Hebrews 11: Living by Faith as Exiles in Babylon

Introduction

This message is the second part of the series "Faithful Where God Has Placed Us," preached at Église Saint-Lazare. After a first session in Genesis 20, the preacher opens what he calls "the chapter par excellence" of the New Testament on faith: Hebrews 11.

His introduction fits in one sentence: to speak of Christian faith is to speak of a new way of seeing and a new way of living. The Bible invites you to see as God sees and to live as God wants. "For we walk by faith, not by sight," Paul writes (2 Corinthians 5:7). And in Hebrews 11, the preacher points out, the vocabulary of sight comes up again and again.

Out of all the witnesses of faith, he picks three: Noah, Abraham and Moses. With them, he draws out three words for living in this world today: hope, exile and resistance.

Outline of the Message

1. A Letter Written to Christians Under Pressure

• Hebrews 11 is often read in isolation. The preacher invites us to look first at chapter 10, which tells us more about the situation of the readers.
• The author urges them: "Let's consider how to provoke one another to love and good works, not forsaking our own assembling together" (Hebrews 10:24-25), a verse the preacher had already quoted earlier that same morning.
• He reminds them of the early days when they endured "a great struggle with sufferings" (Hebrews 10:32), exposed to insults and persecution. Some had lost their possessions.
• "Therefore don't throw away your boldness, which has a great reward. For you need endurance" (Hebrews 10:35-36). To encourage these weary Christians, the author writes chapter 11.
• Faith is "assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). It makes us understand what we cannot see (Hebrews 11:3) and allows us to live without yet seeing what God has promised.

2. Noah: A Hope That Obeys Before Seeing

• "By faith, Noah, being warned about things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his house" (Hebrews 11:7).
• Noah does not yet see what God announces to him, but he obeys his word. The preacher sees in this the opposite of what the world does: some want to fit the Word of God into the world they see, when we need to understand the world we see in the light of the Word of God.
• Peter foretold it: mockers would come, saying, "Where is the promise of his coming? For, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation" (2 Peter 3:4). You can imagine Noah's contemporaries laughing at the man building a huge boat in the middle of dry land: "Either you have to be crazy, or you have to have faith."
• This faith is not blind. The Christian is not a big child playing blind man's bluff with eyes closed, guided by a distant, confusing voice. "We do not obey God blindly; we obey him with our eyes fixed on him and on the testimony he has left us in his Word."
• Hope is not vague optimism or self-suggestion either. The preacher warns against those who say online that you have to "create your own reality" by proclaiming things. We do not simply hope that everything will be fine: we direct our lives by the Word of God.

3. Abraham: The Faith of a Stranger and Pilgrim

• "By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out to the place which he was to receive for an inheritance. He went out, not knowing where he went" (Hebrews 11:8).
• The patriarchs all died without receiving the things promised, but they were "having seen them and embraced them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth" (Hebrews 11:13). The promise was their compass, the horizon toward which they walked.
• This chapter does us good, says the preacher, because we live immersed in the myth of progress: the idea that our ingenuity and technology will free us from the evils of the world. Ironically, this intelligence is a gift from God, and man uses it to try to free himself from him. "Artificial intelligence is just a new Tower of Babel."
• Today, we wave the past away with a flick of the hand. The author of the letter does the opposite: to give confidence in the future to those who are suffering, he tells them to look at the past and at the way our ancestors in the faith lived. Abraham's faith is our faith.
• Modernity believes it will find new solutions to old problems, but mostly it invents new problems. Our hope, on the other hand, feeds on the word of the one who does not change, who is faithful, who keeps what he promises, who led our fathers and will lead you.
• "For we don't have here an enduring city, but we seek the one that is to come" (Hebrews 13:14). "If you don't feel at home in this life, that is normal. And I would even say that if you feel perfectly at home in this life, that is a bad sign."
• We are on our way to the heavenly Jerusalem, like exiles in Babylon, a city hostile to God and a symbol of every human system opposed to his standards. Augustine already said so in The City of God: "Two loves built two cities: the love of self, even to the contempt of God, built the earthly city; the love of God, even to the contempt of self, built the heavenly city."

