By Faith Believers Suffer

Please turn to Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11. It’s good to see some here this morning that you’ve been praying for—continue to pray for the Lord’s people who are facing physical infirmity and surgery and recovery. Hebrews 11—we are in the midst of a study of Hebrews. We are as far as verse 35 of chapter 11, and we want to go a little further this morning. It’s a tremendous book, full of encouragement. It has some challenging portions, but largely it’s full of real application. It deals with the challenges of a world that is at odds with God’s people and keeps reminding us that the answer for us in a hostile world is the gospel itself. Keep looking on to Jesus, chapter 12, verse 2, and keep resting in the finished work—not going back to anything. Nothing can substitute. Everything is, at best, secondary to the finished work of Jesus Christ.

And so we’re going to read again from verse 32. We looked at verse 32 before. In fact, would you do something for me? Would you go back to chapter 10? I want to just have a final thought in my study before the morning service that I might read from verse 32 of chapter 10—a few verses—and then we’ll skip into chapter 11. But Hebrews 10—I want to refresh your mind with the language here from verse 32:

Hebrews 10, verse 32:
“But call to remembrance the former days, in which after ye were eliminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions, partly whilst ye were made a gazing stock, both by reproaches and afflictions, and partly whilst ye became companions of them that were so used. He had compassion of me and my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance. Cast not away, therefore, your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward, for ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of God ye might receive the promise.”

And then go to chapter 11, verse 32:
“And what shall I more say, for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthah, and David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again, and others were tortured—not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy; they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. These all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise—God, having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.” Amen.

This, beloved, is the eternal word of the eternal God, which you are to receive, believe, and obey. And the people of God said, Amen.

Let’s pray.

Lord, help us now in Thy Word. We come to it desirous that we might hear the still small voice of God, that from the youngest to the eldest there would be an appropriate word for the occasion. We ask, O God in heaven, that the Spirit would take the word and drive it home into every heart. Should there be some here not saved, that even this passage would alarm them and save them—Oh God, that there would be, for those who are Thy people, a real work in which this Word takes root and beds in and becomes more than something they’re simply acquainted with, but something that gets into their very soul and becomes something they can reflect upon through the trials of this life.

I surrender all trust in my own ability. I cannot give a word to this people. And so, God, in Jesus’ name, we claim the promised Holy Ghost—please, an empty vessel filled with Thy Spirit. Let me be blessed as people with an experience of hearing from their God, we pray, in our Savior’s name, Amen.

A great Baptist preacher that I often reference, Charles Spurgeon, once said in a sermon, “God had one Son without sin, but He never had a Son without trial.” There was a time when the church knew this better than she does today—a time when Fox’s Book of Martyrs was one of the best sellers in the English-speaking world—because saints tried to grapple with the experience of suffering in this life. And we’re not so focused upon trying to live out some triumphalistic experience, but realize we live in a fallen world, and the primary challenge is staying faithful and enduring through the sufferings of this life.

I am not here to denigrate aspirations to do a great work for God. Go, go—whatever you put your hand to, whatever door God opens for you, pray that His blessing would be upon your labors and the work of your hands. Yet, I do not want us to live without the Spirit-inspired balance that we are given in the Word of God, because we have a proclivity within our nature to tend to extremes. And some get through life by ignoring every trial, acting like it’s not there, and believing no matter what that everything will be better—and not really doing so necessarily by looking at God’s Word, just telling themselves it will be fine in the end. And others, of course, tend to have a more negative disposition, more pessimistic, and in which case, it doesn’t matter what’s going on in their life—they’re always looking, “Yes, but it won’t last; it’ll not be there forever; it’s going to turn out bad eventually,” and so on, and they lean that way.

God’s Word gives us in the very section that we have read here this morning—verses 32 and following—the emphasis of the victory of faith, and seeing things happen that otherwise would be impossible without God; that some get to witness the seas split and the walls fall, but others do not. Others live in life enduring tremendous trial and difficulty, and there’s a need for us to have the balance of both—of looking to God to bless His gospel and subdue kingdoms by the preaching of His Word, while recognizing that even if that doesn’t happen in your life, it doesn’t by default mean you have failed.

