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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Norman McNulty: The Book of Hebrews

Norman McNulty

Hebrews 1:1-9: Introduction and Divinity of Christ

Hebrews 1:9-2:9 “The Enemy After the Cross”

Hebrews 2:9-18 “The Humanity of Christ”

Hebrews 3 & 4 “God’s Rest”

Hebrews 5 and 6 “Milk or Strong Meat?”

Hebrews 7  “The Melchizedek Priesthood”

Hebrews 8 “The New Covenant High Priest”

Hebrews 9  “The Holy of Holies”

Hebrews 9:23-10:13  “The Blotting Out of Sin”

Hebrews 10:13-39  “Seated at the Right Hand of God”

Hebrews 11:1-7  “Faith in the Creator God”

Hebrews 11:8-40 Pilgrims and Strangers

Hebrews 11:39-12:4 Jesus and the Last Generation

Hebrews 12:5-29 “The Highway to Mount Zion”

Hebrews 13 “Final Class and Summary of Book”

And Adrian did announce this from up front, but this is a continuation of the Hebrews class that we've been going through.

I think most of you probably knew that already, but we're not doing the quarterly, we're doing the book of Hebrews, and we are in Hebrews chapter 11.

And we got through the first 7 verses last time.

Now, as you Look at the book of Hebrews, and I said this the last time we started this class on Hebrews 11, is that when you ask someone what the book of Hebrews is about, typically a person will say Hebrews is about faith.

However, 1 chapter out of 13 is dedicated to talking about faith, but the other chapters are talking about other very important concepts.

And so the question is, what role does Hebrews 11 have in the bigger picture of the book of Hebrews as a whole, and that's kind of what we've been looking at the last time we went through this class.

And as we've learned, as we've gone through the book of Hebrews, the book of Hebrews is placing a strong emphasis on who Jesus is and what His work is on our behalf.

We see that He is God in chapter 1, He's man in chapter 2, and that He's the Apostle and High Priest of our profession in chapter 3, and we see the work that He does for us as High Priest in chapter 4, well in chapter 2, in chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5, and 6 and 7 and so forth.

Then by the time we get to chapter 8 we see that Christ is high priest as mediator of the new covenant.

And as mediator of the new covenant, he writes his law into our hearts and minds.

And then chapter 9 goes into more detail about how Christ is our High Priest, how as our High Priest He will blot out our sins and come back a second time.

And chapter 10 continues to talk about that.

We see in chapter 10, Jesus, when He came to this earth, he delighted to do God's will.

That's quoting from Psalms 40 verse 8, and God's will is his law.

And by the end of chapter 10 we see that those who do the will of God are those who God will come back for.

Those are the people who have God's law written in their hearts, that's the new covenant people.

And so by the time you get to the end of chapter 10, you see, okay, Christ is high priest, He's our mediator, and His role as our mediator is to write his law into the hearts of his new covenant people.

And we may say, well, that's all nice and fine, but I've never seen anyone who lives that way.

But then that's what Hebrews 11 is about.

Hebrews 11 says, well, You may feel that you're weak in faith, but here's a whole list of people who were strong in faith.

So don't think that God can't write His law into your heart and mine, because these people all have that experience.

And so that's what Hebrews 11 is showing us.

So yes, Hebrews is about faith, but it's a lot more than that.

Hebrews 11 is just sort of like the show-and-tell of yes, it is possible to have this experience and this is what God wants to do for us.

So we studied last time in the first 7 verses that faith comes when we believe that God is creator.

So if you don't believe that God created the earth the way the Bible says, you don't really have faith or saving faith.

Then we see the contrast between Cain and Abel.

And Abraham, of course, is the father of the faithful.

So there's a lot to talk about with respect to Abraham.

So starting in verse 8, it says, By faith, Abraham, when he was called to go out, into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed.

And he went out not knowing whither he went." Okay, so Abraham, we know the story.

And then God calls him to leave his home and all of his family.

Now, how excited do you think Abraham was to be asked by God to leave the comfort of his home environment and his familiar surroundings?

