Hebrews 11:13

Summary of the characteristic excellencies of the patriarchs' faith

died in faith--died as believers, waiting for, not actually seeing as yet their good things promised to them. They were true to this principle of faith even unto, and especially in, their dying hour (compare Heb 11:20).

These all--beginning with "Abraham" (Heb 11:8), to whom the promises were made (Gal 3:16), and who is alluded to in the end of Heb 11:13 and in Heb 11:15 [BENGEL and ALFORD]. But the "ALL" can hardly but include Abel, Enoch, and Noah. Now as these did not receive the promise of entering literal Canaan, some other promise made in the first ages, and often repeated, must be that meant, namely, the promise of a coming Redeemer made to Adam, namely, "the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." Thus the promises cannot have been merely temporal, for Abel and Enoch mentioned here received no temporal promise [ARCHBISHOP MAGEE]. This promise of eternal redemption is the inner essence of the promises made to Abraham (Gal 3:16).

not having received--It was this that constituted their "faith." If they had "received" THE THING PROMISED (so "the promises" here mean: the plural is used because of the frequent renewal of the promise to the patriarchs: Heb 11:17 says he did receive the promises, but not the thing promised), it would have been sight, not faith.

seen them afar off-- (Joh 8:56). Christ, as the Word, was preached to the Old Testament believers, and so became the seed of life to their souls, as He is to ours.

and were persuaded of them--The oldest manuscripts omit this clause.

embraced them--as though they were not "afar off," but within reach, so as to draw them to themselves and clasp them in their embrace. TRENCH denies that the Old Testament believers embraced them, for they only saw them afar off: he translates, "saluted them," as the homeward-bound mariner, recognizing from afar the well-known promontories of his native land. ALFORD translates, "greeted them." Jacob's exclamation, "I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord" (Gen 49:18) is such a greeting of salvation from afar [DELITZSCH].

confessed . . . were strangers--so Abraham to the children of Heth (Gen 23:4); and Jacob to Pharaoh (Gen 47:9; Psa 119:19). Worldly men hold fast the world; believers sit loose to it. Citizens of the world do not confess themselves "strangers on the earth."

pilgrims--Greek, "temporary (literally, 'by the way') sojourners."

on the earth--contrasted with "an heavenly" (Heb 11:16): "our citizenship is in heaven" (Greek: Heb 10:34; Psa 119:54; Phi 3:20). "Whosoever professes that he has a Father in heaven, confesses himself a stranger on earth; hence there is in the heart an ardent longing, like that of a child living among strangers, in want and grief, far from his fatherland" [LUTHER]. "Like ships in seas while in, above the world."

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Heb_11:13-14

These all died in faith

The attachments and detachments of faith

I.

How FAITH FILLS EYE AND HEART WITH THE FUTURE. AS some traveller topping the water-shed may see far off the white porch of his home, and wave a greeting to it, though it be distant, while his heart goes out over all the intervening, weary leagues; or as some homeward-bound crew catch, away yonder on the horizon, the tremulous low line that is home, and welcome it with a shout of joy, though many a billow dash and break between them and it, these men looked across the weary waste, and saw far away; and as they saw their hearts went out towards the things that were promised, because they judged Him faithful that had promised. And that is the attitude and the act which all true faith in God ought to operate in us. So, then, here are two things to think about. One, faiths vision; the other, faiths greeting. People say, Seeing is believing. I should be disposed to turn the aphorism right round, and to say, Believing is seeing. The sight that faith gives is solid, clear, certain. If I might so say, the true exercise of faith is to stereoscope the dim ghost-like realities of the future, and to make them stand out solid in relief there before us. Well, then, still further, there is suggested that this vision of faith, with all its blessed clearness and certitude, is not a direct perception of the things promised, but only a sight of them in the promise. And does that make it less blessed? Does the astronomer, that sits in his chamber and when he would most carefully observe the heavens looks downwards on to the mirror of the reflecting telescope that he uses, feel that he sees the starry lights less really than when he gazes up into the abyss itself and sees them there? Is not the reflection a better and a more accurate source of knowledge for him than even the observation direct of the sky would be? And so, if we look down into the promise, we shall see, glittering there, the starry points which are the true images adapted to our present sense of reception of the great invisible lights above. And then, still further, let me remind you that this vision of faith varies in the measure of our faith. It is not always the same. Refraction brings up sometimes, above the surface of the sea, a spectral likeness of the opposite shore, and men stand now and then upon our southern coasts, and for an hour or two, in some conditions of the atmosphere, they see the low sand-hills of the French or the Belgian coast, as if they were in arms length. So faith, refracting the rays of light that strike from the throne of God, brings up the image, and when it is strong the image is clear, and when it flags the image fades away into the light of common day; and where there glowed the fair outlines of the far-off land, there is nothing but a weary wash of waters and a solitary stretch of sea. My brother! do you see to it that this vision of faith be cultivated by you. Do you choose whether you shall, like John Bunyans man with the muckrake, have your eyes fixed upon the straws and filth at your feet, or whether you will look upwards and see the crown that is glittering there just above your head, and ready to drop upon it. These all in faith saw the promises. Yes! And when they saw them they greeted them. Their hands and their hearts went out, and a glad shout came to their lips as they beheld the fair vision of all the wonder that should be. And so faith has in it, in proportion to its depth and reality, this going out of the soul towards the things discerned. They draw us when we see them.

IX. How FAITH PRODUCES A SENSE OF DETACHMENT FROM THE PRESENT. They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. A stranger is a man who, in a given constitution of things--in some country with a settled government, owes allegiance to another king, and belongs to another polity. A pilgrim or a sojourner is a man who is only in the place where he now is for a little while. So the one of the two words expresses the idea of belonging to another state of things, and the other expresses the idea of transiency in the present condition. But the true Christian consciousness of being a stranger and a sojourner comes, not from any thought that life is fleeting, but from the better and more blessed operation of the faith which reveals the things promised, and knits me so closely to them that I cannot but feel separated from the things that are round about me. Men that live in mountainous countries, when they come down into the plains, be it Switzerland, or the Highlands, or anywhere else, pine and fade away, sometimes with the intensity of the Heinweh, the homesickness which seizes them. And we, if we are Christians, and belong to the other order of things, shall feel that this is not the native soft, nor here the home in which we would dwell.

III. HOW THIS SAME FAITH TRIUMPHS IN THE ARTICLE OF DEATH. These all died in faith. That is a very grand thought as applied to those old patriarchs, that just because all their lives long God had done nothing for them of what He had promised, therefore they died believing He was going to do it. So for us the end of life may have a faith nurtured by disappointments, made more sure of everything because it has nothing; certain that he calls into existence another world to redress the balance of the old, because here there has been so much of bitterness and woe. And our end like theirs may be an end beatified by a clear vision of the things that no man hath seen, nor can see; and into the darkness there may come for us, as there came of old to another, an open heaven and a beam of Gods glory smiting us on the face and changing it into the face of an angel. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

An inscription for the mausoleum of the saints:

These all died in faith. Believers constitute a class by themselves--These. They are the people that dwell alone, and shall not be numbered among the nations. Believers are a class by themselves, even when they die. It is idle to think that we can mark out a spot in the cemetery where none but saints shall sleep; but yet there is a truth at the bottom of that folly. There is a separation even in death between the righteous and the wicked. As for those who died without faith, they died indeed; but as for His people, a glorious resurrection awaits them.

I. DYING IS FAITH. What does it mean?

1. Does it not mean that when they came to die, they had not faith to seek, but having had faith in life, they had faith in death? I will pronounce no opinion upon death-bed repentance. I would not like to lie upon a sick-bed, much less upon a dyingbed, and have a Saviour to seek there. The pains and dying strife are usually enough to occupy a mans thoughts.

2. They did die, however, although they had faith, for faith is not given to us that we should escape death, but that we may die in faith.

3. These all persevered to the end.

4. Does it not mean, also, that they never got beyond faith?

5. But then, while they did not get beyond faith, the mercy is that they never got below it.

II. WHAT WAS THE FAITH THAT THEY DIED WITH?

1. They had received a great deal, but they had not received the fulness of the promises.

2. Yet they saw them. Faith touched their eyes with eye-salve.

3. They were persuaded of them.

4. They embraced them. The Greek word signifies salutes, as when we see a friend at a distance, In the clear atmosphere of Mentone, I have sometimes stood on quite a lofty mountain, and seen a friend down in the valley, and I have spoken his name; and at first it was greatly to my astonishment when he replied, Where are you? I held a conversation with him readily. I could not have actually reached him for a long time, but I saluted him from afar. At times we can see Gods promises afar off, and we salute them. We are within hail of the glory-land, and we send up rockets in the dark; or, if it be daylight, we signal to the shore.

III. THE FAITH TO LIVE WITH--the life of faith.

1. We are strangers by nature. Born from above, our life differs from those about us. The world knoweth us not. We are in it, but not of it.

2. We are strangers as to citizenship. Here we are aliens and foreigners, whose privileges are connected with another city, and not with earth.

3. We are strangers as to pursuits. We are wayfaring men hurrying through this Vanity Fair. The men of the fair cry, Buy! buy I but they have no wares that we care to purchase. We buy the truth, and they do not trade in that commodity.

4. We are pilgrims in object. We have not come hither for a pleasure excursion; we are journeying to the temple to behold the face of our Lord. Our cry is, Onward! Hinder me not. I must away to the glory-land, where my home is, where my God is!

5. We are pilgrims as to continuance. We do not expect to be here long. Do not wonder if you are found to be strangers as to usage, for the world uses foreigners roughly; and they that are really of Christ must expect to be misunderstood and misrepresented.

IV. And what is THE FAITH BY WHICH WE ARE ABLE TO ENDURE SUCH A LIFE AS THIS? Why, it is this faith: They that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. Our faith is one which we dare to avow. We declare plainly that we seek a country. We are not ashamed to say that this is not our rest, that we do not expect to find pleasure here. We are speeding over this stormy sea to the Fair Havens, where we shall cast anchor for ever. We are not ashamed to say this, however others may ridicule our hope. And we say it because we believe it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Dying in faith

I. It is the glory of true faith, that it will not leave them in whom it is, THAT IT WILL NOT CEASE ITS ACTINGS FOR THEIR SUPPORT AND COMFORT IN THEIR DYING; when the hope of the hypocrite doth perish.

II. THE LIFE OF FAITH DOTH EMINENTLY MANIFEST ITSELF IN DEATH, WHEN ALL OTHER RELIEFS AND SUPPORTS DO FAIL.

III. THAT IS THE CROWNING ACT OF FAITH, THE GREAT TRIAL OF ITS VIGOUR AND WISDOM, NAMELY, IN WHAT IT BOTH IN OUR DYING.

IV. HENCE IT IS THAT MANY OF THE SAINTS, BOTH OF OLD AND OF LATE, HAVE EVIDENCED THE MOST TRIUMPHANT ACTINGS OF FAITH IN THE APPROACH OF DEATH.

V. The due understanding of the whole Old Testament, with the nature of the faith and obedience of all the saints under it, depends on this one truth, THAT THEY BELIEVED THINGS THAT WERE NOT YET ACTUALLY EXHIBITED NOR ENJOYED. This is the line of life and truth that runs through all their profession and duties; the whole exercise of their faith and love, without which it was but a dead carcase. It was Christ in the promise, even before His coming, that was the life of the Church in all ages.

VI. GOD WOULD HAVE THE CHURCH FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD TO LIVE ON PROMISES NOT ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISHED. For although we do enjoy the accomplishment of the great promise of the incarnation of the Son of God, yet the Church continues still to live on promises which, in this world, cannot be perfectly fulfilled.

VII. WE MAY RECEIVE THE PROMISES AS TO THE COMFORT AND BENEFIT OF THEM, WHEN WE DO NOT ACTUALLY RECEIVE THE THINGS PROMISED (Heb_11:1).

VIII. As OUR PRIVILEGES IN THE ENJOYMENT OF THE PROMISES ARE ABOVE THEIRS UNDER THE OLD TESTAMENT, SO OUR FAITH, THANKFULNESS, AND OBEDIENCE, OUGHT TO EXCEL THEIRS ALSO.

IX. No DISTANCE OF TIME OR PLACE CAN WEAKEN FAITH AS UNTO THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF DIVINE PROMISES. There are promises still left unto us upon record that are, it may be, afar off; such as those which concern the destruction of antichrist, and the glory of the kingdom of Christ in the latter days. The rule of faith concerning them is given us (Hab_2:3-4).

X. QUIET WAITING FOR THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF PROMISES AT A GREAT DISTANCE, and which most probably will not be in our days, IS AN EMINENT FRUIT OF FAITH. He that believeth will not make haste.

XI. This firm persuasion of the truth of God in the accomplishment of His promises unto us, upon a discovery of their worth and excellency, is the SECOND ACT OF FAITH, WHEREIN THE LIFE OF IT DOTH PRINCIPALLY CONSIST. (John Owen, D. D.)

Faith triumphant:

This chapter is a little book of martyrs. It discovers the life and death of the holy patriarchs, and by what means Gods children are brought into possession of that that they have an interest and right unto upon earth. It is by faith. There is one faith from the beginning of the world. As there is one Christ, one salvation, so there is one uniform faith for the saving of our souls. We hope to be saved by Jesus Christ as they were. Then again, here is implied a continuance and perseverance in faith. Faith first makes a Christian, and then after, he lives by faith. It quickens the life of grace, and then he leads his life by that faith. He continues in it till he come to death, which is the period of all, and then he dies by that faith. They died in faith. In the faith of the Messiah, in faith of Canaan, in faith of heaven. When death closed up the eyes of their bodies, then with the eye of faith they looked upon Christ, upon God in Christ reconciled to them.

I. THE GRACE OF FAITH, IT IS SUCH A GRACE THAT IT CARRIES A CHRISTIAN THROUGH ALL THE PASSAGES OF THIS LIFE. It enableth him to hold out to the end, to suffer those things that he is to suffer, and in the end by it he dies. And when all things else leave him in death, when riches, friends, honour, and great places leave him, when his life and senses leave him, yet faith will never leave him till it have put him in full possession of heaven, and then it ceaseth when it hath done the work it hath to do, which is to bring us to heaven. What is it to die in faith? To die in faith is to die in the Lord by faith; and it looks to the time past, present, to come.

1. To the time past. To die in faith is to die in assurance of the forgiveness of sins, when by faith and repentance we have pulled out the sting of sins past. For faith looks upon Christ, and Christ hath taken the sting of death in His own, and death ever since hath been stingless and harmless to His members.

2. For the present. In the present instant of death, to die in faith is to see God reconciled to us in Christ, and with the eye of Stephen, to see Christ ready to receive our souls (Act_7:59). This is to die in faith; to see ourselves there with our Head, where we shall be ere long. Therefore our flesh rests in hope till the resurrection; because God did not suffer His Holy One to see corruption. This is to die in faith.