There’s an air in which, again, as I’ve touched on a few weeks ago and I touch on again, there is a desire to see great things accomplished, especially here in our own land, in our own nation. You’re looking for wonderful things to happen, hoping for the best—and I get it. But it needs to be always kept in balance. You don’t look across at other places; for example, from the platform of being in America and looking at pretty much any other nation in the world, you can look on and, in a sense, you can look down. Economic prosperity, comforts of life, modernity—you can pretty much look down on almost any other nation to some degree or other. And you can look at their deficiencies, their lack of advancement in technology or whatever the case might be, and have a sense of pride and say it’s because of this, that, and the other that we have this—and this is where we are.

Now, we can miss the glory even of the church in a land where it is tremendously difficult—in a land that is hard—where you actually might have to suffer for being a Christian, maybe even to the ending of your own life. The focus of this section is, of course, very relevant to the initial recipients of this epistle. The Apostle Paul is presenting to these first-century Jews the realities of what they’re going through, drawing from history and what they know of their past to encourage them. They have already gone through that—which is why I decided to read a little section from chapter 10—because they’d already endured a great fight of afflictions and various other forms of difficulty, the reproach of being believers, and standing with those who were suffering for Christ. And so they faced, in the present, certainly in the possibility for the future, being ostracized and opposed. And yet our Lord Jesus told us, if we are going to follow Him, “There is a taking up of the cross and following Him.” And in that passage of Luke 14, where He says that, He goes on to talk about the need of the man: if he’s going to build a tower, he has to count the cost. And these believers ought to have been aware of the fact that being a Christian was not necessarily going to make life easy for them. They had taken Jesus Christ as the Messiah, believed on Him. Now they’re facing persecution, and the Lord warned them. And Peter—or rather Paul, as he went around establishing those churches in regions that he went to—confirmed them, encouraging them in the fact that they must, Acts 14, through much tribulation, enter the kingdom of God. It’s not through ease.

So how do we face these trials, these difficulties, the providence that we experience in which we may not see great triumphant things occur, but rather we might be tested to the very point of death? Well, by faith—we understand we are to relinquish any illusion that this world will be comfortable. We are to fix our eyes upon eternity and look on to Jesus, chapter 12, verse 2, constantly recognizing that in Him we see the embodiment of so much that brings glory to God, including suffering. And if that is the path for you or for me, there is a great eternal weight of glory laid up for those who suffer for Christ.

So, come what may, we are to believe. And so this morning, we’re looking at how, by faith, believers endure suffering. They may enjoy success, but they also endure suffering. And I have two main heads here—simply this, we will see this morning. It’s seen in their persecution, and it’s seen in their deprivation—their persecution and deprivation. And we’ll look at these two main heads and see a number of points beneath each of them.

First, as we consider that scene in their persecution, we see that faith rejects compromise. It rejects compromise. Look at verse 35. We looked at the opening section of verse 35 last time: “women received their dead raised to life again.” We come now to, “and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection.” So again, in contrast with what others have seen—these great victories, these great miracles, others with the same evangelical faith and trust in their God and looking on to Jesus are cast into dungeons, stretched upon the rack, and torn to pieces. They’re tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection.

The word translated for “tortured” here is something the musicians may be familiar with—a tampini or tampane—like where you have a drum that is illustrated for what they are doing and what’s happening to these people. I don’t know if the idea is that the way they were suffering and afflicted is like a drum, or the way the skin was stretched across the drum to make the sound—why that word is associated with it, I don’t know all the history there—but it is the idea I think of: these believers being beaten in some way or used in some way, as a person might use a drum; misused, tortured, afflicted, hurt, and put upon them such suffering as may be beyond our imagination. And of course, in doing so, you can see in the context that they’re being tortured not for the purpose of simply bringing them to death, but they’re offering them a form of deliverance—they’re being tortured with the hope that they might relent. The goal isn’t just to see them tortured; it is to torture them that they might come to a different position, that they might stand in a different place, that they might give up their convictions.

