"Hope for the Hopeless"
Hebrews 11 has as much to do with hope as it does with faith.
Download or email this sermon (~190k) Introduction
In this message, dear friends, we will be looking at Hebrews chapter 11; most of us are familiar with this passage of Scripture as the ‘faith chapter’. Indeed, we have a teaching on it called Emunah, the Judeo-Christian understanding of faith. Faith is certainly one main aspect of this chapter, but there is another main idea we are given here that will be our focus in this letter: Hope. Hebrews 11 has as much to do with hope as it does with faith.
Background of Hebrews
The book of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians in and around Jerusalem before the second Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. Up until this time, the believers had been persecuted almost exclusively by the Sanhedrin and the rabbinic establishment. In other words, there were believing Jews whom unbelieving Jews were persecuting. However, something began to happen at this time, probably around the time of Nero’s reign as Emperor of Rome. For the first time, believers were not only persecuted by unbelieving Jews, but also by the Roman government – or, at the very least, they were faced with the prospect of it. Nero is the emperor who killed both Peter and Paul, according to Eusebius and the historical record. There was a resulting danger of some people being tempted to go back under the law in order to escape persecution. Many of them were distraught because they foresaw the destruction and judgment coming on Jerusalem, remembering the prophecies of Daniel as well as of Jesus himself.
That is the backdrop against which the book of Hebrews was written. In it, therefore, the author addresses the situation in this chapter by dealing with two subjects: one is faith, the other is hope. What we will do here is to first look through this chapter, talking about the nuances and background, and then we’ll think about what it means for us.
Defining Biblical Faith
Beginning in verse 1 of Hebrews 11:
“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
The word “assurance” there, sometimes translated from Greek as “substance”, is hypostases. Faith and hope, we see here, go hand-in-hand. The Hebrew and Greek words are interesting; the word for “faith” in Greek is pistes or piston, and in Hebrew emunah. In both languages, this is not only the word for “faith”, but also for “faithfulness”. “The righteous shall live by faith” – “The righteous shall live by faithfulness”. “Without faith it is impossible to please God” – “Without faithfulness it is impossible to please God” Hebrews 11:6. We are saved by grace through faith, and also through faithfulness – beginning, of course, with the faithfulness of Jesus.
Defining Biblical Hope
But then there is “hope” – tigna. In Greek, elpis. Look once again at what it tells us: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for”. You cannot define biblical faith unless you do it in light of hope, nor can you define biblical hope unless you define it in light of faith. We think of “I hope” as being synonymous with “I wish”’. In the Bible, however, that is not the case; rather, hope in biblical terms is a future fact. We have faith in a future fact. Faith is the assurance of our hope – we are assured that it will happen. Religions cannot give people the assurance of salvation, and that includes unbiblical forms of Christianity. Only the Lord Jesus can give us that assurance.
We have a hope, and that hope is not ‘I wish this would happen’, but knowing and trusting that it will happen.
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Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.