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.

-Hebrews 11:13-16, ESV

Recently, we contrasted Judah’s Adam-like failure when tempted with Joseph’s Christlike success when tempted.  Overcoming temptation was only one way in which Joseph prefigured Christ.  After being falsely accused and condemned, he “descended into the pit” before ascending to prominence and working physical salvation for God’s people.  Though betrayed by those closest to him, his trust in God remained steadfast—and God used it all for good.  Yet the “hall of faith” only says this about Joseph: “By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones” (Hebrews 11:22).  Of all that could be said of Joseph, we may wonder why the Holy Spirit inspired this, but we will discover that this statement is just as remarkable, unveiling a pattern that is key to understanding the hall of faith.

More Than a Hall of Fame

Hebrews 11:1-12:2 is the most familiar passage of this often-misunderstood epistle.  As a result, it is treated much like a hall of fame: a place we go to be inspired by the greatness of those who went before us.  We should be inspired to greater faith by our ancestors, but the context of Hebrews forces us to look beyond that for the purpose of this passage.  Hebrews was clearly written to Jews to prove that Jesus Christ fulfills all of the Law and Prophets in order to prepare them for coming persecution.  The author begins by proving that Jesus is greater than angels (Hebrews 1-2), so we must pay closer attention to Christ than to the Law delivered by angels (Hebrews 2:1-4).  He then proves that Jesus is greater than Moses, bringing His people into true Sabbath rest that Moses and Joshua never could (Hebrews 3:1-4:13).  Next, he proves that Jesus is the great high priest and therefore the only true mediator between us and God (Hebrews 4:14-7:28), mediating a better covenant (Hebrews 8) in heaven, which the earthly Temple and its contents merely reflect (Hebrews 9).  Christ offered the greater sacrifice once for all that makes all other sacrifices obsolete (Hebrews 10:1-18). 

Then the focus shifts to preparation for trials.  The audience had already endured trials, but it was about to get much worse.  Since Holy Week, the Jewish establishment had been the staunchest opponent of Christ and His Church.  Their persecution of Christians would intensify until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.  God promised to destroy anyone who destroyed His Church (1 Corinthians 3:17), so four decades after Jesus prophesied their destruction in the Olivet Discourse, He would carry it out by the hand of the Romans.  The Temple that had always been so central to Jewish religion and identity would be destroyed and with it the priesthood and sacrificial system, never to return.  Millions of Jews would die, and the Jewish nation would be wiped off the map.  The remaining Jews—including Jewish Christians—would be scattered throughout the world.  Everything they knew about God would be called into question, particularly all of His promises to them.  Additionally, they would see apparently genuine believers around them fall away, which the author addresses throughout the letter (Hebrews 2:1, 3:12, 4:11).  The sternest warning comes in Hebrews 5:11-6:8).  This passage has often been used to argue that it is possible to lose your salvation, but Scripture clearly teaches that all who are truly saved cannot be lost.  Instead, this passage refers to nominal Christians who appear genuine but by falling away prove that they were never true Christians at all, so the faith of genuine Christians should not be shaken when nominal Christians fall away.  This is all but proven by the subsequent verse: “Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation” (Hebrews 6:9). 

Hebrews answers this by proving that the Jewish system about to be overthrown had already been made obsolete by Christ fulfilling it.  Only the shadows and types would pass away, leaving Jewish Christians with the firm foundation of Christ.  God’s promises would only appear to end in failure while they were really being fulfilled.  The Church was about to replace the Jews as the visible people of God, but the invisible church had always been the same: Jews and Gentiles who were joined to God by faith—and the promises they had believed were being fulfilled right before the eyes of these Jewish Christians.  That is the context of the “hall of faith”: “Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised” (Hebrews 10:35-36).  The “hall of faith” exists to remind these Jewish Christians of persevering faith and its promised reward to build their confidence and thereby help them endure the coming trials.