Now many of the commentators will reflect that this is likely—and again, you can’t know for sure—but many of them have a consensus that this is likely going back to the Maccabean period, where the Jews under great persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes suffered tremendously. And in 2 Maccabees chapter 6—and I know we don’t have the Apocrypha in our Bibles, and there’s good reason for that, and yet there’s still a form of history there, and even the early Protestants would have kept the Apocrypha in their Bibles simply for some of the historic relevance and aspect—there’s a reason why it’s not in Scripture, but it still gives us some light about what happened during that period of 400 years between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

And one of the details given concerns the persecution of the Jews. One of the narratives given concerns an old Jew, Eleazar, who’s brought to this experience where he’s being told to relent and give up, and the way it’s being done is, “eat pork.” He’s being offered, encouraged to eat pork, and he refuses to do so because it violates his conscience and the law of God—and he won’t do it. And in order, again, to get the outcome—in order to achieve something that they were after, to just see him publicly relent in some fashion, behind closed doors—the story is that they told him, they encouraged him to, well, “we’ll change the meat,” something that you in good conscience can eat. And he refused to do so. He refused because he perceived it to be his hypocrisy before God—to portray as if he had relented, as if he had eaten something that he shouldn’t, and also then as a negative example to those watching on, who would see a man who had lived his life faithfully before God and now, at the very end, can be persuaded to give it up.

So he refused and paid the price. We can think of more recent times—what feels like many years ago now. We can think of more recent times in history. As I was reading through this, I was thinking, again, of the two Margarets. If you don’t know that story of the killing times in Scotland’s history during the mid and latter part of the 1600s, we have a story—and some of the children here should know about it. Be aware of the two Margarets. We had an older Margaret; she was in her 60s, and she was put out and placed at the shore where the tide would come in, knowing that the tide would eventually come in and drown her. And there was another Margaret, Margaret Wilson, only 18 years of age, and she was placed also. She was placed further in, in the hope that as the young Margaret watched the older Margaret and would see her drown, she would relent in time so that she could be rescued. That young girl, 18 years of age, watched the waves in the water come over the head of the older woman—drowned there for her faith in Jesus Christ. She came to the same fate, not accepting deliverance.

Beloved, this is what has happened through time, through the history of the church. There are periods in God’s providence in which the church is called to suffer greatly, tremendously. Some of the stories, if you have not read them, you will scarcely believe that it actually occurred—that man can be so cruel. I’m not just talking about how the Romans treated believers in the first century and the stories of them being sported before the crowds. I’m talking even in recent times. Of course, in our Protestant Reformation—and the details given to us there, the Spanish Inquisition and other times and periods where people suffered tremendously—details I wouldn’t even recount in a public fashion like this—but it’s happening even now. There are believers even now being beheaded and suffering for Christ, and so it shall be to the end. Believers will suffer. And so they’re tortured, not accepting deliverance. They will not give up on Christ. Apostasy is not in their mind. They cannot do it.

And so, again, you go back to chapter 10. You see what the apostle says, reflecting on what they already had gone through. They had endured a great fight of afflictions—verse 32. I’ll not read it all, but one of the things they were doing—verse 34—“knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance. Cast not away, therefore, your confidence.” That’s what these believers, whom the apostle is referring to, refused to do. They would not cast away their confidence. They would not give up. They would stand fast, no matter what. And why do they do so? Well, look at verse 35 of chapter 11: “not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection.” Now, there are different ideas about what this refers to—what the better resurrection is. Maybe, because, again, it relates to torture and suffering; maybe it relates to the better future resurrection of martyrs. And the way in which martyrs are heralded—and there are passages that uphold that—the suffering saints who actually give up their lives for Christ receive a particular favor and reward from the Lord: a better resurrection. That may be the case, but I think what’s more likely is the contrast with what proceeds in verse 35. A woman received their dead raised to life again. There was a certain reward there. And then you think of the women and their sons being raised to life, those passages in the Old Testament, Old Testament resurrection. And there’s a certain reward there. But that resurrection—those resurrections—were temporary. Those individuals would die again. And so the sense of the better resurrection is that these tortured saints who would not accept deliverance were looking for the resurrection that would bring them into eternal experience and glory. They weren’t looking for a temporary deliverance; they weren’t desirous of something that would just be for a momentary time, as it were. They are looking forward, expecting and believing that there is coming another resurrection that will be permanent and final for the people of God. And I think that’s the emphasis.