3. And for the time to come. To die in faith is by faith to overcome all the horror of death. Faith seeth the faithfulness of God, that God in Christ hath taken these bodies of ours in trust. I know whom I have believed, and He is able to keep that I have committed to Him (2Ti_1:12). And then for the pangs of death, which nature trembles at, faith considers of them as the pangs of child-birth. Now, what is death but the birth to immortality, the birth of glory? It is a little dark passage to an eternal glorious light. Then for the parting of two friends, soul and body, faith sees that it is but for a while, and then that that parting is a bringing in a better joining; for it brings the soul immediately to her beloved, our Saviour Christ Jesus. And then for friends. Faith sees, indeed, that we shall part with many sweet friends; but faith saith we shall have better friends. We go to God, we go to the souls of perfect men, we go to [an] innumerable company of angels (Heb_12:22), we go to a better company a great deal. And for all the employments we have here, that we have below, faith sees that there will be exercise in heaven. We shall praise God with angels and all the blessed and glorious company of heaven. So consider what you will that is bitter and terrible in death, faith conquers it. It sees an end of it, and opposeth to it better things; because, notwithstanding death cuts off many comforts, yet it brings better. And it is the beginning of happiness that shall never end. So, indeed, faith sees that the day of death is better than the day of birth. When we come into misery, it is not so good as when we go out of misery, and enter into happiness. This is to die in faith. This should stir us up, if this be so, to get this grace of faith; above all graces, to get assurance that we are in Christ Jesus, that so we may live with comfort, and end our days with comfort and live for ever happy in the Lord. It is only faith that will master this king of fears--this giant that subdues all the kings of the earth to him. Oh, let us labour, therefore, to get it while we live, and to exercise it while we live, that we may live every day by faith. It is not any faith that we can die by. It must be a faith that we have exercised and tried before. It is a tried, a proved faith, that we must end our days by. For, alas! when death comes, if we have not learned to live by faith before, how can we end our days in faith? Let us all labour for this faith; for though it cannot be said of us that we die rich, or that we die great in the world, perhaps we may die a violent death, as there be divers diseases that lead the body into distempers. It is no matter how we die distempered, and in any estate, so it may be said of us we die in a blessed faith. It is said here, they all died in faith. He saith not they all died in feeling. A man may die in faith, and yet not die in feeling; and sometimes the strongest faith is with the least feeling of Gods love. These all died in faith, not having received the promises. For God promised them Canaan, and they died many hundred years before. Their posterity came into Canaan. He promised them Christ, and they died long before Christ came. He promised them heaven, and they entered not into heaven till death. So they received not the promises, that is, they received not the things promised; for else they received the promise, but not that that was promised. They received not the type, Canaan, nor the things typified--Christ and heaven. This is added as a commendation of their faith, that though they received not the things that they looked for, yet notwithstanding they had such a strong faith, that they continued to live by faith and died in faith. The promises here are taken for the blessed things promised. This should teach us this lesson, that Gods promises are not empty shells; they are real things. And then, whatsoever God promiseth it is not barely propounded to the soul, but in a promise. It is wrapped up in a promise. He gives us not empty promises nor naked things; but He gives us promises of things which we must exercise our faith in, in depending upon Him for the performance of them till we be put in possession. They received not the promises. He speaks in the plural number, though he mean but one main promise, that is, the Messiah, for all other were types of Him. Believers are called children of the promise (Gal_4:28). Here they are called promises, for the repeating of them. The promise of the same thing it was made oft: there was no new promise. The promise of the same thing it was seven times repeated and renewed to Abraham presently one after another. So they are called promises, to show that the promise can never be too much thought on, though it be the same promise of life everlasting; the same promise of grace and of comfort; the same promise of the resurrection, etc. All the promises of good things to come we cannot think of too oft, nor receive the sacrament, the seal of the promise, too oft. They received not the promises. They were comforted notwithstanding, that their posterity should receive them. Canaan was a type of Christ and of heaven. I observe this by the way that God doth not reveal all things at all times. God doth leave diverse things to be revealed in diverse ages of the Church. God doth not reveal everything in every time, to comfort all ages of the Church. We see not everything in our times; we must be content. They saw them afar off, and were persuaded of them and embraced them, etc. This is the order of Gods Spirit; first to open the eye to see, and by sight to persuade, and upon persuasion to stir up the heart and affections to embrace; for good things are brought into the soul through the understanding, by the spiritual sight of the understanding, and from that into the will and affections by embracing the things we know. This is Gods course daily. Therefore he saith they first saw them, and then were persuaded of them, and then embraced them. They saw them afar off. By what eye? By the eye of faith. Faith makes things present, though in themselves they be far off. It is the nature of faith to make things that are absent to be present to the believing soul; and it affects the soul somewhat as if it were present. It sees things far off in place. Faith sees things in heaven; it sees Christ there; it sees our place provided for us there; it sees God reconciled there; by it we see ourselves there, because we shall be there ere long. Faith sees all this; it breaks through and looks through all; it hath most piercing beams, the eye of faith. And it works in an instant; it goes to heaven in a moment and sees Christ. And for distance of time, the eye of faith it sees things past and things to come. It sees things past. It sees the creation of the world; it sees the redemption of us by Jesus Christ; it sees our sins there punished in Christ our surety; it sees us crucified with Christ Jesus; it sees all discharged by Him. When we believe Christ was crucified for us and died for us, faith makes it present. And so for the time to come, faith hath an eye that looks afar off. It sees the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Faith sees the general judgment. If sees eternal happiness in heaven; it sees things afar off. It is the evidence of things not seen. What is the reason of it? It makes things not otherwise seen to be seen, and presently seen; it gives a being to things. It is a strange power that faith hath. The Spirit works an eye of faith in the soul, and then it discovers to it the things of God. They saw them afar off. God created a new eye in the soul, a new sight which they had not by nature; for even as the natural eye cannot see things that are invisible, so the natural man cannot see the things of God, which are seen not by a natural but by a supernatural eye (1Co_2:10-11). The eye therefore that must see things afar off, it must be a supernatural eye; and the light that must discover them must be the light of Gods truth. For reason cannot see the resurrection of the body, and the life to come, and such glorious things as the Word of God reveals to us. If you ask why this sight of faith is so necessary, this supernatural sight, I answer, nothing can be done in religion without the supernatural eye of the soul; for a man may see heavenly things with a natural eye and be never a whit the better. A man may see the joys of heaven, and think, Oh, these are good things; but yet notwithstanding he doth not see these things with a supernatural eye; he doth not see these things to be holy and gracious, and to be fit for him; he wisheth them with conditions, but not with the altering of his disposition. Our duty, then, is to labour to have our faith clear, to have this eye of faith, to have a strong faith, a strong sight. When is the sight of faith strong? When it is as the faith of these patriarchs was. There are three things that make a strong sight, that make us conceive that the sight of faith is a strong sight.

(1) When the things are far off that we see, then if the eyes see them, it is a strong sight. A weak eye cannot see afar off.

(2) When there are clouds between, though the things be near. Yet when there are clouds between, to break and pierce through them there must be a strong sight.

(3) When there is but a little light. When there are many obstacles in the midst, and to break through all by a little light to see things remote, here is a strong eye; and this was the sight of these blessed men. They had a strong eye.

Now to help our sight to heaven, this sight of faith, that we may every day ascend with the eye of our souls with this blessed sight

1. Let us take heed of the god of this world, Satan, that he do not with the dust of the world dim our sight.

2. And withal desire God to open our eyes every day, to take the scales from the eye of our souls, that we may see the promises, that we may see Christ, that we may see God shining on us in Christ; that He would take away the veil from the things by exposition, that He would open the truth to us by His ministers.

3. Then, again, to help our sight of Christ and happiness, let us get a fresh sight of our corruption and sin every day; let us every day look on the terrifying object of our corruption of nature, hang it in the eye of our souls as an odious object, to humble us. They were persuaded of them. It was such a sight of the things as was with convincing, with persuasion. And indeed this follows well upon sight, for sight of all other senses persuades best. All the men in the world cannot persuade the weakest man in the world when it is day or night, when the sun shines or it is dark, that it is not so. When he sees it, he will believe his own eyes more than all the world besides. And as it is in sensible things we believe our own eyes, so much more in spiritual things we believe our eyes. When there is a spiritual light of revelation in the word discovering such things, and also to spiritual light a spiritual eye, when the Spirit puts an eye into the soul to see supernatural things that reason cannot attain to, then there is persuasion.

Persuasion comes divers ways. There be divers degrees tending to persuasion.

1. The poorest degree of the apprehension of things is conjecture, a guessing that such a thing may be so or otherwise, but I guess it rather to be so.

2. Beyond conjecture there is opinion, when a man thinks it is so, upon more reasons swaying him one way; and yet in opinion there is fear on the contrary, that it may be otherwise.

3. And the third degree beyond opinion is certain knowledge. That is science and knowledge when the mind is persuaded by arguments. But that is not so much here meant, the persuasion by argument.

4. There is another degree then of knowledge, which is by the authority of the speaker, a persuasion from thence. When I know not the thing by the light of the thing so much, because I see the reason of the thing, but because I know such a one saith it, that is the persuasion of faith; when one is persuaded of a thing not so much out of his own knowledge, out of the principles of the thing, setting out the causes of the thing, as out of the credit of the person that speaks. Now, this persuasion riseth out of faith in the authority of the person. We conceive that he is wise, and holy, and able withal; one that we trust. If together with this knowledge and persuasion from the authority, and truth, and goodness, and wisdom of the speaker, there be joined sense and experience, we see it proved; and when there is experience, there is reason why we should believe that he saith, because we have found the thing to be so. Now, both are here meant in some degrees, they saw the things afar off, both by the authority of the promise, as likewise by their own sight, and some taste they had. For God reserves not all for heaven. God gives His children some taste and feeling, some little joy and comfort, the first-fruits of the Spirit here (Rom_8:23). So they were persuaded from the authority of the speaker, and some sense and feeling of the thing in some measure. And embraced them. They embraced the promises, the good things promised: Christs coming in the flesh, and Canaan, the type of heaven, and heaven itself. Though they had not these things, yet they embraced what they had, they embraced the promises. That is the nature of faith. If it have not that it looks for, as it hath not till it come to heaven, yet it makes much of that it hath; it embraceth the promises, and in the promises the thing itself promised. Now these things follow one another in a most natural order; for sight brings persuasion, sight and conviction bring strong persuasion, and persuasion breeds embracing. For we embrace that in our affections that we are persuaded of to be good. According to the strength of conviction and persuasion is the strength of the affections. Let us try the truth of our estate by our affections, by our embracing of good things, by opening our hearts to the best things, by our joy and delight in them. Is there a holy wonderment at them? O how I love Thy law! (Psa_119:97); and One day in Thy courts is better than ten thousand elsewhere (Psa_84:10); and O the depth of His mercies! (Rom_11:33); and One thing have I desired of the Lord; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life (Psa_27:4). When the soul stands in admiration of God and good things, when it is ready to welcome Christ and heavenly things and the state of religion: now away all former vanities! away all lusts of youth! away all confidence in beauty, and strength, and riches! The soul had seen better things. There is a discovery of better things; and now the respect of all other things falls down in the soul when there is a discovery of better things. Let us therefore labour more and more to have our affections wrought upon. As we are in our affections, we are in religion. It is impossible that a Christian should be spiritually convinced that there are such excellent things belonging to religion, and that he hath his part and portion in them, and not be transformed to a spiritual state and frame of soul, to love and delight in holy things, and to despise that which is contrary. What be the affections whereby the soul embraceth these good things it is persuaded of? The soul embraceth these things in the affections of faith and hope in the first place; for faith is an empty grace in itself; it is carried to somewhat out of itself that it embraceth and layeth hold on; and hope is with faith alway. Together with the work of faith and hope there is a sanctified affection of the embracing soul; there is a love of the things promised, which is embracing, and a love of the means, and likewise joy and delight in them expressed by thankfulness. How shall this be wrought upon the soul? This embracing we see it follows upon persuasion, and persuasion follows seeing: They saw them far off, and were persuaded of them, and thereupon they embraced them. Therefore let us labour for a clear understanding of Divine things. That which the eye sees, the heart grieves for in ill, and that that the eye sees the heart embraceth in good. And in what measure our eyesight of heavenly things is clearer, and our persuasion stronger, in that measure our embracing is lovely and full of joy and delight. Therefore let us labour to grow in knowledge, that our persuasion may be stronger every day, that our affections will grow, and will be carried to the things discovered. And there is nothing more effectual to commend knowledge to us than this, that it is a means to work a holy and heavenly disposition and temper in us, especially if it be spiritual. And let us meditate upon what we seem to know and are persuaded of. They confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on earth. These words contain what they were in regard of earthly things; their disposition and carriage to all things besides the promises, to the things below. They were strangers and pilgrims in regard of their condition below. It sets down how they apprehend themselves to be, and how they discovered themselves to the world to be. They were in regard of heaven indeed, heirs of happiness, heirs of a kingdom; in regard of the world and earthly things they were strangers and pilgrims. And as they were, so they made themselves to be no better than they were. They confessed it. They apprehended themselves to be as they were, and they carried themselves answerable. Their life and course spake as much as their tongues. They confessed both in word and in deed that they were strangers and pilgrims.

II. IT IS THE DISPOSITION OF HIM THAT HATH TRULY INTEREST IN BETTER THINGS TO BE A STRANGER AND A PILGRIM IN REGARD OF ALL THINGS HERE BELOW. If a man were on the top of a great mountain, he would see the things below to be very little, and the things above would appear greater to him; so when the soul is raised up to see great things, though they be afar off, as these did with the eye of faith, at the same time, his soul looking to things below must needs apprehend them to be little in quantity, as indeed they are. If a man were in body lifted up to heaven, and should look upon the earth, what were the earth but a poor silly point, the whole earth itself, much more a mans own possession; so when the soul is lifted up to heaven by faith--which sets a man in heaven before his time--when it looks from thence to the earth and earthly things, it must of necessity consider them, as they are, to be poor mean things. Therefore this follows, that being persuaded of the promises, that is, of the good things promised in religion in the Word of God, to earthly things they were strangers and pilgrims.

1. First of all, a stranger is travelling to another country--to join both in one; for the one follows the other. He that is a stranger, that apprehends what he is, and apprehends that he hath a country to go to, he travels towards it.

2. A stranger that is travelling homeward, he is content with his present condition, for he knows he shall have better at home.

3. So he will be patient if he meet with unkind usage: he will not stand quarrelling by the way, and so hinder himself in his journey; he will be patient in the injuries and wrongs in this life. If a prince be misused in another country, he is contented, and thinks with himself, I have a country where I shall be more respected; and therefore he bears it the more willingly. So a Christian is a king, he is an heir; and being a stranger, he shall meet with dogs in this world; as, who do dogs bark at but at strangers?

4. Likewise the knowledge of this that we are strangers and pilgrims, it will make a man not only content and patient, but thankful for any kindness he finds in this world; that God sweetens his pilgrimage on earth somewhat: what a mercy is this! He is thankful for any contentment; he is thankful to the world, to those that do anything for him, that afford him any courtesy here that may help him in his pilgrimage, and make it less troublesome.

5. He that is a stranger, he is glad of any good company. Oh, if he meet with a man of his own country, he is a man alone for him; so it is with a Christian that walks in the way to heaven with him, he is comforted much in it.

6. A stranger, he hath his prime intention home to his country, and what he doth in the way, it is in virtue of his prime intention, though he doth not, in every particular action that he doth, think of it. A traveller when he rides on the way he doth not think of home in every step. Ay, but he doth that that he doth in virtue of his prime intention when he first set out, and calls to remembrance ofttimes as he goes home; he thinks of his journeys.

7. And hence it is that there is another property of a stranger that is going to a place, perhaps he may step out of the way, yet notwithstanding, by virtue of his first intention, he gathers himself homeward again. If he take other matters in hand, he gathers home still, though he go out of his way, in he comes; he considers, this is not my way. So a child of God, sometimes he diverts and turns aside, yet notwithstanding he considers, doth this way lead to Godward, to heavenward? Be these actions Christian actions? Are they the way to heaven? If he see they be not, though he have stepped awry, he comes in again, and is gathering homeward.

