But Others – When All Else Seems to Fail

Introduction: I started the year with Immanuel, God with us, then last week, ‘Getting Rid of Stuff’, and now I will spend the next two weeks to speak to you about the role of Faith in our lives.

11:1-2, ‘Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen: it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. Through their faith, the people in days old earned a good reputation’.

11:33-35, ‘Women received their loved ones back again from death. But others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free. They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection. 36 Some were jeered at, and their backs were cut open with whips. Others were chained in prisons. 37 Some died by stoning, some were sawed in half,1 and others were killed with the sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated’. (Heb. 11:35 NLT)

Transition: Now we pick up from here to verse 35b, ‘

NLT  Hebrews 11:35b-40 ‘But others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free. They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection. 36 Some were jeered at, and their backs were cut open with whips. Others were chained in prisons. 37 Some died by stoning, some were sawed in half,1 and others were killed with the sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated. 38 They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground. 39 All these people earned a good reputation

because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. 40 For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us’.

Question: So, the challenge and the question are, ‘what does faith look like when things don’t go our way or as we hope as believers?

I told you last week that, ‘There is no problem too big, no matter too complex, no circumstance too impossible, no burden too big or heavy’!

The answer is, genuine or true Faith still looks like faith!

There is no problem too big, no matter too complex, no circumstance too impossible, no burden too big or heavy!

[Others were]

1. But… Others:

1.  Tortured

Etumpanistheesan. This is a word concerning the meaning of which the critics are not agreed. Tumpanon signifies a stick, or baton, which was used in bastinadoing criminals.

And tumpanizoo signifies to beat violently and is thus explained by the best lexicographers.

• After considering what others have written on this subject, I am inclined to think that the bastinado on the soles of the feet is what is here designed.
• That this was a most torturing and dangerous punishment, we learn from the most authentic accounts; and it is practiced among the Turks and other Mohammedans to the present day.

[Not accepting deliverance] This looks very like a reference to the case of the mother and her seven sons, mentioned 2 Macc 7:1, etc.

• Mocking and Scourging

And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment:

• It is more probable that it refers to public exhibitions of the people of God at idol feasts and the like; and Samson’s case before Dagon, when the Philistines had put out his eyes, is quite in point:

As to scourgings, this was a common way of punishing minor culprits: and even those who were to be punished capitally were first scourged. See the case of our Lord.

• Jesus himself was scourged and punished before being put to death.

• Bond and imprisonment
  
• Joseph was cast into prison;
• Jeremiah was cast into a dungeon full of mire, ch. 37:16, and ch. 38:6; and the
• Prophet Micaiah was imprisoned by Ahab, 1 Kings 22:27.

• Stoned and Sawn into Pieces
• As Zechariah, the son of Barachiah or Jehoida, was, between the altar and the temple; see the account, 2 Chron 24:21; and see the notes at Matt 23:35.
  
• And as Naboth the Jezreelite, who, on refusing to give up his father’s inheritance to a covetous king, because it had respect to the promise of God, was falsely accused and stoned to death; 1 Kings 21:1-14.

[They were sawn asunder]

• There is a tradition that the Prophet Isaiah was thus martyred.

In Yevamoth (a book in Rabbinical Literature, (books fol. 49, 2, it is thus written: “Manasseh slew Isaiah; for he commanded that he should be slain with a wooden saw. They then brought the saw, and cut him in two, and when the saw reached his mouth, his soul fled forth.”

Jerome and others mention the same thing; and among the Jews the tradition is indubitable.

5.Tempted

Epeirastheesan

I believe this word has vexed the critics more than any other in the New Testament. How being tempted can be ranked among the heavy sufferings of the primitive martyrs and confessors is not easy to discern, because to be tempted is the common lot of every godly man. This difficulty has induced learned men to mend the text by conjecture: Beza proposes

epurootheesan, they were branded. Junius, Piscator, and others, propose epurastheesan

• Burnt Alive (Mutilated)

They were burnt alive.

epreestheesan,

• they were mutilated-had different parts of their bodies lopped off.
• Sir Norton Knatchbull contends for epartheesan; cf. peripeiro; they were transfixed, or pierced through.
• Alberti thinks the original reading was espeirastheesan, they were strangled.
  

• Slain with / by the Sword

As in the case of the eighty-five priests slain by Doeg, see 1 Sam 22:18;

• and the prophets, of whose slaughter by the sword Elijah complains, 1 Kings 19:10.

Application: Probably the word means being beheaded, which was formerly done with a sword, and not with an axe; and in the east is done by the sword to the present day.

• They wandered about in sheepskins

Meelootais – Literal skins that were used to symbolize serving God and being ‘different’.

• In general, this was an upper garment; but, in the cases to which the apostle alludes, the sheepskin and goatskin seem to have been the only covering.

• Destitute

Husteroumenoi. In want of all the comforts and conveniences of life, and often of its necessaries.

• Afflicted In consequence of enduring such hardship.

1. Tormented

Kakouchoumenoi. Maltreated, harrassed, variously persecuted by those to whom they brought the message of salvation.

1.  They wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.

• Yet they were obliged to wander by day in deserts and mountains, driven from the society of men, and often obliged to hide by night in dens and caves of the earth, to conceal themselves from the brutal rage of men.
  
  
  • Perhaps he refers here principally to the case of Elijah, and the hundred prophets hidden in caves by Obadiah, and fed with bread and water. See 1 Kings 18:4.
  • David was often obliged thus to hide himself from Saul; 1 Sam 24:3, etc.

Transition: Yet, they obtained a good report through Faith!

1. The Good Report through Faith

And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise:

• [Having obtained a good report (having been witnessed to; see Heb 11:2) through faith]

• It was faith in God which supported all those eminent men who, in different parts of the world, and in different ages, were persecuted for righteousness’ sake.
• [Received not the promise] They all heard of the promises made to Abraham of a heavenly rest, and of the promise of the Messiah, for this was a constant tradition; but they died without having seen this Anointed of the Lord. Christ was not in any of their times manifested in the flesh; and of him who was the expectation of all nations, they heard only by the hearing of the ear. This must be the promise, without receiving of which the apostle says they died.

Hebrews 11:40

God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.

• [God having provided some better thing for us] This is the dispensation of the Gospel, with all the privileges and advantages it confers.

[That they without us should not be made perfect.] Believers before the flood, after the flood, under the law, and since the law, make but one church. The Gospel dispensation is the last, and the church cannot be considered as complete until the believers under all dispensations are gathered together. As the Gospel is the last dispensation, the preceding believers cannot be consummated even in glory until the Gospel Church arrive in the heaven of heavens.

There are a great variety of meanings put on this place, but the above seems the most simple and consistent. See Rev 6:11. “White robes were given unto everyone of them; and it was said unto them that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also, and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.” This time: and its blessings, are now upon the wing.

(from Adam Clarke’s Commentary, Electronic Database. Copyright © 1996, 2003, 2005, 2006 by Biblesoft, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Transition: When faith isn’t answered in miraculous or supernatural ways or ways we expect:

When things don’t happen:

1. Doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love us.
   
2. Doesn’t mean that God isn’t aware or care for us.
   
3. Doesn’t mean that God is mad at us.

What it does mean is that:

A. Faith is not only based on results.

B. God Can be Trusted.

C.      There is something greater than what we can see.

What does strong/biblical faith Look like:

1. Rooted & Grounded in confidence that God is able.
2. Established through experience and testimony
3. Continues to function and operate despite what is seen, heard, believed by others or scrutinize.