Faith in the Promise

The “hall of faith” begins by defining faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).  Faith is not blindly hoping in some myth but being fully convinced of a reality that though unseen is just as real as the visible world.  As we saw when discussing the relationship between Scripture and science, this understanding of unseen realities is vital.  It should be unsurprising then that the author affirms that God created the universe “so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Hebrews 11:3).  More importantly, the physical signs of the old covenant were about to be removed, so the saints needed to be sure of the unseen realities they represented.  Righteous Abel is recognized for faith that produced a better sacrifice than Cain’s—a faith that still speaks (Hebrews 11:4). Genesis lists no children for Abel, so though his line physically ended, by faith he inherited the promises.  Next, Enoch—one of only two men to never die—was commended as having pleased God by His faith, specifically that God not only exists but rewards those who seek Him—the type of faith without which it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:5-6).  Noah likewise is commended for faith in God’s promise to destroy the world but save him, leading him to spend decades constructing the Ark (Hebrews 11:7).  His faith was remarkable considering that the Flood was not only unseen but also unprecedented, and it required him to believe that God could repopulate the whole world from eight people.  This meant his faith had a multi-generational focus, which permeates the rest of the “hall of faith”.

Abraham is then commended for leaving his homeland and living as a sojourner along with his son Isaac and grandson Jacob in the land God promised to give his descendants but they did not possess (Hebrews 11:8-9).  He too was looking many generations into the future for God to fulfill His promises: “For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10).  Throughout Genesis, cities represent wickedness and rebellion against God, so Abraham was called by God to leave civilization just as God would later bring the Israelites out of civilized Egypt.  But by faith Abraham looked beyond that to a time when God would establish a righteous city inhabited by his true descendants.  This leads to the commendation of Sarah, who by faith was able to conceive the child of the promise from whom that nation would come (Hebrews 11:11-12).  Abraham understood this too, so he is further commended for offering Isaac, believing that he would kill him and God would raise him from the dead, which he saw as the only way he could obey and God still fulfill His promise regarding Isaac (Hebrews 11:17-19).  Then, Isaac and Jacob are both commended not for acts of faith in their lives but for blessing their descendants, thereby demonstrating a similar multi-generational perspective (Hebrews 11:20-21).  The reason for this is found in the interlude to Abraham’s commendation:

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.

-Hebrews 11:13-16, ESV

Thus the faith of the patriarchs was fixed on the promise of God to not only create from their family a great nation but also a great and righteous city.  They all understood that they did not truly belong where they dwelt, but that God would provide their true home long after they died.  That brings us back to Joseph.  While the patriarchs were commended for trusting God to advance the fulfillment of His promises in the immediately subsequent generations, Joseph looked far into the future.  Trusting that God would bring Israel out of Egypt four centuries later, he made them swear to carry his remains with them.  By directing his descendants to carry his body out during the exodus, he made his last wishes contingent on God fulfilling His promise.  In that way, his faith in this last act superseded the faith that had undergirded all of his notable accomplishments.  Five centuries later as the initial conquest of Canaan drew to a close and Israel was established in the promised land, Joseph’s dying wish was finally fulfilled when his body was buried at Shechem (Joshua 24:32). 

The text then turns to Moses, starting by commending his parents for sparing his life because they saw that “the child was beautiful” (Hebrews 11:23) and feared God more than Pharoah.  They certainly understood how much God abhors the slaughter of children inside and outside the womb, but they likely also understood that Moses would play a special role in God fulfilling His promises.  Moses is then commended for choosing mistreatment with God’s people rather than the “fleeting pleasures of sin” that accompanied his privileged position as the adopted son of Pharoah’s daughter (Hebrews 10:24-25).  He too was called by God out of civilization to God’s presence in the wilderness and would later lead Israel to do the same.  The Pentateuch records Moses fleeing in fear of Pharoah (Exodus 2:14-15), but Hebrews says that he was not afraid of him “for he endured as seeing him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27).  His fear of God and understanding of the reality of the spiritual realm outweighed his fear of man and the physical.  This extended to the Passover, when he led the people to fear and obey God, thereby sparing their firstborn (Hebrews 11:27).  That faith was put to the test when the people faced Pharoah’s army on one side and the stormy Red Sea on the other.  They walked across the sea on dry land then saw Pharoah’s army drowned when that same sea swept them away like the Flood (Hebrews 11:29).  Moses like Joseph then died outside the promised land.  The commendation then ends with the beginning of the Canaanite conquest with the fall of Jericho and the salvation of Rahab, who represents the firstfruits of foreign faith (Hebrews 11:30-31). 