8. A- traveller and stranger provides beforehand for all encumbrances. He knows though he meet not with troubles, yet he may, therefore he will be sure to go with weapons, and he will go with that that may sustain him by the way. Religion teacheth a man to gather out of the Word of God comforts beforehand, and munition beforehand, to carry with him. When we travel, and are going on in our journey towards heaven, it is good to consider higher things, it is a good meditation. Therefore to go on a little further.

9. A traveller and stranger is inquisitive of the way, whether he be in the way or out of the way. He asks not at random. That doth not content him, whether he go west, or north, or south, or east: it doth not content him to ask where lies my country, eastward? &c. No; but he will ask the particular towns, and particular turnings, how he may avoid going out of his way, and which is the right way, and he will ask upon every occasion, because he knows if he go but a little out of his way it will be a long time ere he shall recover it, and he will be ashamed to come back again; and the more he goes out of the way, the more trouble it is to come back again. So it is with a Christian, he doth not only desire to know in general, but he desires to have daily direction, what shall I do in such a case of conscience, and in such a case? How shall I overcome such a temptation if I meet with it? And so he is willing to have daily direction how to walk with God day by day, that he go not out of his way in anything.

10. And even as a traveller considers of things by the way as they make to his end, to further his journey or hinder his journey, he looks to heaven as his country that he hopes for, and therefore he doth not tangle himself with any more than may help him home. If they hinder him once, away they go; if they may help him, he takes them. If I find that things, though they be indifferent in themselves, if they trouble me in my way to heaven (it may be they are not so to another, but they are to me), though another can do it, yet I must consider whether I can do it, and find myself enlarged to heaven as at other times. If not, away with it. It is not indifferent to me, because it hinders my journey to heaven.

11. Again, he that accounts himself a stranger here, he doth not value himself by outward things. Faith teacheth a man, when he is an heir of heaven, not to value himself by earthly things. He thinks himself a stranger in his own house, as David did, though he were a king, as I said. Every Christian is a stranger at home. He values not himself by his honours, nor dignity, nor by the things that he hath here; nor he doth not disvalue himself by poverty or disgrace. He knows he is a stranger; he is going home; therefore he values himself by that he hath at home.

12. A traveller in his way must of necessity have refreshings by the way, or else he will fail; therefore sometimes he sings, and sometimes useth other refreshings. Now, what said David? Thy statutes have been my song in the house of my pilgrimage (Psa_119:54); that is, when I want other comforts, they are my song, my joy, my delight. A traveller must needs have comforts that may revive him in his fainting; he must have some pleasant walks for meditation. Let us therefore, when we grow weary, refresh ourselves in walking, in holy meditation. (R. Sibbes, D. D.)

Faith eying the promises in life and death

I. WHAT IS IT TO DIE IN FAITH? It is a great question, a mans all depends upon it. To die mistaken in this is to die mistaken for ever.

1. It is not to die barely in a profession of faith. To die owning Christ and His cause, bearing witness to the truth, exhorting our Christian friends that with purpose of heart they would cleave to the Lord ,. this is sweet dying. It is not what a man believes of Christ that saves, but his believing in Him, yielding up himself only and wholly to Him. To die in an outward barren profession of faith, is not to die in faith.

2. Nor is it necessary always that there be a transporting joy arising from a sense of interest in Christ in order to a believers dying in faith. A man may die in faith when he doth not die in feeling. There may be no assuring sense of Gods love, and yet a strong and firm dependence on His promise. The strength of faith is most where there is least of sight; every believer finds the path of life (Psa_16:11), but every one does not see it as he walks through Jordan.

3. To die in faith, is to die trusting Christ, and commending our souls to him by faith. All faith includes trust, though it is not necessarily connected with joy.

II. WHAT IS THE GREAT SUPPORT OF A BELIEVER, CONSIDER HIM EITHER AS LIVING OR DYING? The text says, the promises are so, though the blessings contained in them are not received. Two things faith sees in the promises which support and comfort the soul though the promised blessings are not received.

1. Faith sees Gods Christ and salvation in the promise, therefore in the absence of promised good it supports the soul.

2. Faith sees Gods heart in the promise. What is a promise but an expression of the love of Gods heart in word (2Sa_7:21). That is the secret in all Gods promises, and none but a believer can spell it out.

III. HOW, IN PARTICULAR, FAITH ACTS TOWARDS THE PROMISES IN A BELIEVERS SUPPORT, LIVING OR DYING?

1. Faith sees the promises afar off. It does not require the presence of the thing, but only the promise of it. Christ was not manifest in the flesh till many hundred years after; but faith beheld these things as present in Gods counsel, His covenant, His word of promise, and fixed and centred in them. Is anything too hard for God? Did His promise ever fall to the ground? Is He not truth itself? Are not all His paths judgment? This is the reasoning of faith.

2. It is persuaded of these things. They are realities, though invisible to every one but the man who has the eyes of his understanding enlightened.

(1) This persuasion relates to the things themselves. Gospel-principles, gospel-doctrines, privileges, duties, they are inlaid in the soul as well as gospel-promises.

(2) This persuasion refers to the sense which a believer may have of his interest in them: This is not common to saints as such; it is but at special times and seasons, given and taken away by God, for wise and gracious ends.

3. It embraces them; the word signifies to salute, a metaphor taken from the manner of parting between two intimate friends. Two things are implied in it.

(1) Intimate acquaintance. The saints of old were very chary of Gods promises, they were searching into them to know what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, did signify (1Pe_1:11).

(2) But principally is meant endearing affection. The will chooses them, cleaves to them, and if any delight a believer has it is in them.

Use 1. Did all these die in faith? Have you this faith? It is sad to have faith to seek when you need it to use. If thou art a stranger to Christ, thou art a stranger to faith. Hath thou given up thy soul to Him now? Then thou mayest trust Him with body and soul both another day.

Use 2. How little just ground is there for a believer in Christ to fear death? The love of God, the covenant of grace, the care of Christ, the being and stability of the promise, the life and faith, all last till death.

Use 3. What a slight character do most of this world leave behind them; though thou diest rich, honourable, esteemed, easy, what is this to dying in faith!

Use 4. What need have believers of the help of the blessed Spirit in life and at death? The spiritual eye is His gift, and all spiritual persuasion is His work: Scripture arguments will be of no avail if the Spirit of God does not make the application.

Use 5. Think more of home, and live more above life: if you profess to be heirs of Gods promise, live above the crosses and comforts of life too. (John Hill.)

Of dying in faith

1. In the profession of the faith. They held fast the truths of God to the death. They denied not, they made not shipwreck of faith; they suffered not Satan or his instruments to cheat them of it; exchanged it not for fancies, delusions; made not their opinions subservient to carnal interests; did not tack about, not carried about with every wind. Judgments firmly anchored in truth could ride out foul weather, bear up against storms.

2. In the state of faith. As they lived, so they died, believers. Having begun in the Spirit, they did not end in the flesh. They lost not the habit of faith, but bore on towards perfection; that when their outward man decayed, faith increased, and was strongest in the greatest weakness, in death.

3. In the expression of faith.

4. In the exercise faith. As they acted faith in their life, so in their death. Their life was the life of faith, as Paul (Gal_2:20). Faith had an influence into every act of their life. Abel sacririced by faith (Heb_11:4); ordinary acts: Abrahams travel (Heb_11:8); extraordinary: Noahs building an ark (Heb_11:7). What they did, they did by faith, i.e., depending upon Christ for strength, believing the promise for assistance and success. Thus they lived, and thus they died in faith, with confidence that God would perform what He had promised, even after their death, to them or theirs.

Directions:

1. What you may live and die in the faith of Christ, take this golden rule: Receive the truth in the love of it (2Th_2:10). If you would continue in the truth, and have the Lord establish you in it, love the truth for itself, and love it above all inferior respects whatsoever.

2. That you may live and die in the state of faith, get into that happy state. Get faith rooted and grounded in your hearts, and then you are sure: Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.

3. That Son may live and die in the expression of faith; i.e., that you may not deal unfaithfully in the covenant; consider how horribly wretched such unfaithfulness is. Whose that use to deal unfaithfully with men, lie, or forswear, to get some advantage, there may be some temptation to this; but he that deals unfaithfully with God deals unfaithfully with God to ruin himself.

4. That ye may die in the exercise of faith,

(1) Learn to live in the exercise of it. The more faith is acted, the easier it will be to exercise.

(2) Treasure up the promises in your memories. No such treasure as this. You will find riches a vain thing in that hour, they cannot deliver from death; but faith acted on the promises both support in it, and deliver from it.

(3) Clear up your evidences for heaven. While your title is dark, faith will be weak. How can ye be confident of the eternal blessings of the covenant, while ye have no assurance that you are in covenant? How can ye with confidence go out to meet the bridegroom when ye know not whether ye have oil in your lamps? When you have cleared this evidence, endeavour to keep it clear. Sin blots it, guilt is a blur in the evidence. If you avoid not these in your lives, you will scarce read your evidence at death, and then faith may be nonplussed and to seek, when most needed. Endeavour to keep a good conscience always, in all things, towards God and man, that so you may have the testimony of God and of your conscience on your deathbeds (2Co_1:12).

(4) Lay up experiences. The remembrance of experiments of Gods mercy and faithfulness in your lives will be a sweet support to faith in death. Gods people have made good use of experiences to this purpose (2Ti_4:18). (D. Clarkson, B. D.)

Faith constraining to a pilgrim life

I. THE DISTANT FULFILMENT OF UNFULFILLED PROMISES.

II. THE ATTITUDE OF FAITH WITH REGARD TO THIS.

1. Faith assured them that the city was their fatherland.

2. Faith recognises the promised blessings in the city.

3. Faith reaches forth with eager desire towards these promised blessings.

III. THE REARING OF THIS FAITH ON OUR PRESENT LIFE. It makes strangers and pilgrims of us. A pilgrim life includes

1. A pressing on through the present to the future. The great concern of the pilgrim is concerning the home to which he is going. The road and the present accommodation are something, but not chief.

2. An endurance of privation by the prospect of the coming satisfaction. The discomforts of the way are a small matter when we are going home. A lively faith goes far to break the power from time-sorrows.

3. A growing happiness in the consciously advancing journey. Men do not naturally like to get old. That, in the Christians case, must arise from limiting the view of life by what is seen. Let faith go beyond the seen, and make real to our hearts the glory there, and we shall pass on with joy and hope and quickened step. (C. New.)

The power of the future upon the present

I. GODS REVELATION TO MAN UNFOLDS. A FUTURE. This meets both

(1) A tendency and

(2) A necessity of our nature.

II. SOME OF THE EVENTS OF THE FUTURE WHICH GODS REVELATION DISCLOSES, MAY NOT COME TO PASS UNTIL WE HAVE SLEPT FOR AGES IN OUR GRAVES.

1. Gods plans are independent of our efforts.

2. Success is not the rule of duty.

III. HOWEVER. DISTANT IN THE FUTURE THOSE EVENTS MAY BE, FAITH IN THEM WILL HAVE A PRACTICAL POWER OVER OUR PRESENT LIVES. Observe

1. The description of their faith in these promises.

2. The influence of this faith. (Homilist.)

The feelings of the ancient saints

I. THEIR FEELINGS GODWARD. They believed in Him, and that with a strong faith, whereby they gave glory to His name. Their faith and patience were severely tried; but they knew that it was a good thing both, to hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.

II. THEIR FEELINGS EARTHWARD. And confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

1. Their affections were not set on earthly things.

2. Their happiness was not derived from earthly objects.

3. They were not conformed to earthly habits.

III. THEIR FEELINGS HEAVENWARD. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country, &c. Their knowledge of a future state is here clearly involved. But to know that there is a state of blessedness beyond the grave is one thing, and for that knowledge practically to influence the whole of our present course and conduct is another thing. These worthies declared in the most unmistakable manner that their great concern was to reach it. It is said of Cicero and Demosthenes, that when the one was banished from Rome and the other from Athens, they wept whenever they thought of their own country. Alas! that the spirit of patriotism should be so much stronger in them than the spirit of the gospel is in us. (Expository Sermons.)

Living and dying in faith

I. GODS PROMISES SEEM, AT FIRST, TO ASSURE EARTHLY GOOD. I would not discourage you from seeking the cheer of such promises, for godliness has the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. But I may say this, Let the years pass on, and you will surely find that God is dealing with you so as to purify all your hopes. Your Canaan will come to be a better country, that is a heavenly. Your Jerusalem will be the holy city, new Jerusalem, which comes down from God out of heaven, into which there shall in no wise enter any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie.

II. LIFE BUT SELDOM FULFILS THE PROMISES JUST AS WE SHAPE THEM.

1. Life seldom is, even in its outward circumstances, what we picture to ourselves that it will be. F.W. Robertson, with some intensity of expression says, Herein lies a principle, which, rightly expounded, can help us to interpret this life of ours. Gods promises never are fulfilled in the sense in which they seem to have been given. Life is a deception; its anticipations, which are Gods promises to the imagination, are never realised; they who know life best, and have trusted God most to fill it with blessings, are ever the first to say that life is a series of disappointments.

2. Life seldom permits any great work to be accomplished right through by the man who begins it. Moses must climb Nebo to die before his lifework was completed in the possession of Canaan. Joshua died before the whole country was cleared of the idolatrous inhabitants. David died before the Temple could be built. There is even a sense in which our Lords life was cut off, and He left an unfinished work to be completed by His apostles. Indeed, to do any entire work from beginning to end seems to be too great an honour, too high a trust, for any one man.

III. GOD, BY THE SEEMING FAILURE, GRACIOUSLY LIFTS US UP TO THE HIGHER VIEW OF THE PROMISES. How failure can open mens eyes! How disappointment with life as we find it, tends to lift our eyes away from earth, and make us feel that this is not our rest! As one thing after another disappoints, we begin to see that the time and place for Gods fulfilment of His promises is--yonder and there; not here and now. We begin to repeat after the storm-tossed Psalmist and say, I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness. We even begin to find out that the, seeming, earthly look of the promises in reality only veiled the heavenly meaning for us; veiled it until we had grown strong enough to bear the light. Is not this just the sanctifying work that advancing life does for us all under God. (The Weekly Pulpit.)

Dying gladly:

Behold here the secret of dying! These all died in faith. Bad men die reluctantly; life is extorted from them as if by main force. The believer dies willingly; his will is sweetly submitted to his Fathers will; he makes it a religious act to die. Just as Jesus Himself commended His human soul to His Father, saying, Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit (Luk_23:46): so His believing disciple commends his soul to Jesus, and through Him to the Father. Here, I repeat, is the secret how to die happily. To those who know not that secret, it is a fearful thing to die. It is a serious matter for any. But to the worldly-minded and ungodly, if not past feeling, to die must be, as one of the heathen philosophers (Aristotle) confessed it, of all formidable things the most formidable. Only mention a neighbours death in a gay circle; lo, you have thrown a gloom over the whole assembly--all are evidently sorry that the topic was introduced. The ancient Romans would not mention death in plain words, if they could avoid it, but only by circumlocution and implication. Even serious Christians are often in bondage through fear of death. It is such a venture; a mistake may be so fatal; to go before God is so awful; judgment will bring to light such secrets, that many think, How can I die? Yet you all must. Be persuaded, give your soul to Jesus now; do it again from day to day: and then, when your dying day is come, again approach the Saviour, and say, Lord, I hear Thee calling for my spirit; I see the waggons sent to fetch me home to Thee; in the hand of death I recognise Thy hand of love; Thou askest for my soul; take it, for it is Thine. Do with it what Thou wilt, I have given it to Thee to be washed in Thy blood, and sanctified by Thy Spirit; I am sure Thou wilt do it no harm! (J. Hambleton.)

