is not saved, regardless of anything else they do. What they do afterward becomes a proxy for what they have not believed, and in turn they suffer the fate of those Matthew described in Matthew 7:22, 23. One is saved solely by faith, solely through grace, solely by the gift of God. For the patriarchs thus far listed, they heard the word of God, and having heard it, believed. Behind them was the temptation of their former country. Ur of the Chaldees, archeologists have postulated, is located in present day Iraq, 220 miles southeast of Baghdad. It was a booming trade city with a great Ziggurat, a royal cemetery, and apparently a place for human sacrifice, excavated by C.L. Woolley, between 1922-1934. In Abraham’s day this city was a metropolis, as it were. Abraham left the lifestyle of a metropolitan and walked with God into Canaan. All that Abraham left behind, including his blood family from his surviving brother, Nahor, paled in comparison to what God promised him for leaving all and following Him.

 

Jesus assured Peter, much the same way He assured Abraham 2000 years prior, when the apostle wondered what was the gain for following the Lord. Jesus told Peter (and through him, us) that those who forsake this present world and its trappings for Him, will receive many times what they have forfeit, and eternal life, Luke 18:28. Eternal life is the result of pursuing God rather than pursuing worldly callings. Paul considered it a very advantageous trade, to give up all worldly things (which we cannot keep) and apprehend Jesus Christ, who with Him gives us eternal life, which we keep forever by virtue of its very definition, Philippians 3:8. The patriarchs suffered the same choice: the world or God. We cannot serve both masters. Paul’s choice was swift and severe. Do away with all material trappings to attain what he most coveted, Christ Himself. The Patriarchs’ good testimony involved the decision to follow God rather than finding temporal roots in the country they were called out of. May we, God’s children through faith, follow their example, seeing the result of their faith.