Brief mention is then made of the judges, particularly Gideon, Barak, Samson, and Jephthah, before alluding to the rest of Israel’s history by mentioning David, Samuel, and the prophets (Hebrews 11:32), listing just a few of the mighty and miraculous deeds they witnessed.  That list culminates with a reference to the widow of Zarephath and the Shunamite’s sons rising from the dead (Hebrews 11:33-35a) but then takes a turn by also recounting how various saints suffered while maintaining hope in a resurrection to a better life (Hebrews 11:35b).  It was these, not the mighty, who were so great in God’s eyes that the world was not worthy of them (Hebrews 11:38).  The hall of faith then ends with a surprising statement: “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect” (Hebrews 11:39-40). 

The City of God

What did the Old Testament saints not receive that the author of Hebrews and his contemporary Jewish Christians did?  Throughout, the “hall of faith”, we see saints leaving cities to be with God in the wilderness while at the same time looking toward the city of God.  Even when Israel was established in the promised land, that city did not exist.  The Ark of the Covenant representing God’s presence moved from place to place until David brought it to Jerusalem.  In doing so, he was trying to establish Jerusalem as the holy city.  This is seen throughout the psalms.  But from his successors all the way to Jesus’s day, Jerusalem was plagued with idolatry and corruption.  As its destruction drew near, it was so bad that Scripture likens it to Sodom, Egypt, and Babylon (Revelation 11:8, 14:8, 18:2-24).   In that way, Jerusalem came to embody the evil city of man that God’s people are called to flee.  With its destruction immanent, the author of Hebrews is exhorting his audience to emulate former saints by looking forward to the city of God.  He tells them the coming trials are really God’s discipline of His beloved children to make them holy in preparation to inhabit His city (Hebrews 12:1-17).  Then he describes that city:

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

-Hebrews 12:22-24, ESV

Note how he says “you have come”.  In the preceding verses, he said they had not come “to what may be touched” (Hebrews 12:18) referring to the Sinai scene.  Revelation describes this new Jerusalem descending from heaven as a massive cube of 1,379 miles on every side (Revelation 21:16).  If it had the population density of Houston with inhabitable levels every mile, it could house about ten trillion people.  That was as unfathomable for the original audience as it is for us, but they would have noticed something we often miss: the significance of its shape.  Only one place in Scripture is a perfect cube: the Holy of Holies in the Temple (1 Kings 6:20).  This could only support one man, the high priest, for a very brief period on the Day of Atonement.  This new Jerusalem was a new Holy of Holies that was large enough for all of God’s people to dwell with Him forever, fulfilling a promise God repeats often: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3).  The new Jerusalem is also described as “coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2) and explicitly called “the Bride, the wife of the Lamb” (Revelation 21:9).  That means the new Jerusalem is the universal Church.

The destruction of eschatological Babylon coincides with the arrival of the Bride (Revelation 18-19), so God was about to shake heaven and earth to remove old Jerusalem and its much-tarnished reflections of spiritual realities so that the new Jerusalem with spiritual foundations that cannot be shaken—the Church—may remain (Hebrews 12:27).  That was the city the patriarchs were seeking, which compelled Joseph to direct that he be buried in the promised land.  That was the city that the Old Testament saints were promised but did not receive in their lifetimes.  And that was the city where all in Christ now have citizenship.  In that city we spiritually travel to God’s presence to worship every Sunday, enjoying the presence of God in a way that all those in the “hall of faith” longed for but never experienced.  So we must follow the exhortation of Hebrews: “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:28-29).