Hebrews 11:1-16

City of Faith

The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is well known to those familiar with the Bible as the faith chapter. It starts out defining faith and goes on to expound on some of the heroes of the faith.

“Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

First of all without hope there is no faith. Faith starts with hope. What do you hope for? Is that which you hope for a godly desire? Did God give it to you? If the answer to those last two questions is, “Yes,” then you are ready for faith to kick in. You should start to live your life in confident expectation of of that hope. If the answer to those last two questions is, “No,” then you can psych yourself up all you want and try to do some magic, but there is nothing of biblical faith there.

Faith is being certain of what we do not see. Here is the tricky part. Faith is being certain of what we don’t see even if we never see it in this life. Some of the things we will see here but others we won’t and that is just the way it is. If we aren’t good with that then what we have isn’t the kind of faith the writer of Hebrews is talking about.

Noah saw the deliverance of his family through the deluge. He did not see a glorious new world after the flood. We were still (Noah included) a fallen race. Abraham saw the miraculous birth of Isaac. He did not see the manifestation of the City with Foundations whose architect and builder is God. 

“All these people were still living by faith when they died.” There have been believers who ave seen great things but no one has yet seen what we are really looking for. Every person who has been healed has also died. Every building that has been built has, or will be, destroyed. But that is okay. We are aliens and strangers here. This isn’t our country, our eternal country. 

We look, no, we long for a better country. We are looking for the city that at present only faith can see. So God is not ashamed to be our God, and we made live in full assurance that He has prepared such a city for us.