He was of the Brahmin Caste, a well-to-do and important family. He was a young man with a bright future in that Hindu culture. But he had come to know the Lord Jesus Christ. He had been driven out of his family, out of his village. He had been beaten for his faith. There was no one who would house him, no one who would employ him. He was an exile. I met him and because he was well educated, I could interview him in English, and I asked him what those first days were like, I asked him if he was afraid.
Sleeping Under the Moon
He said, "That very first night, I had nowhere to go. I found a foundation that looked like it was going to be the foundation for a little house out in the bush. I laid there under the moon." I said, "Were you afraid?" He said, "I was not." He said, "I reasoned in my heart that if Jesus is real and His Word is true, I'm as safe here as I am anywhere." And then he said, "I reasoned, if Jesus is not real and His Word is not true, there's no reason for living anyway." That's the amazing power of faith in God to transform.
And we're going to be looking at a passage of Scripture this morning that is like a painting. It's like standing in front of a great Rembrandt, or Monet, or Matisse, and wondering at its beauty. This is a portrait of how faith transforms us, faith in God, as that faith causes us to lay hold of the power of His grace. We continue to look in Hebrews 11, if you want to turn there in your church Bibles, page 1008. I think the passage that we're going to look at is one of the most beautiful in Scripture, as it paints what God and God alone is able to do in the hearts of people.
Listen as I read 13 through 16: These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
(ESV) Faith in God will not leave you the same. Faith in God changes everything in your life. Faith in God will transform you at the core of who you are as a human being, and that transformation is captured for us in this telling of the desires, and thoughts, and reactions, and responses of this nameless group of faith in this passage. Notice the first words: "These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar." Hear this: faith radically transforms your vision.
I want to say again what I said last week - I'm not talking about your physical eyes. This passage is talking about the eyes of your heart. Human beings have this distinct ability to envision the future, to see things that are not yet there, to anticipate them. You actually see them with the eyes of your heart; it's a profoundly important ability. Theologians in the past have called this imagination. It's a very important gift that God has given us. And so for every human being, there is some compelling vision that you live out after, you live for.
There's some golden dream, some 'I want,' some 'if only,' some bright thing that you're questing for. And for most people, that doesn't go any further than the temporary pleasures of this fallen world. Maybe I think my life will change if only this person would love me, or if only I could be in this location, or if only I could have this experience, if only..., if only..., if only... And the delusion of all of that is that somehow, some way, those things would satisfy the longing of my heart. But they never do!
Faith Opens Your Eyes to Something Better
And so, faith opens your eyes to something greater and something better. Notice what it says: "These all died in faith, not having received the things promised." Faith helps me to envision the promises of God. The bright things that now capture my heart, the bright things that I desire are not just the temporary pleasures of this world, but they have to do with the wonderful things that God, by His grace, has promised me. God's promised me that Paul Tripp will one day stand before Him holy and blameless.
Oh, my goodness! Anybody who knows me knows I'm not there yet, but I grab ahold of that promise. That is more precious than situations and locations for me. Oh that I some day would be free of sin is a glory so glorious it's hard for this brain to capture it! That's what faith does. Faith fills your eyes with the glories of the promises of God. And in doing that, faith produces in you sturdiness, and perseverance, and resolve, because once your eyes embrace those glories, there is no turning back.
It was amazing to have this bright young man stand in front of me, having lost everything and not having him say, "I think I made a bad choice." It was as if none of those things had happened. He was going forward; he was going forward; he was going forward because his eyes had been opened to the things of God! There was no going back. What is more precious than one of God's people dying in hope, and dying in joy, and dying in faith, not letting go? How sad it is when a person dies in cynicism, and anger, and fear, and disappointment.
I'll never forget the passing of my dear mom. She was not a perfect lady, but she was a lady who grabbed ahold of the Lord Jesus by faith. And she was in a comatose state. We don't know how much she actually heard of what was going on, but there was always this amazing moment; we would start singing hymns, and this lady who seemed like she had no consciousness at all, would lip the words of those hymns as we sang. Still holding on; not one moment of giving up; now her eyes even more fixed on Jesus.
You see, the average person isn't there. That takes radical transforming grace. The average person lives for the moment and is angry, and disappointed, and fearful because those momentary things seem to slip through their fingers like sand. But faith also transforms your identity. Look at what it says here, ...Having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.