It’s a sense of contrast. Yes, it’s a wonderful thing when, by faith, women received their dead raised to life again. It’s a wonderful thing—no denying it. I’m not going to make light of it as if it’s not. It’s by faith—real faith, genuine, God-given, Spirit-given faith. They received their dead raised to life again, but that same faith in others brought them to a place where they would not accept deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection—one superior to those who in this life may have been raised to life again. A better resurrection where there’s no termination of that resurrection. And so, again, you see how faith is helping them to see what otherwise they cannot see. That faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” They’re not looking to something merely material, but they’re seeing the promises of God and believing what God has said and promised to His people.

So here we have these believers. In a position—you might say—you talk about those earlier believers; they had mountain-moving faith. And they subdued kingdoms and so on and so forth—stopped the mouths of lions. You say, “That was mountain-moving faith.” Well, what do you say about the faith of those who follow? In verse 35, these are believers who could have moved mountains without faith but refused to do so because to do so would have been to compromise—the mountain of their own survival. And they refused because they couldn’t do it without compromise. This is given as an example for you and for me and for all believers. Paul is driving into their hearts a great crowd of witnesses—those that they respect and love—what they have done for Christ in the past. And he is warning them again in the present: this is what it may require of you as well. The world beckons with ease and pleasure. It promises deliverance from the fire, from the torture. But remember, fear not him that can destroy the body—fear him that can destroy both body and soul in hell, as Jesus warned. So you have your own trials. And you may have, may not look like this, but you’ll have your own experience when the furnace is turned up seven times hotter. And what are you gonna do? Comparatively, in our own age, it’s quite hard to fathom that we would need encouragement in this regard. Given your own context, what might you suffer? Loss of a friend here and there, a family member that might not speak to you, lose a job maybe, neighbors that might treat you differently since the time you tried to tell them the gospel. You might suffer a little suffering like that.

People give up Christ for all sorts of reasons. This is a faith that would rather die in the flames than live in dishonor—a faith that cannot be bribed. A faith that, even when tortured, will never bow the knee to compromise. It’s a real thing. Don’t compromise. Don’t compromise on Christ, on the gospel. I want you to see the material point: you say, “Well, that means I’ll never compromise on anything at all.” Well, I hope your marriage goes really well and all your relationships are without any form of compromise, and you can run your business or be in a business in that way. No, there’s a place for Godly compromise—negotiation—but this is about the person and work of Jesus Christ. It’s about what you believe and how that belief shapes your decisions and your actions. We’re not talking about preferences. We’re not talking about certain expediency. We’re talking about: if I deny this, I’m denying Jesus Christ and the gospel. So faith rejects compromise.

In this persecution also, faith overcomes ridicule—overcomes ridicule. Verse 36: “others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings.” Not all persecution comes with a sword. Some comes with a sneer or a word of scorn. And sometimes the world knows that the best weapon it has on a given occasion is not violence, but shame. Well, shame them. Make them feel bad. I mean, really—that’s been what Christians have been experiencing in the West, and certainly in America in the last 20, 30 years. It really has been: try to shame them. Make them feel ashamed of their stance on marriage and sexuality and other things. Just try to shame. And so you have this pressure. You have constant messaging going out there into a world, fed by a media that is trying to spread a contagion of ideology that is counter to God’s Word. And you’re sitting there and you’re hearing it, and if you were brought up in a Christian home and under God’s Word, you meet with a certain resistance there. You say, “I know. See, in the early years, I knew this wasn’t right.” But it begins to break you down. And what happens is, as the collective becomes more conditioned, then it becomes harder because you feel more shame by standing on that old path, that old ground. And then the real clincher—the real one that breaks most people—is when one of your friends or family members exposes one of these contrary views and makes your expression of love to them conditional on accepting their new position. You can say, “I love you, but I can’t go with you,” and they reject that love. They will only accept the love on the condition that you accept their belief or behavior. And so what happens? Well, people give up. They relent. They don’t want to lose their friends. And so this is the modern form of trials of cruel mockings. This is what is pumped through the media continually, always coming at us from every direction.

And so they know—they know they can’t get away with outright violence against the church today in America, at least not now—but we can shame them, make them feel foolish, make them believe they’re the only one; maybe they’ll give up. And so you join those like Jeremiah, who was laughed at, scorned, and mocked—or, more to the point, our Lord Jesus Christ, who was also mocked continually, misrepresented, spat upon, and taunted with the cruel language of men. And so this is more likely to be what you will endure, at least in our present time—the mockery. And you’re not to marvel when they hit you. And you have to come; they will mock you until you give up. They will mock you until you give in.