4. Three Traps for Those Who Live in Exile

• Withdrawal. Some cut themselves off from the world to protect themselves from sin: closed communities, and even Simeon the Stylite, who stayed about thirty years on top of a column with barely room to sit. "It's a bit like scouting, but taken to the extreme." Yet Jesus sends us into the world as the Father sent him, because God loves this lost world. We are in the world without being of the world, like ambassadors of a foreign kingdom.
• Violence. Others want to fight sin, sometimes literally, by calling for new crusades, or politically and culturally. The temptation to build the kingdom on earth by force has always existed.
• Yet in the heart of historical Babylon, Jeremiah writes to the captives: "Build houses, and live in them; and plant gardens, and eat their fruit [...] Seek the welfare of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to Yahweh for it; for in its welfare you will have welfare" (Jeremiah 29:4-7). Jesus acted through neither withdrawal nor violence, but as an exile in the world without being of the world.
• Compromise. Faced with persecution and seduction, we are tempted to cut corners and water down our convictions. Sometimes to avoid losing our job, more often so that our reputation will not be tarnished. This was probably the greatest temptation for the first readers. To answer it, the author speaks to them of another ancestor in the faith: Moses.

5. Moses: Resistance Born of the Fear of God

• Moses' parents "were not afraid of the king's commandment" (Hebrews 11:23), because they feared God. So did the midwives of Egypt, who "feared God, and didn't do what the king of Egypt commanded them" (Exodus 1:17). "We know their names; we don't even know the name of the pharaoh."
• The fear of God makes it possible to do what is right despite the risks. The preacher repeats it twice: "When you fear men, you flee suffering and accept compromise. When you fear God, you refuse compromise and accept suffering."
• The Christian life is often a matter of preference. Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, "choosing rather to share ill treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a time" (Hebrews 11:24-25). He had everything at the royal court and turned down that empty glory.
• "Moses is a resistance fighter." He shows a Christian resistance that is not first political but spiritual. Peter uses the same image of exile: "Beloved, I beg you as foreigners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul" (1 Peter 2:11).
• The slogan of our age fits in a Queen song: "I want it all and I want it now." That is the sermon the world repeats to us every day, on every channel and every network.
• Moses held on because "he looked to the reward" (Hebrews 11:26). By faith, we know that God will lift up those who humble themselves now and bring down those who glorify themselves now. The preacher quotes this line: those who do not bend the knee today before the grace of God will bend it tomorrow before his wrath.

6. Don't Mistake the Appetizer for the Meal

• The preacher tells of being invited to a couple's home with his wife after a church meeting. The appetizers drag on, and he starts to think this might be the meal, and that it would be better to eat now. Then it is announced that it is time to sit down at the table.
• Everything changes with perspective. Many live as if this life were the whole meal, and they try to eat everything they can, because they do not believe there will be anything better afterward. "We're munching on little pizza crackers while a prime rib is waiting for us. What madness!"
• Every day the choice comes up: am I taking everything I can right now, or do I believe the best is yet to come? In what way does my life bear witness to my hope?
• The choice becomes concrete: what guides my decisions when no one is watching? When it costs me, slows my career, touches my comfort or exposes my reputation?
• "By faith, he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible" (Hebrews 11:27). The preacher speaks of an eschatological courage: living the present with the end as the starting point. This courage is not blind; it is rooted in God's promises fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
• If you think your trials are too great for the authors of the Bible to understand you, reread verses 36 to 38: mockings, scourging, chains, prison, stoning, believers sawn in two, wandering about dressed in sheepskins and goatskins. "The world was not worthy of them."