But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. (ESV) Faith makes you an exile, because by faith and through the grace of God, you have become a citizen of another Kingdom. Grace gives you a green card, and it says, "Citizen of Heaven." Grace gives you a new passport, and it says, "Kingdom of God." Now your heart has a different set of values, the values from another place. What's important to you is different than what was important to you before. Faith makes you have an allegiance to a greater King, a King that you didn't acknowledge before that is now the center of your world.
Faith causes you to want to follow a new set of rules, no longer the rules of your wants, and your needs, and your feelings. Now you want to be a follower of God's Law, and the desire to keep His Law shapes whatever you do. Faith introduces you to a new culture. It gives you a new language. You are an alien! All this week I've been thinking of that old spiritual, "This world is not my home; I'm just a passing through." That's our existence. The goal of life for us is not to see how deep we can dig and how much we can enjoy everything that we can possibly get our hands on, because we realize we're passing through; we're realizing that our home is to come.
Cross-Cultural Living
Now, let's be honest. That cross-cultural living isn't always easy. I want to give a bit of an advertisement, by God's providence, I'm going to be speaking on cross-cultural living this evening from First Peter. So if you want to get that defined more, please come; it's a great way to spend the Memorial weekend. But we're called to that kind of living. It's hard at work when you are operating by a different set of rules than the people that are around you. It's hard when your values are different.
Maybe you've experienced that as you watch television, or you read the newspaper, or you talk to a neighbor, or you are at work. But God's called us to a different way of living, and again, the heart of faith acknowledges that and acknowledges the alien nature of our existence. Do you live like an alien? Happily? Like an alien, do you live in that cross-cultural way? That's what faith does. But faith also transforms your desires. Look what it says there, verse 16: "But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one."
Again, these are profound things that are being said to us, not only about the transforming power of faith in God, but about the basic way that you and I function as human beings. You and I have been given the capacity to desire. We don't live by instinct. We live by desire, and there's always some set of desires that are shaping and orienting your living. You're always living in desire for something. Now, it's not wrong to desire some comfort in your life--to desire a little bit of pleasure in your life; to desire friendship, and acceptance, and appreciation; to desire pleasurable experiences and desire some beautiful possessions.
None of those desires are wrong in and of themselves, but they must not rule you. They must not be the thing for which you live, because those things do not have the organic capacity to satisfy your heart. And so what God does, by His grace, is He puts a new set of desires in our hearts, and those desires literally rescue us from us. Isn't it amazing that the most successful person in the world, with all of his or her experiences and accomplishments, still goes to bed at night dissatisfied, still wants to work more, still wants to acquire more?
Why? Those things can't satisfy you! And so, as God begins to give us a new set of desires, He's literally returning us to that thing for which we were made. We were made for Him. We have a vacuum in our hearts that will only ever be filled by Him. Hear this: even atheists, working hard, are seeking Him; they just don't know it, because what they seek is Him. And look what it says here; it says: "They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one." What are they actually desiring? Not just a change of location, but they've come to understand that this 'here and now' world cannot satisfy the longings of their hearts.
That's what it means when it says, "If they wanted to go back to their former country, they could've gone." But they've learned that life is only ever found where? In relationship with God, and they want to be home, home where He is, home forever. My concern for you is not fear that you would be dissatisfied. My concern for you is that you would be all too satisfied, that you would be satisfied with the temporary pleasures of this fallen world and lose that deeper hunger. I think God is transforming us to live in a state of holy dissatisfaction, and that holy dissatisfaction is a good thing.
Protection of Your Heart
It's a protection of your heart, because the things around you can't satisfy your heart. That longing for that final homeland, that longing for the security that can only be found there, is, in fact, a longing for the one thing that will only ever satisfy - it's a longing for God. I am convinced that the default language of the people of God, of people of faith, is groaning. We don't groan because we're dissatisfied with our current set of experiences and possessions; we groan because we long for home.
And it's right to groan, because although you should be thankful for every good blessing Jesus has given you, you ought to recognize there's more to come; there's more to come, and you should long for that more. You should long for this journey to end. You should long to be in that place where there is no more sin, and there is no more sadness, and there is no more suffering, and you are like Him and with Him forever. You should groan until you're there. You should want; you should crave, you should be excited as you think about the security that will only ever be found in that homeland.
That should motivate you, and that should structure your living. That's what transforming faith in God does. Now, if that were not enough, this passage ends in a crescendo. As I read, I would welcome you to listen to the roll of the tympani as it gets louder and louder because what is said here at the end is magnificent: "Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city." In ways that are glorious, way beyond the ability of this man to depict, faith in God radically transforms your relationship with God.