And so you can see this. You can see it in the Jewish community. You take that Jewish community—those who were tied into a Jewish community, going back as far as they could calculate, all the way back to Abraham—and you say, “This is our lineage.” And now, if a family member who is believing that Jesus is the Christ—and the family itself does not have the power, the authority to do something that might actually threaten their life—but they can mock. And they can use their harshest language and try to bring them around through shame. The child of God awakened to this. This is going on. No doubt in the very history of this congregation there are those who have given up because of this very thing. They’ve given up positions. They say, “I used to go to this church, the church I was brought up in, or whatever—but I no longer believe that now. I’ve gotten away from that.” As if—well, have you checked the Scripture? It’s not about the church. Forget the label on the church you went to. Go and test it with God’s Word. There are people now that are playing games with their own conscience, trying to fashion Scripture after their own making, making an idol of their own opinions, and they have been duped by the devil, by society, by their own carnality.

Believers who stand strong and say, “I love you, but I can’t go down that path,” have been mocked. Some of you know exactly what I mean—some even to the point of scourging. These cruel ways in which people are afflicted throughout time. Again, Jeremiah stands as an example; others could be given as well. What does a Christian do? The Christian listens and hears all this scorn. And what does faith do? Faith rises over the language of scorn and mockery and hears one day, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Faith also withstands execution; it rejects compromise; it overcomes ridicule; it withstands execution. Again, verse 36: scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonments—they were stoned, they were sawn asunder. We’re tempted, we’re slain with the sword. It’s awful, isn’t it, reading this? By faith they did this. By faith they were stoned. By faith they were imprisoned. By faith they were sawn asunder. Tradition tells us that this may have been the end of the prophet Isaiah—we don’t know that for sure, but there is certainly a strong indication from tradition that that is the case. Sawn asunder. Many of the prophets died, many of them. Our Lord Jesus constantly condemns Jerusalem for that very thing—Jerusalem that killeth the prophets. God keeps sending men to tell you the truth, to call you to repentance, to encourage you in the right path—and you end their life. So it was so that the Lord Jesus would follow the same path. They would not go down without a fight. They would not let one preach to them and declare, condemn, and pronounce His woes upon them without seeing Him brought to an end—not sawn asunder, but crucified.

So you can think of it—I mentioned Isaiah, Zechariah (who was murdered between the temple and the altar), Stephen who was stoned, even in the New Testament, and others as well. I can mention James—people who suffered, many of them suffered. So it is, and this is what happens. These bonds, these imprisonments, these stonings, these sawings asunder, slayings with the sword—all of these things. The world afflicts the people of God, and the faith of these people withstands execution—the threat to their life—and they just stand there. They will not give up. They will not give in. It’s powerful.

And you read the martyrs of the past. You read the saints who suffered so greatly. You think, what does it mean to have triumphant faith? Yes, we can recount Moses and the parting of the sea, and Joshua and the fall of Jericho, and other amazing things that may have occurred. But the real, the real expression of faith that triumphs when opposed so fiercely is in this latter section. And that was what was most relevant to those the Apostle was addressing.

Again, you’re not going to face this—this is not happening right now. Things can change, I know that. That’s not what we expect in the next months and years. Yet you ask yourself, “This is a real part of church history. This happened many times and still goes on today. What will happen if it were me? At what point does my faith break and be found to shout?” Now, I do not want you to go away bothering yourself about whether or not you know you will stand under such trial. I don’t want—you can assess it, but I don’t obsess over it—because ultimately there’s strength given in the moment. There has to be. You see those occasions where some did—initially they were brought to give up, to recant—and later offered the ultimate sacrifice and the giving of their life. And they had another opportunity. And they withstood execution—that’s the kind of faith. You’re praying, “Lord, increase my faith to pass these exams, or to secure this job, or for this relationship.” We know all these things are very positive, and I’m not about to tear them away from your breast. Right, go ahead, pray over those things. But do you ever pray about your faith when you know the people you work with are trying to press you and push you in another direction? Do you pray that your faith would stand? “Give me the faith of the martyr. Give me the unrelenting commitment to my Lord, no matter what. Help us.”