Dying in faith:

The friends of Archbishop Whately said, with unbecoming praise, when they visited him as he lay on his death-bed: You are dying as you lived--great to the last. He replied, I am dying as I lived--in the faith of Jesus. At another time it was said: The great fortitude of your character supports you. No, was his reply, it is not my fortitude that supports me, but my faith in Christ.

The soul committed to Christ in death:

The emigrant who sees the blue hills of his native land sink beneath the wave, and goes away to the land of gold, has seen and handled the gold dug from the mines or washed from the waters of that distant land. He has seen those who have been there; he has seen them go out poor and come back rich; he has seen them go out empty and come back full. These have taught him to believe in a land beyond the waters; but I believe in a land, not beyond the seas, but beyond the grave, to which I have seen hundreds go, but none come back to unveil its secrets. I believe in a Saviour I never saw, and never saw the man that saw; and commit to His keeping, not my money, but what is more precious than all the gold of the Bank of England--I commit to Him my precious soul. (T. Guthrie.)

The forecasting of faith

The discovery of the New World, as the continent of America and its islands are called, was not, like many discoveries, an accident; it was the reward of faith--the reward of Christopher Columbuss faith. He found fruits on the shores of Western Europe, cast up by the Atlantic waves, and brought there, as we now know, by the Gulf Stream, perfectly diverse from any that the temperate, fiery, or frozen zones of the Old World produced. So one day, let me say, strolling by the sea-shore, he saw a nut. He takes it in his hand and looks at it; he takes it into his capacious mind, and out of that little seed springs his faith in another world beyond that watery horizon, where, as he believed, and events proved, the sea had pearls, and the veins of the earth were filled with silver, and the rivers that flowed through spicy groves ran over sands of gold. (T. Guthrie.)

Dying in faith

"My fathers death, says the son and biographer of Caesar Malan, will remain for those who witnessed it the most astonishing of all his actions. The doctor, on quitting him, said to me one day: I have just seen what I had heard spoken of, but what I had not seen before. Now I have seen it, as I see this stick which I hold in my hand. And what, then, have you seen? I asked him. I have seen faith. I say the faith, not of the theologian, but of the Christian. I have seen it with my eyes, he replied. (Tinlings Illustrations.)

Faith sees eternal life:

As he that is to pass over some broad and deep river must not look downward to the current of the stream, but must set his foot sure, and keep his eye on the bank, on the farther shore; so he that draws near death must look over the waves of death, and fix his eye of faith on eternal life. (Cawdray.)

Faith in death

A monk near his end was heard to exclaim, I care little for earthly things now; soon I shall travel among the stars. (H. O.Mackey.)

Dying in faith

It has often been my privilege to test the power of religion when I have been sitting by the bedside of the dying. There is a young girl in heaven now, once a member of this our church. I went with one of my beloved deacons to see her when she was very near her departure. She was in the last stage of consumption. Fair and sweetly beautiful she looked; and I think I never heard such syllables as those which fell from that girls lips. She had had disappointments and trials; but all these she had not a word to say about, except that she blessed God for them: they had brought her nearer to the Saviour. And when we asked her whether she was not afraid of dying, No, she said, the only thing I fear is this, I am afraid of living, lest my patience should wear out. I have not said an impatient word yet, sir: I hope I shall not. It is sad to be so very weak; but I think, if I had my choice, I would rather be here than be in health, for it is very precious to me. I know that my Redeemer liveth; and I am waiting for the moment when He shall send His chariot of fire to take me up to Him. I put the question, Have you not any doubts? No, none, sir; why should I? I clasp my arms around the neck of Christ. And have you not any fear about your sins? No, sir, they are all forgiven; I trust the Saviours precious blood. And do you think that you will be as brave as this when you come actually to die? Not if He leaves me, sir; but He will never leave me, for He has said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. (C. H.Spurgeon.)

Confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims

Faiths pilgrimages:

You have here, in few words, the Pilgrims Progress from the wilderness of this world to an everlasting city of habitation. You learn what it is which induces him to commence the journey; in what manner he complies with that inducement; what sustains his hope as he proceeds; and in what state of mind he finishes his course. True faith includes five things:

I. A SIGHT OF DISTANT, PROMISED BLESSINGS. Not that the believer is left destitute of comforts and privileges connected with the present life. Nevertheless, his greatest prize is yet to come: he sees it indeed, but he has not yet received it--it is afar off.

II. A PERSUASION OF THEIR REALITY. God is able to keep His word; and therefore, after all the mockery of an ungodly world, I come to the deliberate conviction that Verily there is a reward for the righteous; verily He is a God that judgeth in the earth.

III. AN ACTUAL EMBRACING OF THEM. Oh yes! says the worldly man, to be sure I believe the Bible--I have no doubt that good people will go to heaven! And perhaps you might not find it easy to convince him that he disbelieves these things: but you have no difficulty in discovering that he takes no interest in them. Here, then, is a faith persuaded of the truth, but not embracing the truth! Do you ask, then, How shall I embrace the salvation thus offered? The answer is plain--By coming to Christ for it, in the way prescribed--repenting, converting, trusting in Him.

IV. A VISIBLE INFLUENCE ON THE HEART, THE LANGUAGE, AND THE LIFE. Let a man gaze upon the sun till he can without pain examine its splendours; he will find, on recalling his eyes to this lower world, that their power is gone for a season. And such is the effect where faith is in full exercise: one upward glance at the glory that shall be revealed is enough to eclipse the most glittering earthly bauble.

V. A STEADFAST RELIANCE ON THEM EVEN IN DEATH. After seeing, being persuaded, embracing, and walking as pilgrims and strangers, the black river of death still remains to be crossed, before we receive the promise. But the righteous hath hope, even then; and they that walk by faith will assuredly die in faith. (J. Jowett, M. A.)

Strangers and pilgrims on the earth:

I. AN ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF HUMAN CONDITION. The fact which it asserts, it is a very easy thing to acknowledge in words; but nothing can be harder than to realise it particularly. The truth is admitted indeed, just because the denial of it would be utterly beyond hope. Every funeral procession, every tolling bell, furnishes a memorial of what awaits each one of us in our turn. Infirmities, to which our flesh is heir, and ailments, are nothing else but Gods messengers to accomplish Gods sentence of universal mortality. And there is evidence in the restless and the far-reaching character of human wishes, that the whole sphere of our being cannot possibly lie within the horizon which now circumscribes our dwelling-place. Man looks to the future; he draws on the expectation of other days for the enjoyment of the present. What we have to labour for, is not the admission of the truth, but the imparting to it an operative influence. The brevity of human -life is a matter which belongs to observation and not to experience; we see it in others, but as yet we know nothing of it in ourselves. But it is very hard to bring home to our bosoms the certainty that the hearts which are now full of hopes and fears and wishes shall soon cease to beat. No man believes himself to be immortal; and yet there is no truth so difficult to get embodied as ones own mortality. And all this while the world present environs us about and shuts us in closely on every side. It is visible to the eye of sense; it excludes the world unseen and spiritual. And we remember what Scripture tells us concerning one who, through his usurpation, is called the prince of this world. We know that it is his business to separate the souls of men from Him who is the only source of their happiness and their good. And he accomplishes his end in the most effectual way when he casts about them the fetters of an utter worldliness, preventing the free spirit from soaring aloft into a better atmosphere and into communion with the Father of all spirits, by binding it down gradually closer and closer to the concerns and the interests of this earth that we tread. He does much indeed for his object, when he can plunge men into sensuality, when he can entangle them in vicious pursuits; for then they must needs, if they would be at peace, administer an opiate to conscience. But we entreat you to remember that the peril arises not merely from things which are in themselves bad and forbidden; but from things in themselves and in their commencement blameless or even praiseworthy--the business of daily life, its thousand schemes and its thousand toils, in the midst of which a man may move forward with his integrity unimpeached, maintaining a character for honour that has never known a stain. He forgets the world that is to be. Now these considerations will furnish, as you will immediately perceive, a great motive why we should enforce the assertion of our text. But it is not the eloquence of the advocate, nor the urgency of the appeal, nor the frequency of the warning, that can dislodge the earthliness of mind whereof we have spoken. The grace of God must come into the heart of man, teaching him so to number his days that he may apply his heart unto wisdom.

II. AN AVAILING MOTIVE FOR HUMAN CONDUCT. We must, as a preliminary, call upon you to observe that the text includes a reference to the future. The patriarchs believed not merely that they had no abiding city here; they believed also that God had prepared for them a city, which hath foundations, whose Maker and Builder is the Lord. And the information of the Bible are more and wider and of greater encouragement than what would be contained in a mere detail of the worlds barrenness and insufficiency. It sets faith in operation; of which the apostle says, it is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. And it so wrought in the patriarchs of old time, who are the subjects of our chapter, that they that said such things declared plainly that they sought a country. Now what we find operative in the case of godly people many centuries ago, is still the only availing principle whereby we can turn men aside from pursuits and pleasures unsatisfying and perilous, and bring them to follow after Him who alone can satisfy an immortal and redeemed spirit. We cannot turn them aside from the love of this present world, its business or its painted vanities, by sermons alone on its insufficiency; we must tell them of a world that shall be hereafter, where all is true and good and lovely. And whatsoever may have been the mans particular object of pursuit, there is most mercifully provided for him in the gospel something better in that very department, which shall so through the grace of God lay hold upon his very heart as to separate it from the things whereby it was once enslaved. And if you will think awhile you cannot but perceive that there is a remarkable safety in looking unto that rest which remaineth for the people of God. It is like the home thoughts which come into the heart of an exile, and which return again and again with the potency of an irresistible charm; they come about the heart of the wanderer, sometimes to preserve him from seductions which would otherwise be insurmountable. And sometimes they sustain him under suffering, carrying him through weary days through the power of the principle of hope, which is strong in his bosom. And thus while Gods pilgrims are passing through a world thickly set with perils, encompassed on all sides by foes, they are safe while they think of the land where there are holy affections and dutiful obedience, where there is no sin, where there are no tears, and where trial cannot come any more. And if these things are truly impressed upon the heart, not merely shall we believe the fact which is asserted in our text, but we shall make a correspondent movement. We shall immediately prepare for our journey. And whoever has these thoughts upon his heart will remember that a reckoning must follow. He possesses all things in stewardship; he possesses nothing as a proprietor. All things are of God, and to be used for His glory. And, finally, in the enumeration of the various motives brought to bear upon the heart of man through the receiving practically the truth which is affirmed in our text, we must by no means forget the sympathy with the great family of man which is thus engendered in the heart. Points of difference may have seemed considerable while we lived as though there were no scene to be entered on but the present; but let us only read our own poverty and dependence and the transitory nature of everything we possess, and straightway there is a brotherhood established large enough to embrace all men--a wider and a wider circle, till it includes every individual of the whole race of man. (S. Robins, M. A.)

Strangers and pilgrims:

Wherefore they are not to be heard, says the seventh article of our Church, which feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises. It is well known that in all ages of the Church there have been men who have taken this unworthy view of Old Testament theology-believing that the saints of the Old Testament did look for transitory promises, and nothing else. On what ground have they come to such a conclusion? Well, they took down the Books of Moses; they searched them from beginning to end; and what did they find there? Anything about heaven? Anything about hell? Anything about a great scheme of retribution, such as we have brought before us in the parables of our Lord, or in the writings of St. Paul? No, they found nothing of this. They saw that rewards were temporal, that punishments were immediate; the whole economy of moral government seemed to be constructed only upon present recompenses, limited to the present life, and never pointing at any other. Now if these objectors had taken the pains to understand the genius of Old Testament teaching, or the nature and design of Old Testament types--if they had mastered the simple fact which every devout Jew well understood, that the dispensation under which he lived was to be succeeded by another--this their difficulty would have vanished. For then they would have seen that the land of Canaan, the great subject of Old Testament promise, was a declared and understood type of the heavenly city. They would have understood further that all the historical antecedents of the Jewish people were typical also. Their wilderness wanderings were to be a type of mans life to the end of time. Their warfare in the desert was an emblem of mans constant struggles with the power of evil. Their redemption from Egypt was a sign of mans deliverance from the bondage of sin: and their settlement in the good land shadowed forth the blessedness and repose of heaven. Hence you will observe, that in the chapter before us, the apostle does not hesitate to attribute to all the children of faith under the Old Testament an insight into the spiritual purposes of God. He supposes them to understand that a great scheme of pictorial truth was being brought before their eyes, even in the facts of their external history. They dwelt in tents because they knew there were mansions in store for them. They knew that there was to be a more complete development of Gods purpose. They knew that His promises were to have a spiritual fulfilment. They saw the day of Christ afar off. They were persuaded of all the blessings promised to them in and through Him: they embraced these promises. Thus while in possession of those temporal privileges, which God in His mercy had vouchsafed unto them, they learned to sit loosely to them, because they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

I. THE IMAGE WHICH IS HERE GIVEN US OF LIFE. Notwithstanding their possession of these outward advantages, the fathers confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Other Scriptures express the same thought (Psa_39:12; 1Pe_2:11).

1. Such an idea of life would be suggested by the very nature of the human constitution, and the relation in which we stand to the world around us; for everything in that world will be found to suggest the conclusion of this being a passage world, and not a resting world. For this world cannot satisfy those higher instincts with which God has endued us.

2. Such an idea of life would be suggested by its constant changeableness and instability. The strange admixture of good and evil which we experience in our passage through life is no chance arrangement. Our world seems to be evidently arranged upon the principle that we should have so much of good in our lot as to enable us to bear the evil, and yet so much of evil commingled therewith that our hearts may not be unduly set upon the good. Now, all this exactly answers to the pilgrims condition.

3. The text would suggest to us an infinite and everlasting existence; for he that is a stranger in a country has another country which he calls his own; and he that is a pilgrim has a place and destination towards which he is hastening.

II. PRACTICAL LESSONS SUGGESTED BY SUCH A VIEW OF LIFE.

1. The duty of contentment--the duty of acquiescence in that lot which God has appointed for us, whether it be fixed here or there--a holy indifference whether, in the arrangements of the social household, we be set down in a higher or a lower room.

2. Reference should be constantly had to Divine guidance and direction. We are not pilgrims only, says the apostle, but strangers. Now, the stranger in a strange land does not know his way. Misled by delusive appearances, he may take a way which seemeth right unto him, but the end thereof are the ways of death. He takes one path for its smoothness, and he finds that it is beset with perils and hidden snares; he takes another path for its shortness, and afterwards finds that he has but gone so far out of the way. Oh! how wisely does the prophet remind us, The way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps!

3. The duty of exercising in all things a holy moderation and sobriety. The patriarchs might have lived in tents in Chaldea, or they might have lived in palaces in Canaan, but they would not have palaces, and they would not return to Chaldea. Why? Because these tents were designed of God to be a standing protest against a worldly spirit, even as Canaan itself was also to be an emblem of the spiritual and eternal state. They kept to their tents because they would testify to the simplicity of the patriarchal character, because they would witness against the pride, the covetousness, and the ostentation too often found to accompany a season of prosperity. And thus we are to let our moderation be known unto all men. Be sober in your joys, sober in your griefs, sober in your gains, sober in all the pursuits of life.

