Wed.’s Devo - By Faith

Read: Hebrews 11-13
Hebrews 11 is known as the “Hall of Faith”. It begins by giving us a definition of what faith is. Faith is the confident assurance that you will get what you are hoping and praying for. It is the visible proof of what hasn’t happened yet. It is the very essence of Christianity. We believe God created the world and all that is in it though we weren’t there to see it happen.
God always has a plan in everything written in the Word so he had a plan when he chose these men to be in the “hall of Faith”. Abel is the first mentioned and though he had a short life, his life was most important. He offered the perfect sacrifice by faith. Something in his spirit told him that a blood sacrifice of his first fruits might please God. (His name means “son of Adam” which can be interpreted “son of man”. Jesus was the Son of man who offered the perfect sacrifice so Abel is the story of Christ.) The next mentioned was Enoch. Enoch walked with God in such a way that he just spent so much time in heaven he just stayed there. (Enoch is the picture of the overcoming Church that Christ is going to rescue in the end.) Noah was moved by fear and built an ark to save his family from the coming judgment. He knew that there was another land worth all the ridicule and work to get there. He built a huge boat totally on faith. (Noah went through the judgement safe in the ark and came out on the other side. Noah is a picture of the church that goes through tribulation and God preserves.) Abraham was sent to a foreign land to walk it out and claim it for his posterity. (Abraham is a picture of us that walk by faith in this world as if it was the last millennium and Jesus was on the throne literally. ) We prosper when the world is in great poverty, persecution and distress. Abraham had his trials and tribulations and though he never got to literally live in the promise land, he paved the way for his children. That is what we do when we live as overcomes looking for a better day. Sara is a picture of the ones that hold on to past promises knowing that God will do what he said he would. Sara saw her promise of Isaac birthed in her lifetime but she didn’t see it completed. All these people died knowing there was something more - a country - their own country - a heavenly home that couldn’t be found on earth. Verse 14 says that if they had been mindful of that country that they came from, they might have been able to return. But the next verse tells us that they desired a better country that was heavenly. To me, this is saying that we can exercise our memory and go back to a time before we found faith but when we do, we lose our future inheritance. We can not be like Lot’s wife and look back and long for the pleasures of sin but it will kill us now and eternally.
I’ve run out of time, but all the men of faith saw something more that compelled them to keep going and keep trusting God. At the end of that chapter we see that some gave their lives to their belief but their faith gave them a good report. After it is all said and done, God is not looking for our achievements but our faith. To take it further, we complete their faith.
The next chapter tells us that they hang about us waiting for us to complete what they started and believed in and sacrificed their lives for. Our lives are so important in the chain of the family of God.
Lord, let us live by faith today knowing that what we are living for is eternal and waiting for us.