It’s seen also in their deprivation—not only the persecution, but their deprivation. You see, if the devil cannot destroy with things like death, stoning, and so on and so forth, or imprisonment—if he can’t come at that angle, where often it’s the authorities that are at work, the authorities who come and you see these periods of persecution where he utilizes those in control and in power to come after the people of God—but there are other expressions that can be seen in that way as well as just being ostracized from your community. And so faith also braves material poverty. Faith braves material poverty. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. It’s a kind of scene of having nothing—a depiction of you not belonging anywhere, nowhere to live. You have Elijah, for example, having to go out into the wilderness, depending on God to provide; or David as well in this time, fleeing from Saul and other occasions where you have this man who’s running and trying to find a home, a place to stay—he’s just wandering about. It’s not like there’s a Walmart and you go and buy clothes. It’s like you’re having to—you can’t even go to the marketplace. You can’t be found in those places. You have to find animals, get their skins, and so on. That’s the kind of scene that you have there at the end of verse 37.

And so, you’re in this place of poverty where you have nothing—these aren’t people that have somewhere to lay their head. They’re like the Lord Jesus—they have no home; they have no address. And yet these are God’s men. They have no golden crowns upon their heads, no purple robes upon their shoulders. They’re destitute—but it’s not because they were lazy. They didn’t bring this on themselves. No, they’ve been faithful. Their enemies have eliminated their other options; they’ve taken from them a normal way of living. And so they come after them and afflict them—not because they’re criminals, but because they would not bow to the gods of the world, because they would not give up their faithfulness to the true living God. And they find themselves tormented. But they will not surrender—destitute, afflicted, tormented. Their minds are being broken. The pressure of it affects them. If you were to meet them 20 years afterwards, they’d be a very different person. I can imagine if there were those who remembered Moses at 40 who left Egypt, and Moses who came back at 80—if anyone could remember the young man, full of promise and ability at 40 years of age, meeting the older, more mature man at 80 years of age, they would say, “I don’t recognize him.” He is not the same person. He spent his time wandering, filled with a sense of hope and expectation, but he would not— as we have read here in this chapter—he would not give himself to the riches of Egypt. He would not give up for the promise of wealth and prosperity; he wanders around in the wilderness. These are those who would not trade their standing before God for any comfort.

So they brave this material poverty, and I just wonder about it—are we willing? Are we ready? Will we do it? Would we, for something that pertains to the marrow of God’s Word—the marrow of the gospel—be fired for something that pertains to the marrow of the gospel? Would we? Because you start calculating all the ramifications of that. You start seeing: if I go through with this, I lose a job. This isn’t a good time to lose a job; jobs aren’t aplenty. There aren’t many options. You start assessing it all. You realize your options are narrowing. Your mortgage needs paid; your responsibilities don’t go away. And you’re calculating all of this. Would you? Would you be willing? Let them fire you. Let poverty come if it must. If affliction is going to press me down that way, that’s fine. If my wallet is thinned, then so be it. I will brave material poverty.

We want the Christ who always leads us in green pastures and beside still waters. We want the imagery of peace and rest constantly, but it’s not—He will lead you in the green pastures and beside still waters with a cross on your back. And so you suffer. And I worry—I worry that some have more of the faith of Judas than of Job. That was the last straw for Judas, wasn’t it? Watching that money, that box, that alabaster— that box of ointment that could have been sold for 300 pence—that was the last straw. It was after that, seeing he could have got his little piece of that, that he immediately not only accused the woman but left that place and found the Jewish leaders and conspired to deliver Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. That’s his little portion, his little percentage of what he missed out on. And I wonder—some believers today, do you have the faith that this passage encourages and speaks of? Faith braves worldly rejection—not only material poverty, but worldly rejection.

Verse 38: “of whom the world was not worthy.” Oh, what could be said here? This is the Spirit’s verdict on suffering saints. The world drove them out. The world sought to end their life. The world cursed them, spat upon them, and said, “Away with them.” But heaven says something entirely different. The world is not worthy of these. The kings of the earth sit upon their thrones, thinking themselves great. The rich men of the world fill their barns, thinking themselves wise, and the celebrities of today are enveloped in their own power and admiration—but the day is coming. God will laugh at their calamity. He will mock when their fear cometh.