7. A Counter-Culture, With Eyes Fixed on Jesus

• The preacher reads the Epistle to Diognetus, an anonymous document describing the life of Christians at the end of the second century. They do not live in a subculture but in a counter-culture: "They dwell in their own countries, but only as sojourners [...] Every foreign land is a homeland to them, and every homeland a foreign land." They have children, but do not abandon their newborns. They are in the flesh, but do not live according to the flesh. They spend their lives on earth, but are citizens of heaven.
• He invites us to consider how comfort lulls us to sleep: little by little, this world of pleasure and entertainment makes us live like it in almost every respect. Why turn our eyes toward the world to come when this one seems so sweet? He quotes a line he attributes to Spurgeon, often linked to the Puritan Thomas Watson: "Until sin tastes bitter to you, grace will not taste sweet to your palate."
• Babylon is the city of vice and easy pleasures. We can withdraw as much as we like, but Babylon is in our pocket. And even if we take it out of our pocket, Babylon is in our heart. That is where everything must converge on Christ.
• The author does not present these heroes for us to admire them, but so that we will persevere by looking to the Lord, the Invisible One toward whom Moses turned his eyes. Hebrews 12 describes a race in a stadium, surrounded by "so great a cloud of witnesses": "let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith" (Hebrews 12:1-2).
• The cross shows true hope: sharing in God's glory after following Christ's course. It shows true exile: Christ left the glory of heaven to endure shame in our place. It shows true resistance: that of Jesus, who refused everything the world could offer him, for the sake of the joy that was set before him.
• All these witnesses did not receive what was promised them, "God having provided some better thing concerning us" (Hebrews 11:39-40). "This is the engine of our perseverance, the heart of our hope, the foundation of our resistance."
• In his closing prayer, the preacher thinks in particular of those who are suffering: this text was written for them, so that in the trial they would turn their eyes away from their difficulties and fix them on Jesus. He asks God to nurture in us a spirit of resistance and to help us "suffer well" in the eyes of the world, with the assurance of being delivered from sin and being with him forever.

Key Takeaways

• Faith is a new way of seeing the world, which leads to a new way of living in it. It is not blind: it has its eyes fixed on God and on his Word.
• Like Noah, Christian hope obeys God before seeing what he has promised. It is neither vague optimism nor self-suggestion.
• Like Abraham, the Christian is a stranger and pilgrim on earth. He avoids three traps: withdrawal, violence and compromise.
• Like Moses, resistance is born of the fear of God: we refuse compromise and accept suffering, because we believe the best is yet to come.
• The ultimate model is Jesus, who endured the cross for the sake of the joy set before him. Our gaze turns toward him.

Personal Application

1. Do you read the Word of God in the light of the world you see, or do you look at the world in the light of the Word of God?
2. Do you feel perfectly at home in this life? What reminds you that your homeland is elsewhere?
3. Which of the three traps is lurking closest to you right now: withdrawal, violence or compromise?
4. What guides your decisions when no one is watching you, or when obeying God costs you in your career, your comfort or your reputation?
5. In what area are you living as if the appetizer were the whole meal? What would change if you believed the best is yet to come?

Verses Cited

• Hebrews 11
• Hebrews 10:24-36
• Hebrews 12:1-2
• Hebrews 13:14
• 2 Corinthians 5:7
• 2 Peter 3:3-4
• John 17:15-18
• Jeremiah 29:4-7
• Exodus 1:17
• 1 Peter 2:11

Frequently Asked Questions

What is faith according to Hebrews 11?

Hebrews 11:1 defines it as "assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen." For the preacher, faith is not a private religious opinion: it is a new way of seeing the world, which leads to a new way of living in the world. It is not blind, because it has its eyes fixed on God and on the testimony he has left in his Word.

Why does the Bible say Christians are strangers and pilgrims on the earth?

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived in tents, confessing "that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth" (Hebrews 11:13). Peter takes up the same image for Christians (1 Peter 2:11). Our ultimate homeland is elsewhere, in the heavenly Jerusalem. That is why, says the preacher, not feeling at home in this life is normal, and feeling perfectly at home in it is a bad sign.

What are the three traps for a Christian living in exile?

The first is withdrawal: cutting yourself off from the world so as not to be contaminated, whereas Jesus sends us into the world as ambassadors. The second is violence: wanting to build the kingdom by force, whereas Jeremiah tells the exiles to seek the welfare of Babylon. The third is compromise: watering down your convictions to keep your job or your reputation. The answer of Hebrews 11 is the resistance of Moses, grounded in the fear of God.