All these people died in faith, without having received the things they were promised. However, they saw them and welcomed them from afar. And they acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and embraced them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
3 sermons cite this verse
… that here, there mentality. Again, the Bible emphasizes over and over again that there is our final destination. In Hebrews 11 verse 13, the writer says, we are nothing but strangers and exiles on the earth. In Colossians 3, 2, Paul says, set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on the earth. But here's the ironic thing. The more we focus on there, the more effective we become here. I think of the great Puritan preacher and leader, Jonathan Edwards. He understood that heaven is our true destination. He was consumed as he thought about heaven. At one point he wrote, to go to heaven fully to enjoy God is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Therefore it becomes us to spend this life only as a journey toward heaven, to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life. Why should we labor for or set our hearts on anything else but that which is our proper and true happiness. And yet, if you know anything about the life of Jonathan Edwards, you know how tremendously productive he was in the 50 some odd years God left him here on earth. All of the things he wrote and accomplished. I mean, it's mind boggling what he accomplished here. He was focused on there, but he was effective here when he was only 19 years of age. He sat down and wrote out 70 resolutions that would guide his life. How he would live here in light of what awaited him …
… having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on this earth. they didn't get what they waited for. They didn't get what they prayed for. They didn't get the outcome. And this is the reality. Our faith, our hope cannot depend on outcomes. Hebrews 11, they believed without receiving. Now, our culture doesn't do that, all right? Our culture ties faith to getting what you ask for, to getting what we want. This, this day, this flips that whole thing around because waiting well means not settling for less than what God wants for us. It means this. Waiting well means having the disposition. Waiting well means having the posture towards God that looks like the prophet Habakkuk. Another example from the Old Testament. Habakkuk was a prophet living at a time of Israel's demise, right? So here is the 12 tribes of Israel reunited, right? Under King David, under King Solomon. They divide under Solomon's son. …
And confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things, declare plainly that they seek a country. The apostle is here setting forth the excellencies of the grace of faith, by the glorious effects and happy issue of it in the saints of the Old Testament. He had spoken in the preceding part of the chapter particularly, of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Jacob. Having enumerated those instances, he takes notice that “these all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers, ” &c.—In these words the apostle seems to have a more particular respect to Abraham and Sarah, and their kindred, who came with them from Haran, and from Ur of the Chaldees, as appears by the 15th verse., where the apostle says, ” and truly if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.” Two things may be observed here: 1. What these saints confessed of themselves, viz. that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.—Thus we have a particular account concerning Abraham, “I am a stranger and a sojourner with you.” And it seems to have been the general sense of the patriarchs, by what Jacob says to Pharaoh. “And Jacob said to Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. ” “I am a stranger and a sojourner with thee, as all my fathers were.” …