4. Having no continuing city here, being strangers and pilgrims upon the earth, we should seek one to come. The patriarchs had no home in Canaan, and yet they loved it. Why? It was not the fertility of its valleys, nor the beauty of its hills, nor the wealth of its fig-trees, nor the luxuriousness of its vines, that made them love the land in which they were strangers. It was because Canaan was typical of the rest of the covenant. It was because it was the place where God had promised to honour and meet and bless His people. It was because it was associated in their minds with the most inspiring tokens of the Divine presence, as well as all their most lofty anticipations of the life of the world to come. (D. Moore, M. A.)

Strangers and pilgrims

I. THE CHARACTER OF OUR PRESENT CONDITION.

1. Aliens. Not of same race as world; not having same desires, aims, thoughts, affections.

2. Travellers. Only staying for a time; ever passing on from one stage to another.

II. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THIS STATE.

1. Fearless, independent. The world is almost a matter of indifference. It can neither give nor take away anything worth possessing.

2. Earnest ambition for a better state.

3. Patient resignation. When a state will so soon be over it matters little what is its nature.

III. THE INCUMBENT DUTY. They confessed. This implies a realisation of the important truth. The great cause of our indifference and negligence and consequent loss is a failure to realise our state and to apprehend what our actions involve. (Homilist.)

I. WHAT IS INCLUDED IN THE METAPHOR.

Saints pilgrims on the earth

1/ The pilgrims original home was in the city of destruction.

2. His pilgrimage commenced through the influence of the gospel on his heart.

3. By faith in Gods testimony he set his face towards the heavenly Zion.

4. As a pilgrim he claims no possession in the country through which he passes.

5. As a pilgrim he travels onwards towards the city of habitation.

II. THE QUALIFICATIONS AND DUTIES INVOLVED IN IT.

1. A pilgrims heart. And that is a renewed heart; one delivered from the love of sin and the world.

2. A pilgrims head. A knowledge of his way; of the good old way; the way revealed in the Holy Scriptures; a way written in the luminous words of God; a way trodden by all preceding pilgrims journeying to Zion.

3. A pilgrims spirit. The spirit which has animated every child of God.

(1) Of devotion and direct intercourse with God.

(2) Of praise; singing His statutes, and rejoicing in His grace.

(3) Of self-denial: sacrificing self, and submitting fully to the will of God.

(4) Of faith and hope: believing and trusting in the truth and goodness of the promises of God.

(5) Of vigilance, to watch against enemies and perils.

(6) Of perseverance: holding on his way.

4. A pilgrims resources.

(1) His staff on which to lean. And this is the pledged promise of God, that His own presence shall go with him, and never, never leave him.

(2) His provisions: bread and water given him from heaven. The true manna and the streams of salvation. If any man thirst.

(3) His houses of entertainment. Places where he can be welcomed to the hospitable board and chamber of repose. These are the ordinances of religion, and the various social and private means of grace.

(4) Suitable raiment, and especially sandals for his journey. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass, &c. Feet shod, &c.

Application:

1. How really happy is the Christian pilgrim; his sorrows and crosses will soon be over, and that for ever: his present comforts and blessings are rich and numerous.

2. How glorious the end of his journey. The heavenly Jerusalem; the city of God; world of light, and life, and glory.

3. Urge sinners to set out on this spiritual pilgrimage. (J. Burns, D. D.)

Strangers and pilgrims

I. ALL, MEN, BOTH GOOD AND BAD, ARE STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS ON THE EARTH. The life of man is a kind of pilgrimage, are words which Plato quoted as proverbial; and Cicero puts this speech into the mouth of one of his characters: Our departure from this life is like leaving not our home but an inn, for nature hath given us this world as a place to rest in, but not that we should fix here our permanent habitation. In how many respects does this life resemble a pilgrimage! How full of labour, of inconvenience, of privation! Even when no particular calamity presses; when we are free from bodily suffering, from anxiety, even then there is a vacuity, a certain unsatisfactoriness in our very prosperity itself. Men endure in this world sorrow enough, and pain enough, disappointment enough, to convince them that they are strangers and pilgrims here. One of the greatest pleasures of travel consists in our meeting with good and agreeable people, whom we feel it is a privilege to have met. But one of the pains of travel is, that these persons must be parted with so soon; as if we had enjoyed just enough of the pleasures of their society to qualify us for feeling the pain of losing it. The societies of this life, its closest relations, even those of families and bosom friends, what are they but the casual meeting of travellers at an inn?

II. ALL ARE STRANGERS HERE IN FACT; THE SAINTS ALONE ARE STRANGERS IN SPIRIT. Others must die and leave this state like them-they would leave it. They hold the world by that loose grasp--they view it in that light as merely a temporary residence, as a tabernacle or tent to dwell in, that they feel no deep regret when it is taken down; nay, they long ofttimes for its dissolution (2Co_5:1-21.). They converse with the end of life. It is a door of hope. Why should the captive, burdened with the load of mortality, weep when about to put off that burden? Although to be absent from the body were some pain in itself, it becomes a pleasure when it is the condition of our being at home with the Lord.

III. THOUGH THE SAINTS CONFESS THEY ARE STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS ON THE EARTH, THEY ARE NOT WITHOUT A HOME. It is their prospect of something higher, more glorious, which exiles the affections of holy men from the earth. Their tastes have been purified and exalted, till this world has become unfit for them, and they have become unfit for it, except to be disciplined in it. Whenever our perceptions are so corrected as to apprehend what good is, it is from that moment impossible we should be at home anywhere but in heaven, in which the illuminated eyes of the mind Eph_1:18) discern every character of a secure and eternal habitation. There sin is not, and the soul, punting for release from that burden, sees in heaven the land of its liberty. There God, who is light, dwells no more in light inaccessible, and there the spirit is at home who earnestly desires to know God, to enjoy God, to be like him. Lessons:

1. Though the saints are dissatisfied with this earth, as their home, yet they are content, yea, cheerfully resigned to endure it as their schoolhouse.

2. As we are strangers and pilgrims here, let our thoughts and affections be more set on the place which is our home, being the house of our heavenly Father.

3. Let us, knowing this is not our country in which we dwell, take care to behave ourselves innocently and circumspectly.

4. Is there not good reason to apprehend that many who profess to be strangers and pilgrims on the earth, are so as Nabal was, and as Saul was, and as Ahab was, only because they cannot help it? If not, why such deathless animosities? Such grasping to get and to keep the mammon of unrighteousness? Such holding to this world? Such forgetfulness of the next? Such intemperance? Such sensuality? Is this the character of strangers and pilgrims? (R. Lee.)

Strangers and pilgrims

I. THE POSSESSOR OF FAITH IS A STRANGER IN THE EARTH. What a change! In unbelief we were strangers to God (Eph_2:12). By faith strangers to world. Because

1. We are now more sensible of our frailty. Make me to know how frail I am.

2. Our Master was a stranger. His love made Him a stranger.

3. We, like Him, are born from above. Life Divine will re-seek its source. Sparks fly to sun.

4. The true Christian even now lives elsewhere. He is a non- conformist to the world. Thus an enigma.

II. THE LIFE OF FAITH IS A PILGRIMAGE ON THE EARTH.

1. A well-trodden path of pilgrimage.

2. A brief pilgrimage.

3. A pilgrimage in which we have an excellent guide.

III. THE EXPECTATION OF FAITH IS A COUNTRY BETTER THAN THE WORLD.

1. Heaven is our legal inheritance.

2. Heaven is our rest.

3. Heaven is our city of foundations.

4. Heaven is the ultimate place of assembly of Gods people.

IV. THE DUTY OF FAITH IS TO CONFESS THIS TO THE WORLD.

1. By word (Heb_11:14; Num_10:29).

2. By conduct.

(1) Let us not seek our happiness here.

(2) Let us be satisfied with our portion here. Enough for a journey.

(3) Let us remember that our way to heaven lies not only through duties of religion, but also through duties of our calling; self, families, fellow-men have demands, though subordinate.

(4) Let us look for a change of place.

(5) Let us fit ourselves for a change of place. (R. S. Latimer.)

Strangers and pilgrims

This is a confession which all the patriarchs made; if not in words, more emphatically in deeds. We find it expressly made on five occasions in the Old Testament.

I. The first two instances of this confession occur in historical narratives, and may be considered by themselves.

1. Abraham says to the sons of Heth: I am a stranger, &c. (Gen_23:4). You are alone, and would fain be let alone, in your grief. You care not for companionship; you shrink from it. Leave me to myself, may be your instinctive cry. Only give me liberty in quietness to bury my dead. Earth may have many things attractive to you: for me, it can furnish only one thing I care for; a grave for my dead. This may be a morbid frame; and it may have a fascination for the mourner; and such a fascination as is apt to grow. It may become the luxury of woe; and, like all luxury, it will enervate and enslave. It is to be resisted in its beginning. As a lover of men, you have much to live for; to do good as you have opportunity. As a lover of Christ, you have more; for to you to live is Christ. In this spirit, you may well and warrantably use the language of the patriarch; with fullest fellowship and sympathy, Have pity upon me, O my friends! You may have been wont to regard me simply as a stranger; separated from you; moving in a different sphere, and following different ways. You may have seen perhaps, with some not unnatural grudge, my prosperous state; thinking it hard that such an uninvited intruder into your country should possess such wealth in flocks and herds: or the simple worship of my household may have provoked your indignation or contempt. I was not one of you. You saw me as a stranger; as one whom you did not understand, and could not altogether like. But see me now, a stricken mourner, a desolate old man, fain to come to you and ask from you a grave in which to bury my dead. There is that in sorrow which makes men kind; which makes them kin. How precious, in this view, may a season of distress be to one labouring among his neighbours on behalf of Christ!

2. The Lord says to Israel, The land is Mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me (Lev_25:23). This may be regarded almost as a kind of rejoinder to the pathetic appeal which we have heard Abraham making to the sons of Heth. Thou art here again, after a long interval, in the land where thou wast once a wanderer. Then thou was a stranger and sojourner with the sons of Heth. Now thou art a stranger and sojourner with Me. Then thou didst acknowledge them to be thy hosts, and thyself to be their guests. Now thou art to feel that I am thy Host, and thou art My guest. For the land is Mine. Thou sojournest with Me. There is comfort in this thought applied retrospectively. Thou didst indeed then succeed in purchasing a few feet of ground, that thou mightest bury thy dead in no borrowed tomb, but in a sepulchre thou hadst by purchase made thine own. But, after all, it was in a land possessed by alien tribes, a land of strangers.

Is it not a satisfaction, solace, to reflect now that it was in a land which is the Lords? This comfort may be yours, believer. You too bury your dead in a land that is the Lords. And the land is the wide earth; for the earth is the Lords. Whenever you have to bury your dead, it is in a land of which the Lord says, It is Mine. To leave loved remains on a foreign strand, slowly and sadly to lay down the brave where the foe is sullenly firing; to lose the weary adventurer in the wild jungle, abandoned to his fate among its beasts of prey; to cast with measured plunge into the deep sea the cold form which you prize above all its treasures: ah! what a hard sore trial of love and faith. But courage. The earth is the Lords, and the fulness thereof! There is admonition also in the thought. If you were hospitably received in some great and good mans house, seated at his table, and allowed the full range of his wide domains, you would not think of taking liberties as if all were your own. You would be on your guard, lest you should abuse his hospitality. You would beware of encroaching on his condescension. And you would pay him the decent compliment of showing how much you valued him and his company above all his goodly fare. Then again you would be careful not to set your heart too much upon your temporary residence, and its temporary entertainment. You would moderate your taste for the enjoyments and indulgences which are yours only for a brief and uncertain time; allowed to you by him whose guest you are. And you would not think of giving away to foolish friends the goods stored up in his cellars; or cutting down the timber of his woods for your own pleasure or aggrandisement. This figure or parable may explain and enforce the right and safe way of using this world without abusing it. As the Lords guests you cannot be indifferent or stand neutral in the great strife that is going on in the land of which He says, It is Mine. You must take a side. Nor can there be room for doubt what the side is to be. The buried bones of your pious dead, whose graves are all over the field of battle, forbid all hesitancy or indecision, all cowardice or compromise. The earth is indeed the Lords. And it is ere long to be triumphantly vindicated and gloriously Occupied as His. But meanwhile it is the Lords, as a kind of debateable territory, every inch of which has to be fought for, to be won and kept as it were, by force of arms; like the parcel of ground which Jacob bought, but which, nevertheless, his sons had to conquer by their swords and their bows. And it has in its bosom a countless multitude of redeemed bodies, belonging to redeemed souls; bodies now vile perhaps, but destined to be conformed to the Lords own glorious body. You cannot be idle while the battle is raging that is to end in such a victory. Two things in particular you must have much at heart. The first is to break every tie that ever bound you, or could bind you, to the usurpers service; the service of the prince of this world. You cannot now be brought under Satans bondage; for greater is He that is for you than all they that can be against you. You cannot now be blindfolded by the great deceiver. You know the truth, and the truth makes you free. Surely now you will not betray your Host with whom you dwell, by shrinking from knowing His name and defending His cause, or by keeping up a treacherous correspondence with the enemy. Rather, secondly, knowing His mind and heart, seeing how intensely He longs to clasp to His bosom, and welcome into His home, and entertain as His guests each and all of those fighting in the rebel host, will you not be ever appealing to every one of them whom you meet with, every stranger wandering afar off, every unwary youth enlisting himself as a recruit?

II. The three other instances of this confession of the text occur in devotional exercises, and they may be made to fit into one another.

1. We are strangers before Thee and sojorners, as were all our fathers 1Ch_29:15). Here the thought we are strangers before Thee and sojourners is brought in to heighten the admiring and grateful joy with which David contemplates the amazing goodness of God, in permitting him and his people to do so much, to do anything, for the building of His house and the glory of His name. What grace, what condescension, is there in this! The Proprietor and Lord of all things enables and inclines us who are His guests, sojourning with Him in the land that is His own, to offer as our gift what already, as His property, belongs to Him alone; and most generously consents to accept the offering!

2. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not Thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with Thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were (Psa_39:12). This is your sad cry as you suffer under the inevitable evils of a strangers lot, even though you may have the blessedness, in the land in which you are strangers, of being sojourners with him whose land it is. For, however hospitably he with whom you are sojourning may entertain you, it is still, as it were, within the precincts of an inn, nor can you expect to escape the vexations and troubles inseparable from that mode of accommodation. Then you must remember that the land in which as strangers you are for the present entertained as sojourners, is the earth which has been cursed for your sin, and on which, with whatever mitigation, the sentence still lies. You may think it strange, perhaps hard, that you should be thus lodged, even temporarily; in the midst of creations groans, mingling with your own. But for wise ends your gracious entertainer considers this to be right. And may you not always be appealing to Him, and reminding Him of your relation to Him?

3. I am a stranger in the earth: hide not Thy commandments from me Psa_119:19). The point and pith of this prayer would seem to lie in the continual need which one who is a stranger on the earth has of communion with Him whose guest he is; with whom, as a stranger, he is a sojourner. In that character, as a stranger on the earth, I do not now desire to have more fellowship with the people of the land than is necessary for pious ends; for the comely burial of my dead, or for the discharge of my duty of love to the living. I would rather converse with Him who says, The land is Mine. And the medium of conversation with Him is His word, or His commandments. His commandments, His communications of whatever sort, precepts, promises, histories, prophecies, warnings, encouragements, all sayings of His, for they are all commandments, I desire to use as means of real personal converse with Him. But I cannot do so unless He opens my eyes. Therefore, I pray, Hide not Thy commandments from me. (R, S. Candlish, D. D.)

