Last week:

• The difference between living with your focus on
  • the visible world
  • vs. the invisible world of God’s promises
• and how this will change your life

Israel’s Heros of Faith

• Why were these people chosen and not others?
• Not stories of the great/pure/perfect leaders
• People who were marginalized by their culture because of their beliefs
  • e.g. Sarah, Noah, Moses (early years), Rahab…
• Often very imperfect in their faith
• But nevertheless God values them so highly because they treated his invisible promises as visible reality

Stories of Trusting God for what is not yet Visible

• If you have a firm hold of the true reality (by means of faith)

1. It will change what you value in this life
2. You will have a different attitude to your problems
3. You will have joy and hope for the future

Structure of Hebrews

Three reasons/motivations for Endurance:

• The context of this part of Hebrews
  What it means to have “Endurance”

1. Future Joy (12:1–3)
2. Faith developed & rewarded (11:1–12:1)
3. Specific Training (12:5–11)

Habakkuk 1:2–3 CSB

2. How long, Lord, must I call for help
   • and you do not listen
   or cry out to you about violence
   • and you do not save?
3. Why do you force me to look at injustice?
   • Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?

Habakkuk 2:1–3

1. I will take my stand at my watchpost
   • and station myself on the lookout tower.
   I will watch to see what he will say to me
   • and what I should reply about my complaint.
2. The Lord answered me:
   Write down this vision;
   • clearly inscribe it on tablets
   so one may easily read it.
3. For the vision is yet for its appointed time;
   • it testifies about the end—it will not lie.
   Though seems slow, wait for it,
   • it will certainly come and not be late.

Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (1970)

• Used children age four to six as subjects
• The children could eat the marshmallow, but if they waited for fifteen minutes without giving in to the temptation, they would be rewarded with a second marshmallow.

Reasons/Motivations to Endure

1. Anticipated Joy (Jesus)
2. Growing in Faith/Trust in God

2. Faith developed & rewarded

• Trust in God is like a muscle that needs developing
• A step of trust
• Abraham developed his “faith muscle”

Abraham’s growth in faith

• Stage 1 —leaving his homeland:

8. By faith, when he was called, Abraham obeyed, leaving for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he left, not knowing where he was going.

• Stage 2 —not putting down roots:

9. By faith he wandered in the land of promise, as if a foreign land, living in tents as did Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise.
10. awaiting therefore the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God

Abraham’s growth in faith cont’d

• Stage 3 —with Sarah waiting 25 years for a child:

11. By faith Sarah herself, even when she was past the age, also received power to conceive, because she considered the one who had promised to be faithful.
12. Therefore from one man, and indeed from one as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars in the sky and as innumerable as the sand on the seashore.

Abraham’s growth in faith cont’d

• Stage 4 —Being asked to sacrifice his son:

17. By faith Abraham offered up Isaac, being tested
    his only son, the one who had received the promises.
18. It was said to Abraham: “Through Isaac your descendants will be traced”.
19. He considered that God was able even to raise Isaac from the dead and so, in a prefigurement of what was to come, received him

Three reasons/motivations for Endurance:

• The context of this part of Hebrews
  What it means to have “Endurance”

1. Future Joy (12:1–3)
2. Faith developed & rewarded (11:1–12:1)
3. Specific Training (12:5–11)

Three Reasons/Motivations to Endure