Humanly speaking, probably not, but he obeyed.

And of course, there's a lot more to this.

But what's interesting, and there's some spiritual applications if you think about it, Abraham lived in Ur of the Chaldees.

That is eventually where Babylon was built up.

And so God called Abraham to leave Babylon.

And it's an example for all those who follow the example that Abraham gives us.

And in Galatians 3 at the end of the chapter it says, they that be Christ are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise.

So those who are of the seed of Abraham will follow him in like manner.

He left Ur of the Chaldees or he came out of Babylon and ironically enough God's last day message is a message to call his people out of Babylon.

So there's a practical illustration, but notice Abraham, when he went out, it wasn't like he was leaving a good job for a better job or a good home for a better home.

And verse 9, by faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise." So Abraham must have had a pretty nice home.

If you study the history, he came from a very wealthy family, and so he goes from living in a mansion to living in a tent.

And he never owned a piece of property the rest of his life.

In fact, when his wife Sarah died, he had to buy a piece of property in the cave where he buried her because he didn't own anything.

So we think of Abraham like, oh yeah, Abraham, he had this vast expanse of territory in the promised land.

God promised it to him in a seed, but Abraham never owned that land his entire life up until the point that he died.

So he lived in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.

Verse 10, For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

Abraham was looking for a different place.

He was looking for a heavenly city whose builder and maker is God.

Now if he had stayed in his home land that God called him to come out of, which was, we'll just call it Babylon.

If he had stayed in Babylon, when God had called him to come out, would he have been able to look for that heavenly city?

But because he obeyed God, that enabled him to look for a heavenly city.

His eyes, his mind was set on a better place, and we're going to see more about this as we go through, especially in verses 13, 14, 15, and 16.

Continuing on in verse 11, through faith also, Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed when she was delivered of a child, and she was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised." Now you remember the story, God comes personally to Abraham, Sarah is in the next room over, and she hears God tell Abraham that she and Abraham are going to have a child, and in her heart she laughs.

And she lied to God and said, I wasn't laughing.

So at that point, she was not exercising faith.

She didn't believe that what God said could really happen.

Now, Paul doesn't explain here in Hebrews 11 what changed, but if you go to Romans 4, this is very interesting.

In Romans chapter 4, Starting in verse 18, and this is speaking of this very story, speaking of Abraham, it says, "'Who against hope believed in hope that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, so shall thy seed be." Verse 19, and being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb.

Abraham is strong in faith, giving glory to God, that's in verse 20, and because of his faith he's considering his physical deadness, so to speak.

He can't have a child, and neither can Sarah.

So not only...so God's saying, hey, you and Sarah are gonna have a child.

Now it'd be bad enough if 1 of them was past childbearing age, but both of them are.

And so Abraham has to believe in God to overcome his physical impossibility, and it says he considered not the deadness of Sarah's womb.

So he's like, well, if God can take care of that problem with me, he can take care of that problem with Sarah also.

And evidently, based on what we see from Romans 4 and from Hebrews 11, it was Abraham's faith that also produced fruit in Sarah.

So because Abraham had faith, it caused Sarah to also believe.

And then when they both believed, they bore a child.

And the spiritual application for us is this.

It's 1 thing to say we have faith in Him.

But if our belief in God and our faith in Him is not producing faith in other people, then our faith is dead.

Because Abraham's faith was so strong that it affected Sarah as well.

She said, wow, if Abraham really believes this strongly, then it must be true.

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Series

Norman McNulty: The Book of Hebrews

Hebrews 11:8-40 Pilgrims and Strangers

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Abraham: Father of the End-time Faithful

Father Abraham: Stranger and Pilgrim

42m

Plenaries with Norman McNulty

Abraham - Father of the Three Angels’ Messages

50m

Pilgrims and Strangers

35m

The Three Angels' Messages

03 The Second Angel

54m

Abraham and the Ancient Blood Path

57m

Freedom From Fear 2006

God is Able

1h 18m

The Resurrection and the Life

39m

Is God Enough?

1h 11m

Sound Doctrine