Of living as strangers:

The people of God are strangers and pilgrims.

1. In respect of their station, the place of their abode. While they are in the world they are in a strange country; while they are present in the world they are far from home. The world is a strange country, and their habitations in it, how much soever their own in civil respects, are but as inns in that journey homeward. The world is a strange country to the people of God, and the men of the world are men of a strange language, strange customs, strange laws, far differing from that of their own country.

2. In respect of their design, their motion, it is still homewards. This strange country likes them not, nor they it; they are travelling towards another, that which is, that which they account, their home, that better country, that heavenly country, that city prepared for them, that city whose builder and maker is God.

3. In respect of their enjoyments. They are but accommodated here like strangers. Much would be a burden, a hindrance to them in their journey; they have more in hopes than hand. Their treasure, their crown, their glory is at home, their Fathers house; till they come there they are strangers.

4. In respect of their usage. They are not known in the world, and so are often coarsely used. In this strange country they meet with few friends, but many injuries. Their habit, language, practices, must be after their own country fashion, such as become heaven; now this being contrary to the world, meets with opposition, scorn, reproaches, hatred.

5. In respect of their continuance. Their abode on earth is but short. They dwell but as Abraham in tabernacles (Heb_11:9), in tents, moveable dwellings, quickly, easily removed; no dwelling that has a foundation, that is lasting, durable, till at home (Heb_11:10).

6. In respect of their relations. Their dearest relations are in another country. Their Father, their Husband, their Elder Brother, their dearest Friend, their Comforter, and the far greatest part of their brethren and fellow-members, are all in heaven.

Use 1. Reproof of those who profess themselves to be the people of God, and yet live not like His people; live on earth as though earth was their home, and mind heaven as little as they mind a strange country; suffer their thoughts, affections, endeavours, to be so taken up with the earth, and the things of it, as though the world were all the home they expect; instead of being strangers to the world, are strangers to the thoughts of, to the employments of, to the endeavours for heaven; rise up early, &c., to lay up treasure on earth, and lap up their hearts and souls with it.

Use 2. Exhortation to the people of God. You are strangers and pilgrims, oh endeavour to live as strangers. You expect to die in the faith, oh live then as you may so die.

(1) Be not familiar with the world. Let the pleasures, the carnal interests of it, be strange things to you (1Pe_2:12; Rom_12:2).

(2) Be patient under sufferings, under the affronts, reproaches, hard usages you meet with from the world. It is the portion of strangers. Expect no vindication till in your own country.

(3) Be content with what things you enjoy. Though it seem small or poor, it is enough for a stranger. More would be a burden to you, and travellers should avoid burdens, if they long to be at home.

(4) Set not your hearts upon anything here below, Remember, while you are on earth, you are but in an inn. Mind the things here below as in transitu; use them as though ye used them not.

(5) Make haste home. Make no longer stay than needs must in this strange country. Make straight steps to your feet; disburden yourselves of worldly cares, projects, fleshly lusts, that weight that does so easily beset you. What you have to do here, do it with all your might, that you may be fit for home. Despatch, make haste; remember whither you are going, and to whom. Your Father expects you; the Bridegroom thinks long till you come, He that will delight in you for ever.

(6) Be not too fearful of death. It is a sleep now; Christs death did change the property of it? and will a pilgrim, a weary traveller, be afraid of sleep? (D. Clarkson, B. D.)

Christian pilgrims

I. CHRISTIANS NO EXERCISE A TRUE FAITH IN THE PROMISES OF GOD.

1. The faith of Christians in the promises of God implies that they understand them.

2. Their faith in the promises of God implies that they have a full and undoubting Conviction of their truth and certainty.

3. The faith of true Christians in the promises of God implies a cordial approbation of them.

II. Such A FIRM AND CORDIAL RELIEF IN THE GREAT AND PRECIOUS PROMISES OF GOD LEADS CHRISTIANS TO LIVE AND ACT AS STRANGERS ON THE EARTH.

1. Pilgrims never feel at home. They find no place which they can call their own; where they can reside as long as they please. They are constrained to go from stage to stage, and to change their situation from day to day. And though they may sometimes find pleasant and desirable places, yet they can find no place at which they can feel at home.

2. Pilgrims feel very much alone in the world. They find but a few travelling their way; and if some now and then fall into their company, yet they are strangers to their views and feelings, and afford them but very little comfort or entertainments and generally they obstruct rather than animate and quicken them in their journey.

3. Pilgrims always feel themselves exposed to danger. Travelling in a foreign country, they are unacquainted with the disposition of the inhabitants, and unused to their customs and manners. On these accounts, they never know when or where they are safe. They cannot place entire confidence in those with whom they converse, whether they wear a friendly or unfriendly aspect. They are exposed to contempt from the great, to fraud from the unjust, and to every evil from the lawless and malevolent.

4. Pilgrims feel thankful for all the agreeable accommodations which they meet with on their way. They are sensible of their dependence on Providence, and on the favour and assistance of their fellow.men. They are thankful for plain and smooth paths, for pleasant weather, and for good stages for rest and refreshment. And they are thankful to every stranger who faithfully directs them and kindly treats them.

5. Pilgrims take nothing with them but what they deem necessary for their journey. They throw aside the superfluities as encumbrances.

6. Pilgrims never think of turning back on account of any difficulties which they meet with in their way. If they are lame, or sick, they stop only till they recover, and then go forward. If the season be unfavourable, they wait only till it becomes better. Or if the roads be obstructed, they wait only till the obstructions are removed.

Improvement:

1. If those who cordially embrace the promises of God are real pilgrims, then it is to be expected that they will profess their faith before men, and confess that they are pilgrims and strangers on the earth.

2. If those who profess to be Christians at the same time profess to be pilgrims, then there is a great impropriety as well as criminality in professors of religion being conformed to the world.

3. If all real Christians are pilgrims, and live and act as such, then they are living monitors to sinners. They admonish both by their profession and practice.

4. If all real Christians are pilgrims, then those have little reason to think that they are pilgrims who do not make it appear so in the sight of the world.

5. If Christians are pilgrims, who are entitled to the great and precious promises of God, then they will be peculiarly happy when they finish their pilgrimage, and reach their long home. All their labours, and dangers, and trials, and sufferings, will work for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. (N. Emmons, D. D.)

Soul-pilgrimage

I take the idea of pilgrimage to illustrate the life of a true soul in the world.

I. Soul-pilgrimage involves a DEPARTURE.

1. From a dominant materialism.

2. From controlling selfishness.

3. From practical atheism.

II. It involves a PURSUIT. Not of wealth or happiness, but of godliness. Following on to know the Lord. Pressing toward the mark. (Homilist.)

The pilgrim

I. WHAT IS IT TO FEEL AND CONDUCT OURSELVES AS STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS ON THE EARTH. It is to feel and conduct ourselves as not being at home in the flesh, but as travelling on a journey to the world above. A wise pilgrim will not encumber himself with a load of toys which will only impede his progress towards home; which, instead of adding to his enjoyments, will only perplex him on his journey; and which at last he cannot carry into his Fathers house to possess, but must lay down and leave at the threshold. A stranger on earth, if he is wise, will not expend his all in procuring the riches of the country which he cannot carry with him when he returns, as he shortly must to his native land. His principal object will be (besides those temporary supplies which will support him by the way) to lay in copiously those riches which he can carry with him when he returns to his abiding habitation.

II. SOME REASONS WHY WE OUGHT TO FEEL AND CONDUCT OURSELVES AS STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS ON THE EARTH.

1. A- pilgrims way is the only way to heaven. We are by nature as far from home as we are from God. In order then to find an entrance into the peaceful doors of our Parents house, we must say with the prodigal, I will arise and go to my Father.

2. Heaven is the only good worth setting our hearts upon--the only place where unsullied enjoyment is to be had--the only spot where untainted excellence is found. It alone contains pleasures which will never fade away.

3. There is a sweetness in feeling ourselves strangers and pilgrims on the earth. It is sweet to feel ourselves not at home in the flesh, just on the wing to be gone, and arising to a better habitation. It is sweet to feel the world beneath our feet, to stand above it and converse with God. The man that does this is not indebted to the unsteady shifting objects of time and sense for his principal satisfaction, but possesses a happiness which the world can neither give nor take away. He can remain unruffled amidst the changes of life.

4. A stranger and pilgrim on earth has everything that he needs; why then should he wish for any closer alliance with the world? Gods favour is life, and His loving-kindness is better than life. He who enjoys Him has all and needs no more.

5. To relax into friendship with the world, to feel earth our home, and to say, It is good to be here, is very dangerous; as it draws the soul from God, clouds out of sight the glory of spiritual objects, exposes us to temptation, and is the chief cause of all our miseries.

6. We are here in an enemys country, while our dearest friends are in heaven.

7. This earth was never designed for the Christians home. It is a field in which he is sent to labour.

8. The more of strangers we are on the earth, and the more intercourse we have with heaven while here, the more welcome and happy shall we be when we arrive at glory.

III. THE DUTY OF BELIEVING AND TRUSTING IN THE PROMISES OF GOD.

1. To believe and trust in the promises of God is an exercise of faith and an essential mark of a Christian.

2. We should not distrust the promises of God on account of their not being yet fulfilled, or because at particular times we cannot see the fulfilment of those which relate to the present life. It was never designed that the promises which relate to the life to come should be fulfilled at present. It is not fit we should receive our reward till our work is done.

3. The want of a realising belief in the Divine promises is the great reason of our impatience at the thought of being strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

4. There is a sweetness in believing and trusting in the promises of God. The Christian then feels as secure and immovable as unchanging truth and almighty power can make him.

5. The promises of God are absolutely unfailing. And dare any who have the Bible in their hands deny their truth? Let us then

(1)Reprove ourselves for our worldly attachments, and for not feeling more like strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

(2) Let us reprove our impatience and despondency at a distant view or disbelief of the promises. (E. Griffin, D. D.)

Gods people are strangers:

1. A stranger is no medler in the country wherein he is; he takes that which is requisite for hint; he looks to his own business; but he doth not interpose himself in the affairs of the commonwealth, he leaves them to those that be of the country. Even so being strangers in the world, let us meddle no more with the world than needs must. But we are drowned in the world, our minds are on the world all the week, all the year long; we meddle little with the Scripture, with prayer, heavenly meditations; we are altogether in and about the world.

2. Strangers must not think to bear sway in the town and country where they dwell, the natural inhabitants will not digest that (Gen_19:9); the Sodomites could not endure that Lot should be asking among them. So we, being strangers in the world, must not make account to domineer in it, to have all men at our control, we must be content to be underlings here that we may be aloft hereafter; the faithful are often put to the wall and the wicked are lords over them. This we must take patiently because we are strangers.

3. Strangers and pilgrims are wont to be abstemious (1Pe_2:11); a stranger, a traveller, if he be a wise man, doth not set his mind on feasting and banquetting, he takes a morsel, and so away. So, being strangers here, we must lead a sober life, take no more of the world than will serve us for our journey; we must reserve our feasting till we come to that place where we shall eat bread with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,

4. Strangers must look for no great love; for the most part they are hated in the country where they be, and they are wished to be out of it; even so the world loveth her own; we are not of the world, we are men of another world, therefore marvel not that we find little friendship in the world.

5. Strangers have a longing desire to be at home. If an Englishman be in Spain, Turkey, India, he thinks every day two till he be in England. Oh that I were with my wife and children, with my friends and neighbours at home! So, being strangers in this world, let us not make too great account of it; let us desire to be at home in our heavenly Jerusalem; let us say with St. Paul, I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, which is best of all.

6. Strangers do not heartily love that country wherein they be; they may love it in some sort, but nothing to their own country; so being viatores we may take viaticum; but let us not love the world; let us use it as if we used it not. Let the heavenly Canaan, our native country, have all our love.

7. If a stranger come to an inn he looks about hint and says, This is a fair inn, here I have a goodly chamber; I fare well for my money; but this is no place for me to tarry in. So we should think and say of the world, I have a convenient dwelling, meat and drink enough; I thank God I want nothing; but this is not my place of abode, I am but a stranger here, all these things I must forego. I would to God that this were deeply engraven in the hearts of us all that we did effectually consider we were strangers on the earth. We say we are strangers, but we live as lords. A strange thing that strangers should be so bewitched with a strange country as we are with the earth. (W. Jones, D. D.)

The journey of life

I. OUR PASSAGE THROUGH LIFE IS COMPARED IS HOLY SCRIPTURE TO VARIOUS THINGS--sometimes to an arrow flitting through the air--sometimes to a flower which is to-day in the field, tomorrow cut down and withered. But no figure, I think, more comprehensively describes it than that of a journey.

1. The first great resemblance may be found in the various stage of each. In the common journeys of this world some are long, and marked, of course, with a great variety of circumstances. Others, again, are short, quickly performed, and little varied with any particular occurrences. Exactly thus is our great journey through life. In our great journey through life we cannot make the stages as we please. They are laid out for us. We have only to prepare ourselves properly for them.

2. A second great resemblance which may be traced between a journey and our passage through life arises from the various roads which present themselves in both. Every one accustomed to travelling knows there are various roads commonly leading to the same place. Some are bad, others indirect, while there is generally but one which is the best, and which every prudent traveller would wish to pursue. Such too is our journey towards eternal life. Ask any who are not quite abandoned and they will tell you they hope to go to heaven--that this at least is their aim; but through what a variety of paths do they often pursue it! It may be hoped indeed that all these wanderers will in time see their error, and at length arrive safely at their heavenly home. But what toil, what distress might they have prevented if they had not suffered themselves to be led astray through all the bye-paths of pleasure or worldly allurements; but had from the first pursued the direct road!

3. As a journey thus resembles our passage through life in being a progress through various stages to a destined end, so does it resemble it in the many difficulties and inconveniences with which it is incommoded. No man can pass through life without meeting them. From our early youth they begin, and as we advance our difficulties increase. The cares and mischances of the world--or the knavery and malice of mankind--or sickness--or the ingratitude of friends--or the miscarriages, if not of ourselves, at least of our near connections, present us with a great variety of distress. Then again, they who are of a feeling nature have their compassion daily exercised by their fellow-travellers whom they see toiling under various burdens and cannot relieve. As we advance towards the end of life new distresses arise. The infirmities of age and the difficulty of mixing with a younger generation, all tend to lessen our relish for the world and teach us more and more to depend on happiness hereafter.

4. Another resemblance, nearly allied to the last, between a journey and our passage through life arises from the different manner in which its different stages affect us. At first, during the warmth and inexperience of youth, everything strikes us with pleasure. The world is new to us--our spirits are high--our passions are strong--the gaieties of life get hold of us--and it is happy, if we can enjoy them with moderation and innocence. Now and then we meet a rebuke from the world, but we lay it not to heart; youth is prone to forget untoward circumstances, and other objects catch our attention. But as years come on--as the inconveniences of life increase and the satisfactions arising from it diminish--we grow fatigued with so tiresome a march, and if we are those strangers and pilgrims upon earth of whom the text speaks we begin to think with pleasure of finishing our earthly toil.

5. From these inconveniences which meet us in every stage another resemblance arises, the last I shall suggest, which is, that we must never expect to find in a journey the comforts we look for at home. Many people have no idea of a heavenly home. Of them I speak not. They must, if they choose it, wander about in this world without any aim till they drop into their graves, and must take the consequence.

