Hebrews 11:3-40
39All these were approved through their faith, but they did not receive what was promised,40 since God had provided something better for us, so that they would not be made perfect without us.
Ever wonder how the Old Testament and New Testament fit together?
It's easier than you think: when you finish reading Malachi, just start reading Matthew.
Ok, but conceptually. How do they mesh? What is the unity in diversity? How can we read one in light of the other?
The simple answer: Jesus.
The simple answer: Jesus.
All of the people mentioned in this 11th chapter of Hebrews lived and ended their lives prior to the Messiah being revealed as Jesus. Yet, they lived by faith. They believed God and it was credited to them as righteousness. How were these men and women saved? By grace through faith in God’s provision, just like us. Only we now have the benefit of knowing that provision has a specific name: Jesus.
Hebrews 11 lists a lot of things people did or refrained from doing. But the point is not to highlight that these acts earned them anything, but rather to reinforce that these actions were produced from an earnest faith in the One in whom they placed their hope.
They all died never seeing Jesus live in the flesh.
We all live never having seen Jesus live in the flesh.
They looked foreward.
We look backward (and foreward again).
All of us are united by a common faith in what God has done in Christ.
We look backward (and foreward again).
All of us are united by a common faith in what God has done in Christ.
These OT heroes were“not made perfect without us.”
There is only one way any one of us is made perfect and it is not unique to us. It is the same, consistent method by which God has granted righteousness and justification from the beginning of time:
It is by grace, through faith, in Jesus, for the glory of God, ALONE.
God does not make us into statues for museums.
He brings us to life to live for Him.
These heroes of the faith are not dead people we should admire.
They are not heirlooms we pass down to others.
They are alive in the presence of God now because they lived once by, for, through, and to God.
such a great reminder. and it really is an awe-inspiring thing to think about the fact that they were saved by a savior who showed up hundreds or thousands of years afterward.
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