There is a sad, sad painting by Michelangelo, painted somewhere between 1509 in 1510 (a while ago), and there is a big angel with a stern face, a straightened out arm and a pointed finger, pointing out of the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve cowing like this, with heads down, and bodies bent, and faces with sadness and fear, are running out of the garden. And when you see that painting, your heart should scream, "No! No! No!" because human beings weren't made to live separate from God. They weren't made to chase a whole catalog of God-replacements.
They weren't made to fear His wrath. They weren't made to live as His enemies. They weren't made to put themselves in His position, but that's exactly what sin does to all of us. Sin makes all of us want to be sovereigns over our own lives, to want to be at the center of our existence, to want to write our own law, to want to get the glory that only belongs to God. Somehow, some way, that narrative, that drama, is played out in all of our lives. And so when this passage says that the lives of these people are so powerfully transformed that God is not ashamed to call them His people, you are viewing the stunning glory of the transforming grace of Jesus; nothing else could do that.
For God ever to say that He is honored by one thought, one desire, one choice, one action, any of us made just one time, would be a miracle of grace. But for God to look at lives and say, "Because of the way that they have lived in faith in me, I'm not ashamed to say, 'These are my people,'" is something we should celebrate forever! Now I think that this is why passages like this are in the Bible, because one of the scary things that happens to all of us is that we become accustomed to grace. We get used to the presence of God's Spirit.
We get used to the stunning wisdom of God's Word. We get used to the fact that Immanuel has invaded our lives by His grace, that He's made us citizens of His Kingdom. All of a sudden, that's just "ho-hum" to us; and brothers and sisters, when that happens, we are in a dangerous spiritual place because there is a short step between ingratitude and idolatry. And so we need these passages to stir up our hearts again, to celebrate once again. I remember being in the Cleveland Museum of Art. I sort of knew that Monet was a wonderful painter and knew that his water lily series was amazing.
A Water Lily Masterpiece
But I walked around a corner into a gallery where there was a water lily masterpiece, 16 feet long. I'm a bit of a museum rat, I will confess, but as I went around the corner and was hit with the stunning glory of this painting, my knees got weak. And in my heart was this, "Oh, my goodness!" This painting was painted when he was an old man, failing in eyesight. Aides encouraged him not to continue painting. And sometimes he couldn't stand up; he would sit down, and he'd hook his brush to a stick, but he painted.
And the beauty of that painting, I will never forget. If a painting has a power to change a person, I was changed that day. That's what this passage is supposed to do to you. You're standing before a portrait of powerfully transforming grace, and you should say, "Oh my goodness!" because we must be celebrants. Because when you celebrate that grace, you remember the vision that is to compel your life; you remember your identity; you remember the desires that must rule your heart, and you celebrate the grace that has gotten you there.
And as you celebrate that transforming grace, you quickly recognize that that work of transformation is not yet done in you; and in your celebration, you cry out for more of that grace so that transformation would continue and would reach completion. Like these people, if you've embraced God by faith, He's not ashamed to name you as His own, and He's prepared for you a city--A city that has Him in the center, where you will be like Him and dwell with Him forever. Now with that journey ended, none of those things could you earn.
None of those things could you achieve. None of those things will you ever deserve. God sent His son, the Lord Jesus, to perfectly keep God's law on our behalf, to suffer a vicious death in our place, to rise again, conquering sin and death so that we would be transformed from His enemies into those who live for His honor, and His glory, and hold on to Him in joyful celebration forever. May that never quit getting our attention. May we be celebrants today, and tomorrow, and forever of that powerful transformation that is the result of His gift of grace.
Let's Pray: Lord, what a portrait that we have looked at today! ...More magnificent than any painting that any artist has created because this artwork paints, for us, the power of faith in God to transform us completely; transforming what the eyes of our hearts see; giving us a compelling vision that earth cannot satisfy; transforming our identity; causing us to live willingly as strangers, and aliens, and exiles, and citizens of a greater Kingdom; capturing the desires of our hearts; seeking satisfaction only in You; and moving us from judgment to reward having You declare that You're not ashamed of us.
What grace is this! What grace is this! And Oh, Lord, as we would recognize the present operation of transforming grace, we would also admit that we need further transformation. Won't You, by Your Spirit and according to Your grace, help us to lay ahold of You by faith and not let go until that work of transformation is complete. In Jesus name, for the furtherance of His Kingdom and for the sake of Your glory, we would pray, Amen.