II. IF THEN LIFE IS A JOURNEY AND CAN BE COMPARED SO PROPERLY TO NOTHING ELSE, LET US CONSIDER IT AS SUCH.

1. In the first place, let us not set our hearts upon anything in it.

2. If, again, life is a journey, let us not loiter in it.

3. Lastly, if life be a journey, let us keep the great end continually in view. We are journeying to our great home--the eternal mansion of spirits. What is there here to detain us from such an end? Our valuables are not about us; they are at home, at the end of our journey. Where our treasure is, there then let our hearts be also. (W. Gilpin, M. A.)

The pilgrim not a hermit:

It seems a very common thing to take the word pilgrim in its religious sense as very nearly identical with the word hermit; but the two not only differ, but in some respects very strongly contrast. The hermit is a personage who never appears in the Bible, or if he does appear, it is in some very distant glimpses indeed. He is not found, either in the Old or the New Dispensation, as having any part in the appointments of the people of God; but the hermit is one of the favourite institutions of heathenism, and was, in olden times, prevalent over all the great ancient countries. The idea was early adopted in Egypt, and from Egypt it diffused itself over all the West, even to our own country. The hermit is one who has a quarrel with human society, and takes it to be his business to get as far away from mankind as circumstances will permit him. He may effect the separation by locality, by getting into a desert; he may effect it by confining himself within the walls of a convent, by getting up a tree, or living on the top of a pillar, as has sometimes been done. He may confine that separation to costly and particular habits and vows; but still his great idea is, to separate himself from human society and so cut out that part of human nature that does not lie built up within the four walls of his own person. Now, this is by no means the character of the pilgrim. The pilgrim is quite another personage. He has no quarrel with human society. He does not purpose to separate himself from mankind. On the contrary, pilgrims have been remarkable in every age and nation for being social, for seeking in their pilgrimage as many companions as they can possibly gather together, and for cheering their pilgrimage with as many comforts as they can carry through the journey, and with as many songs, and as much intercourse, and as much vivacity and pleasure of every kind as they can possibly command. But the pilgrim is one who has a point at which he is aiming, and a purpose for which he aims at it; and no matter what land he has to traverse, however pleasant it may be, it must not tempt him to stay, or however foul it may be, it must not discourage him so that he turn back. He has to go on; if it be a desert, to cross it in spite of its difficulties; if it be a garden, to cross it in spite of its flowers, and still to go on. (W. Arthur, M. A.)

An exile on earth

A holy indifference to present things makes it easy to part with them, and death less fearful. Chrysostom, in a letter to Ciriacus, who was tenderly sensible of his banishment, wrote to him, You now begin to lament my banishment, but I have done so for a long time; for, since I knew that heaven was my country, I have esteemed the whole earth as a place of exile. Constantinople, from which I am expelled, is as distant from paradise as the desert to which they send me.

Home yet distant

A father, with his little son, is journeying overland to California, and when at night he pitches his tent in some pleasant valley, the child is charmed with the spot, and begs his father to rear a house and remain there; and he begins to make a little fence about the tent, and digs up the wild flowers and plants them within the enclosure. But the father says, No, my son. Our home is far distant. Let these things go, for to-morrow we must depart. Now, God is taking us, His children, as pilgrims and strangers, homeward; but we desire to build here, and must be often overthrown before we can learn to seek the city that hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God. (H. W. Beecher.)

They seek a country

Longings for the heavenly city:

I. THE LONGING WHICH THE GODLY HAVE FOR SOMETHING BETTER THAN THIS WORLD CAN GIVE. Here we may notice first of all the difference in kind between this longing and sinful discontent on the one hand, and the difference between it and the noble aspirations of worldly minds on the other.

1. Discontent is the spirit of self-will, displeased with the ordinances of God, or denying a providence and complaining of its destiny. This temper is insubordinate, for it would remove the disposal of things out of Gods hands: it is proud and selfish, for so far from being willing to take an humble place in the universe, it would take the highest, and bend everything to its own arrangements: it is worldly, for the excessive desire of earthly good, which by the nature of the case must be ungratified, gives it birth: it is not only miserable in itself, but the source of new misery, for it leads the soul to look on the dark side of its earthly lot, and to make the most of whatever counteracts the desires. Compare with this discontent the temper of the godly man, as he looks with dissatisfaction upon this world. He is not like the chained beast which howls with rage and bites his chain, nor even like the caged bird that sings as he flies about the walls of his little prison but seizes the first chance to escape: he is rather like the soldier in the garrison, with whom he has often been compared, weary, it may be, with the constant vigilance and the toilsome defence, but stationary until his commander allows him to depart, and giving himself up meanwhile, with energy of will, perhaps with heroic joy, to the defence of the fortress.

2. The feeling of the godly man towards this world, so unlike the spirit of discontent, resembles much more the higher aspirations of mere human nature. There are men who seem to have by nature a high standard of character and attainment, who, if they lived alone and were uneducated, would have a certain dignity about them which is not allotted to all. These men are not made to be worldlings; the toils of covetousness, the intrigues of ambition they despise. Now these men have this resemblance to the godly who are our true pilgrims, that they are at a wide remove from earthly-mindedness in its worst sense, that they never reach the goal of their choice, and that thus they gather a dissatisfaction, often a very great dissatisfaction, with themselves and the world., But they differ from them in this; that they have not surrendered their native self-will, and that their standard, however lofty, is not spiritual.

II. The text leads us to remark in the second place THAT THE GODLY HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO RETURN TO THEIR FORMER STATE AND MAKE THIS WORLD AGAIN THEIR PORTION. By not doing this they show that they seek a heavenly country. The confessions which proceed from their lips and lives prove that the world has not yet satisfied them. But if their earthly desires are not controlled by heavenly principles, they have abundant facilities for making new experiments upon the world. They can immerse themselves it again, as they did in their days of thoughtlessness. The world is ready to welcome them back, for it does not relish the silent reproofs which a non-conformist to its rules utters, as he withdraws from it. But he with opened eye is seeking for a better country, that is a heavenly. It is not the extent of his dissatisfaction with the world, or the strength of his resolution, or the force of circumstances, or a peculiar nature which leads him on in his chosen course, but the conviction that there is a better country to which he can attain. And it is better not simply because it promises a greater amount of good, or more lasting good such as the earth gives for a few years, but because it lays before his hopes another kind of good, as different from earthly as possible. This difference between spiritual and temporal good was always a reality of infinite importance, but he could not perceive it until his eye was opened and his affections transferred. Since that great revolution in his character, weak and tempted and often vacillating as he has been, he has resisted the invitations of the world to return to his old plan of life, because his desires are fastened on a new object, on the heavenly inheritance, which comprises all that is holy and truly blessed.

III. Owing to these heavenly desires, to this spiritual mind of the Christian, GOD IS NOT ASHAMED TO BE CALLED HIS GOD. As his God and Protector, God takes care of his interests by preparing for him a city. The man of God dwells in a tent or tabernacle in this world, and not only wants no city here, but feels that he can find none. Still his nature longs for something abiding. Death, decay, change, uncertainty are alien from his nature, they run counter to the longing for immortality which is within him. Such an abidingplace God, his God, hath provided for him. It is a permanent home. Again it is a city which is prepared for the godly man, in distinction from a lonely tent among strangers. So that his feeling of being by himself away from his best friends will have an end. As the traveller in the East passes from the bazaars and thronged streets of some capital, to the border of the wilderness, where the Bedouin is encamped for a season, he finds a new sort of people, who have no turn for city life, who are retired from the haunts of men, and when nearest to cities feel wholly estranged from them. Something so do godly men feel amid all the ties and joys of this world. Its spirit is unlike theirs. They have no home-feeling in its neighbourhood; they have, while they live closest to it, an unsatisfied sense of absence from something most akin to them, a sense of emptiness for which hope alone furnishes a relief. The city which God, their God, hath prepared for them fills up this want. There they are to be among friends, in whom they can fully confide--with God, Christ, and the redeemed--there they will no more have that sense of loneliness which saddened them in their night-wanderings through this world. (T. D.Woolsey.)

The faith of the patriarchs:

It is in the power of actions as well as of words to declare plainly; and the patriarchs of this chapter made it as plain by what they did as by what they said, whither it was that their desires and their affections were tending. Nothing could be more explicit of this than the practice of Abraham--who gave up the place of his nativity; and tore himself away from all its charms and endearments; and became a pilgrim in an unknown land. What is very well termed a mans general drift, stood most palpably out on the whole of his history. And, in the same way, every human being has a prevailing drift, that may in most instances be pretty accurately gathered from certain obvious indications, which are ever obtruding themselves on the notice of bystanders. But there is a distinction to be remarked here. It may sometimes not be so very plain what the particular interest is which a man is prosecuting with the main force of his ambitious desires--whether it be the love of money, or the love of power, or the love of acceptance in society, or the love of eminence above his fellows by the lustre of a higher literary reputation. I may not be able to pronounce of the most bustling and ambitious member of our city corporation, whether his heart is most set on the acquirement of a princely fortune, or on a supreme ascendency over all his compeers in the political management of this great community. But whether it be the one or the other, I can say on the instant, that the great theatre of his favourite exertion is this, the place of our habitation--that is here--that it is among home society around him where he seeks to signalise himself, whether by wealth or by influence, or by popularity; and not in any remote or distant society with whom no sympathies are felt, and for u-hose homage either to his dignity or to his opulence, no anxiety whatever has been conceived. One would need to be profoundly intimate with the hidden mysteries of our nature to trace the numerous shadings and varieties of worldliness that obtain in our species. But it may be a matter of the most obvious recognition to the most simple of men, that worldliness, in some shape or other, is the great pervading element of all its generations. This much at least may be seen, without the piercing eye either of scholar or of satirist; and while the apostle said of the faithful whom he was enumerating., how they declared plainly that they were seeking a future and a distant country--we may say of nearly all whom we know, and of all whom we look upon in society, that they declare as plainly the world to be the only scene on which their hopes and their wishes do expatiate. It is not either that man is actually satisfied with present things. It is not that he has set him down in placid acquiescence among the creatures and the circumstances by which he is for the moment surrounded. We see nothing of the repose of full and finished attainment with any of our acquaintances. There is none of them, in fact, who is not plainly stretching himself forward to some one distant object or other; and, as the tokens of one who is evidently on a pursuit, do we behold him in a state of motion and activity and busy endeavour. But when we come to inquire into the nature of the object that so stimulates his desires and his faculties, do we find it to be a something which lies within the confines of mortality--a something suited only to such senses and such powers of enjoyment as death will extinguish--a something that he may perhaps hand down to posterity, but which afew rapid years will wrest away from himself, and that by an act of everlasting bereavement. Surely it is one of the strangest mysteries of our nature, and, at the same time, one of the strongest tokens of its derangement, that man should thus embark all his desires in a frail and crazy vessel so soon to be engulfed. But to alleviate this gross infatuation, it may be said, and with plausibility too, that the region of sense and the region of spirituality are so unlike the one to the other--that there is positively nothing in our experience of the former which can at all familiarise our minds to the anticipation of the latter. And then, as if to intercept the flight of our imaginations forward to eternity, there is such a dark and cloudy envelopment that hangs on the very entrance of it. Ere we can realise that distant world of souls, we must pierce our way beyond the curtain of the grave--we must make our escape from all the warm and besetting urgencies, which, in this land of human bodies, are ever plying us with powerful solicitation; and force our spirits across the boundaries of sense, to that mysterious place where cold and evanescent spectres dwell together in some incomprehensible mode of existence. We know not if there be another tribe of beings in the universe who have such a task to perform. Angels have no such transition of horror and mystery to undergo. There is no screen of darkness like this intrposed between them and any portion of their futurity however distant; and it appears only of man, that it is for him to drive a breach across that barrier which looks so impenetrable, or so to surmount the power of vision as to carry his aspirings over the summit of all that vision has made known to them. Now if this be the work of faith, you will perceive that it is not just so light and easy an achievement as some would apprehend. Think for one moment of the apostolical definition of faith. It is the substance of things hoped for, anti the evidence of things not seen--or, as it should have been rendered, it is the confident expectation of things hoped for, and the clear and assured conviction of things not seen. It is that which gives to an interest that is future all the urgency and deciding power upon the conduct which belong to an interest that is present. And should the future interest be greater than the present, and they come into competition, the one with the other, faith is that which resolves him who is under its influence to give up the immediate gratification for the sake of the distant advantage. Thus it is, essentially and by its very nature, a practical principle; and no sooner does it take possession of the heart of any individual, than it holds out the plain attestation of itself upon its history--and not by his dogmata, but by his doings. Heaven is held out in the gospel not in bargain as a reward to our performance of Gods precepts, but simply in anticipation as a fulfilment to our hope of Gods promises; and what place, it may be asked, is there for seeking after this? How shall we seek that which is already gotten? or what conceivable thing is there to do in quest of a benefit that is offered to our hand; and on the honesty of which offer we have merely to lay an unfaltering reliance? We can understand how to go about it, when the matter is to seek that which we must work for. But if heaven be not of works but of grace, what remains but to delight ourselves in the secure anticipation of that which we should count upon as a certainty, instead of labouring for it as if it were a contingency that hung upon our labours? And yet they are promises, and nothing else, which put all the patriarchs into motion. It was just because they saw these promises afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth--it was just because of all this that they declared plainly, both by their desires and by their doings, that they sought a country. Eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord--a thing not purchased by us but purchased for us by another--a matter so gigantically beyond any price that man could render for it, that, if held up to him in this aspect it would look to his despairing eye as if placed in the region of impossibility away from him. Grace has been charged with ministering to human indolence. But it is free grace, and nothing else, which unfastens this drag--which releases man from the imprisonment that formerly held him--which brings him out to a large and open space, and sets an object of hopefulness before him that he knows to be accessible--which breaks him loose from the grasp of that law, from whosecondemnation and whose penalties he felt so inextricable. So that, instead of doing nothing for heaven, when the gulf of a pathless separation stood in the way of it, he can now embark on a career of approximation, where, by all his doings, and by all his seekings, he may declare plainly that heaven is indeed the country to which he is travelling. It is said of the patriarchs in this chapter that they were not only persuaded of the promises, but that they embraced them. To be persuaded of them was to believe in the truth of the promises; to embrace them was to make choice of the things promised. Abraham chose his prospects in a distant country, rather than his possessions in the country of his father; and, in the prosecution of this choice, did he abandon the latter, and plainly declare, by all his subsequent doings, that he was seeking and making progress towards the former. And a believer nowadays, is not only persuaded that he has heaven for the acceptance of it; but he actually accepts, and, in so doing, he, like the father of the faithful, makes a preference between two objects which stand in competition before him. The man who chooses heaven rather than earth, chooses what is essentially characteristic of heaven, rather than what is essentially characteristic of earth; or, in other words, he makes choice of the piety of heaven, and the purity of heaven, and the benevolence of heaven. It is not by these that he purchases a place for himself in paradise; but it is by these that he prepares himself both for the doings and for the delights of paradise. It is by these that he brings his taste and his temper into conformity with that which is celestial. It is by these that he becomes a fit recipient for all those sensations of blessedness which are current there. The point at which heaven is accepted as a gift, so far from marking that place in the history of a believer when he gives up his activity because he has now gotten all that he wants, marks the place of his breaking forth on a career of activity--at the entrance of which he was before bound by a spell that no exertion of his could dissipate. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)

Seeking heaven:

One told Socrates that he would fain go to Olympus, but he distrusted his sufficiency to go the length of the journey. Socrates said, Thou walkest every day little or much; continue this walk, forward thy way, and a few days shall bring thee to Olympus. Every day every man takes some pains. Let him bestow that measure of pains in travelling to heaven; and the further he goes the more heart he gets, till at last he enters through the gates into the city. (T. Adams.)