And so, we want to be accepted—but by whom? By whom? Where is your desire for being accepted? If you want the reception of this world, you can have it, but in doing so you may give up acceptance with God. And these believers wouldn’t do that. They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t give in. They understand that the worth of being right with God is more than anything else that could be measured. They would not trade the smile of God for the applause of men. They were true disciples indeed, and this, beloved, is what you’re called to. When you say, “I will have Jesus”—when you’re baptized, when you’re given to Him, when you’re wholly His—you’re saying, “Come what may, it is Christ for me.” The world may throw away God’s saints like garbage, but God will clothe them with glory.

Finally, faith braves social isolation. Social isolation—they wandered in deserts and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. You’re multiplying terms here—you get the idea. Social isolation. Again, like Elijah, like David, like others that could be mentioned—even John, who later was to be put upon the Isle of Patmos, probably after this letter was written. Left alone, cut off, sometimes hunted, driven from their homes, banished from society, forced to dwell in desolation, just trying to survive—this is the reward of faithfulness. This is what it means to put Jesus Christ first. You may be driven into a literal desert. You may be driven far from those you loved, those you cared about—those you may have—and yet they may turn on you, and they may abandon you in the hour of need. “Oh, put not your trust in princes, beloved.” Some of you know it. You know the feeling of betrayal. You know it keenly. You know the feeling. Someone, if they could, if they had the power to do so, would drive you into this destitute place, leave you in a desert, abandon you.

But there’s one—oh, there’s one. Just flip over, and we’ll close with this. Just flip over to chapter 13. See what Paul says, as he is driving home application to their hearts. Verse 5 of chapter 13: “Let your behavior, your conversation, be without covetousness.” Oh, why is that, Rylan? We’ll get to it. Why is it? Let your whole life be governed without covetousness. Why? Because covetousness will cause you to give up on Christ. Covetousness is what you say when you think, “Oh no, if I lose my salary, that’s the end. No, if I lose Christ, that’s the end. If I lose my salary, it’s poverty—but not spiritual poverty—if you lose out in Jesus Christ.” And so, you have to have your life holding loosely the things of this world. Let your conversation be without covetousness and be content with such things as you have, for He hath said, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee,” so that we may boldly say, “The Lord is my helper. I will not fear what man shall do unto me.” That— that is the victory cry of the people of God. That’s what those saints understood. That’s what those believers, who were sawn in half, tortured—you can take it—your worst, your worst is to take my life. God’s worst is to destroy my soul eternally, forever. You try your best. “The Lord is my helper.” Oh, Christian, your faith needs to grow—it needs to soar into these eternal realms and seize upon these truths. And you need to look on to Jesus and see the suffering Lamb who, through His suffering and even crucifixion and the mockery of the world, triumphed in purchasing your salvation. Now He’s in heaven, and that’s where you’ll be with Him—if you’re faithful, even unto death.

May God help us. Let’s bow together in prayer.

Oh, Christian, just settle your heart and let that word set in. Take it with you. It’s the Lord’s Word for you. The doctor may come and say, “I have bad news,” and you respond, in the hope of the gospel, that death is just a portal into the very presence of my Redeemer—to live as Christ, to die, is gain. Lord, help us. Bless us with such faith. We do desire to see success in the kingdom of Christ, but we desire even more to not be found wanting when we suffer the pressures of a persecuting and Christless world. We pray that we might be found faithful to the end. Gird up all that we need. Prepare us. May we come and receive from Thy hand the strength that we need. Deliver us from looking inward for help. Keep us from looking to men for help. Keep pointing us to Jesus Christ for help. Oh, what a wonder, our Lord Jesus, who, though He was rich, for our sakes became poor. We, through His poverty, might be rich. So help us then to live in the glory of the Lamb. So help us now—bless us, keep this word hidden in our hearts, that we might not sin against Thee. Keep all here from apostasy, please, dear God. And should there be some playing with fire—should there be, even today, in some fashion, naively toying with something that might destroy them—today may their conscience be pricked and may they be pulled back into being near to Thee. Hear our prayers, receive our thanks.

Now unto Him that can keep you from falling and present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. To the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power both now and ever. Amen.