Interest in heaven:

If you expected to make California your home in the next six months, would you not be interested in that country? I once knew an old man whose son went out to Oregon, where he became prosperous, purchased a great farm, and was getting it under magnificent cultivation. He often wrote home to his family about Oregon and his prosperity. By and by he sent for his brother to come out there and live with him; and then he sent for his sister and her husband. One by one, all the boys and their wives, and all the sisters and their husbands, were settled and prospering in Oregon. That old man was far more interested in Oregon than Indiana, where he was born and had lived all his days. He had many books on Oregon; he studied Oregon, its climate and soil, its increasing population, its commerce and prospects. Presently the son wrote to the old man, We are coming for you, father. After that the old man was more interested than ever. He talked about Oregon more and more, when he went to visit his neighbours or his neighbours came to visit him; he talked to his farm hands; up and down the streets he talked about Oregon, until some people thought he had well-nigh gone crazy. Do we not often forget that our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ? (Php_3:20). Have we not sometimes forgotten that He said, I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also? (Joh_14:1-31). Oh, what interests we have there! (G. F. Pentecost, D. D.)

Heaven a country and a city

It is a country and it is a city. A country. That thought throws before us at once the great idea of breadth and vastness. As we are passing to the other world, we are not passing to a confined sphere, but to one where there will be wide places for the powers of every man and of every woman called to unite in the work of that land, wide places for all to exercise their power, and for all to dwell in it. It is a city. It is not a lonely place, but a place of society. It is a city: it is not an undefended place, but a place with its walls and bulwarks, and eternal fences. It is a city: it is not a place built by chance and without arrangement, but a place built upon a plan. It is a city that hath a builder and a maker; that is, as we should say in our modern language, both an architect and a builder. The word translated builder means the architect who builds the structure first within his soul before it is ever built outside. An oration, a sermon, a grand scheme, or a palace, is in the first place produced within the soul of a man, and there it stands, and grows, and shines, perhaps far nobler than it ever does in the outer world. And so that city has its Architect, the great God; for, in what He would delight in the midst of His own, in what He Himself would dwell, where His children should be housed, in what streets the princes of God should walk, in what abbey the multitudes of the happy should assemble, and with what defences and adornments the city of the ,Great King should shine upon the eyes of His own for ever, He formed this first, and then He made it. Both architect and constructor is God; and that city and that country are His country and His city. (W. Arthur, M. A.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Heb 11:13. These all — Namely, Abraham and Sarah, with their children, Isaac and Jacob; died in faith — Believing that God would fulfil his promises; but not having received the promises — That is, the things promised, for which the word promises is here put by a usual metonymy. For the promises being made to Abraham personally, and to his immediate descendants, the apostle could not say of them that they died, not having received the promises; but he might justly say, they died not having received the things promised. For they neither received the possession of Canaan before their death, nor the actual exhibition of Christ in the flesh, with the privileges granted to the church in consequence thereof, which the apostle had so fully set forth in the four preceding chapters. This was that better thing provided for us under the New Testament, that they without us should not be made perfect. But having seen them afar off — At a great distance of time; as sailors, says Chrysostom, who after a long voyage, descry at a great distance, with much joy, their intended port. This makes it further evident that the things promised, and not the promises themselves, are intended; for the promises were not afar off, but present with them. They saw the things promised in that they had the idea of them in their minds, understanding in general the mind of God in his promises. And were persuaded of them — Namely, that such things as they had an idea of were promised, and that the promises would be fulfilled in due time; and embraced them — With the most cordial affection and greatest ardour of mind. The original word denotes the affectionate salutations and embracings of friends after a long separation. We then embrace the promises, and promised blessings, when our hearts cleave to them with confidence, love, complacency, and delight, the never-failing fruit of faith in them. This, and not a mere naked barren assent to divine revelation, was the faith whereby the elders obtained a good report. And confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth — That their interest, hopes, and enjoyments were not in this world, but in another which they expected. In other words, These heavenly-minded men, knowing well that a better country than any on earth was promised to them under the figure of Canaan, considered their abode in Canaan and on the earth as a pilgrimage at a distance from their native country; and to show what their expectations were, they always spake of themselves as strangers and pilgrims. See the passages referred to in the margin.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Heb_11:13-16

Living and Dying in Faith.—This rhetorical chapter, reviewing rapidly the stories of the other saints, could not fail to interest the Jewish Christian readers to whom the epistle was addressed. It illustrates the fact, that the great secret of the mastery of life is faith—trust; and God is ever working to make that trust a really sanctifying power. That indeed is the key to all His dealings with us. Just this is shown in the example of the patriarchs. Special attention is directed to Abraham. He started life under a promise. But the promise was never fulfilled to Abraham in the letter. He died possessor of only a grave in a promised land. So he was led to trust for the fulfilment by-and-by, and even to reach forth to its fulfilment in spiritual ways. Faith toned the patriarch’s mind, and made him feel like a stranger. It filled him with longings for, and onlookings towards, and even preparations for, “the city which had foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” He died, not in possession, but “in faith.”

I. God’s promises seem, at first, to assure earthly good.—The promise made to Abraham seems to mean an actual earth-territory, a national inheritance, and our promises have a very earthly look. We are assured that we shall “inherit the earth.” Treating us very much as we treat our children, God gives assurances and promises which take shape for us as material and temporal good. And with our life all before us, that is what we seem chiefly to need and to desire. God’s Canaan for us always seems, at first, to be some earthly prosperity and blessing. And this is more evidently the case when we have some definite purpose in life, some country that we mean to win.

II. Life but seldom fulfils the promises just as we understand them.—It might be said that it never fulfils. The writer addresses Christian Jews, who were oppressively feeling how different Christian life was proving to be to the picture of their early hopefulness. Then it looked so fair, so bright. It proved to be a scene of care, and struggle, and persecution, and peril. And it is much the same with us.

1. Life seldom is, even in its outward circumstances, what we picture to ourselves that it will be. Could Jacob’s story or St. Paul’s story have been imagined beforehand? The fact is, that God’s promises are general, and God’s providences work out the precise fulfilments of them. God orders our place and our work very strangely. As life passes on we are even led to do exactly what we most shrink from doing, and what we even think ourselves altogether unfitted for doing. We are brought through scenes and experiences which would have seemed to us hopelessly overwhelming, if we had thought of them in the outset of life.

2. Life seldom permits any great work to be accomplished right through by the man who begins it. Moses must climb Nebo to die before his life-work was completed in the possession of Canaan. Joshua died before the whole country was cleared of the idolatrous inhabitants. David died before the Temple could be built. There is even a sense in which our Lord’s life was “cut off,” and He left an unfinished work to be carried on by His apostles. To do any entire work, from beginning to end, seems to be too great an honour for any man. Some sow, others weed, and others reap. Some die ere life is started; some live on long enough to see others put the topstones on their work. And thus the solemn lesson is taught us, that God absolutely needs no one of us.

III. By the seeming failure God graciously lifts us up to take the higher view of His promises.—How failure can open men’s eyes! How disappointment here, dissatisfaction with life as we find it, tends to lift our eyes away from earth, and makes us feel that this is not our rest! As one thing after another disappoints, we begin to see that the time and place for God’s fulfilment of His promises is—yonder and there; not here and now. We begin to find out that the seemingly earthly look of the promises in reality only veiled the heavenly meaning for us—veiled it for a while, until we have grown strong enough to bear the full and spiritual truth of them. Is not this just the sanctifying work that advancing life does for us all under God? Still we believe—as Abraham did, right to the end—these earthly promises of Canaan; but we grow to be quite willing that they should be fulfilled for others—for our sons and daughters. For ourselves, every year makes us look away, more and more, to the heavenly city. It is quite plain that the earthly Canaan, of which we had dreamed never will be ours. We seek a country.

Conclusion.—This is God’s gracious way of sanctifying us through the actual experiences of our life. He makes us feel here on earth like strangers. He enables us to give the witness of strangers, and show ourselves to be heavenly citizens, who are only “passing through.” He thus helps us to live in trust, and to die in trust, and to find and feel the present peace and power of a life that is a “life of faith on the Son of God, who loved us, and gave Himself for us.

SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES

Heb_11:13. Faith a Persuasion and a Power.—Faith was an actual present blessing to the men of old, though what faith led them to anticipate never came to them. They died with the faith, not with the possession. And yet they really had held the possession all through their waiting-time; for it had been to them, and it had done for them, everything that the actual possession could have done. It had comforted them, satisfied them, inspired them. The two terms “persuasion” and “power” suggest that our faith has a most gracious influence on our mind and heart, as well as a most powerful influence in ordering our conduct. Faith puts the heart right; faith puts the life right. Faith keeps for us the proper relativity of this life to the life to come.

Heb_11:13-14. The Christian Pilgrim.—The apostle is here setting forth the excellencies of the grace of faith, by the glorious effects and happy issue of it in the saints of the Old Testament.

1. What these saints confessed of themselves—that they were strangers and pilgrims.

2. The inference drawn by the apostle—they sought another country as their home.

I. This life ought to be so spent by us as to be only a journey or pilgrimage towards heaven.—

1. We ought not to rest in the world or in its enjoyments, but should desire heaven.—A traveller passing through pleasant places, flowery meadows, shady groves, only takes a transient view of them as he goes along. His journey’s end is in his mind.

2. We ought to seek heaven by travelling in the way that leads thither. This is a way of holiness, the way of obedience to God’s commands, an ascending way, a Christ-like way.

3. We should travel on in this way in a laborious manner. Many mountains, rocks, and rough plains demand our strength.

4. Our whole lives ought to be spent in travelling this road. We ought to begin early; we ought to travel with assiduity; we ought to persevere.

5. We ought to be continually growing in holiness. Thus we come nearer and nearer to heaven. “As new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word,” etc. “This one thing I do,” etc.

6. All other concerns of life ought to be subordinate to this. Business, money, temporal enjoyments, quit if they prove a hindrance.

II. Why the Christian’s life is a journey or pilgrimage.—

1. This world is not our abiding-place. Continuance here is short. God never designed that this world should be our home.

2. The future world was designed to be our settled and everlasting abode. The present state is short and transitory, but our state in the other world is everlasting.

2. Heaven is that place alone where our highest end and highest good is to be obtained. God hath made us for Himself. God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. Here we get but scattered beams—God is the sun; but streams—God is the fountain; but drops—God is the ocean.

III. Instruction afforded by this consideration.—

1. Moderation in our grief for the loss of friends who have died in Christ. Death is to them a great blessing; gone to Father’s house. “I heard a voice from heaven,” etc. (Rev_14:13).

2. How ill do they improve their lives that spend them in travelling towards hell! Thus do backbiters, covetous, drunkards.

3. Converted persons do but begin their work, and set out in the way they have to go. They should be earnest and laborious, and should strive for grace.

IV. Exhortations.—

1. How worthy is heaven that your life should be wholly spent as a journey towards it! Where can you choose your home better than in heaven?

2. This is the way to have death comfortable to us.

3. It will make retrospect pleasant.

4. In journeying to heaven we may have heaven.

5. If our lives be not a journey towards heaven, they will be a journey to hell.

Conclusion.—A few directions.

1. Labour to get a sense of the vanity of this world.

2. Labour to be much acquainted with heaven.

3. Seek heaven only by Jesus Christ. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

4. Let Christians help one another in going this journey. Go in company, conversing together, assisting one another. Go united. This will ensure a more successful travelling, and a more joyful meeting at the Father’s house in glory.—Jonathan Edwards, M.A.

Heb_11:13-16. General Lesson of the Patriarchal Times.—The reference of these verses is strictly to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sarah. In a sense the older men, from Adam, may be called patriarchs; but the point of reference here is to those patriarchs who had a temporary home in Canaan, and held it together with the promise that it should be made a permanent home for them. They never actually had it as such a settled, permanent home; but their faith that God’s word would stand, and that their descendants would have Canaan for a possession, gave a practical power to the promises, and enabled them to bear, and suffer and enjoy, while they had but the temporary holding.

I. Their faith brought discontent with this life.—The peculiarity of the Abrahamic race, in this practical power of their faith in God’s word, may be shown by contrasting the Abrahamic as an Arab tribe, with the other Arab tribes around. Usually Arab tribes have no ambition to become settled nations. And even if we recognise that in Abraham’s time there was a general and widespread migratory restlessness among the Eastern peoples, still there were marked differences between the instinctive restlessness that was common, and the intelligent discontent that was peculiar to the Abrahamic race.

(1) This faith embraced the truth of the unity of God;

(2) conceived of the possibility of personal relations with Him;

(3) apprehended life as in the direct Divine lead;

(4) and saw duty as implicit and unquestioning obedience of the Divine will. Such faith made satisfaction with material conditions and worldly successes—the things which met all the needs of the tribes around—impossible to this tribe. Lift a man up to high things, and he must ever after fail to be content with the low, as those who can appreciate the art creations of this century are discontented with the pictures and figures of the fathers’ time. Touch a soul with the true and worthy thought of God, and the world can no longer be its rest.

II. Their faith brought content with the life to come.—A man can be in the present, and yet be really living in the future. That is the Christian state. To these patriarchs Canaan, which they knew not, was better than Chaldea, which they knew. To us heaven promised is better than any Canaan possessed.

Heb_11:14-16. Human Restlessness.—Faith does not crush down human aspirations. It guides them and tones them aright. The models of faith are stated to have been restlessly seeking something that they had not. Restlessness for humanity is a Divinely implanted condition; upon it depends the peopling and subduing of the whole earth. Human restlessness is so persistent that it cannot be satisfied with any earthly attainment. It may be considered:

(1) what various forms human restlessness may take; and

(2) how certainly the unrest will remain, whatever may be the measure of attainment in any direction. Man’s good time is always coming.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 11

Heb_11:13. Faith and its Fruits.—St. Chrysostom is wont to insist, by virtue of faith, rustic and mechanic idiots do, in true knowledge, surpass the most refined wits, and children prove wiser than old philosophers; an idiot can tell us that which a learned infidel does not know; a child can assure us that wherein a deep philosopher is not resolved; for ask a boor, as a boy educated in our religion, who made him, he will tell you God Almighty, which is more than Aristotle or Democritus would have told; demand of him why he was made, he will answer you, to serve and glorify his Maker; and hardly would Pythagoras or Plato have replied so wisely. Examine him concerning his soul, he will aver that it is immortal, that it shall undergo a judgment after this life, that accordingly it shall abide in a state of bliss or misery everlasting—about which points neither Socrates nor Seneca could assure anything; inquire of him how things are upheld, how governed and ordered; he presently will reply, by the powerful hand and wise providence of God; whereas, among philosophers, one would ascribe all events to the current of fate, another to the tides of fortune—one to blind influences of stars, another to a confused jumble of atoms. Pose him about the main points of morality and duty, and he will, in a few words, better inform you than Cicero, or Epictetus, or Aristotle, or Plutarch, in their large tracts and voluminous discourses about matters of that nature.—Barrow.

Dying in Faith.—A clergyman having occasion to wait on the late Princess Charlotte, was thus addressed by her: “Sir, I understand you are a clergyman.” “Yes, madam.” “Of the Church of England?” “Yes.” “Permit me to ask your opinion, sir, what is it that can make a death-bed easy?” Mr. W. was startled at so serious a question from a young and blooming female of so high rank, and modestly expressed his surprise that she should consult him, when she had access to many much more capable of answering the inquiry. She replied that she had proposed it to many, and wished to collect various opinions on this important subject. Mr. W. then felt it his duty to be explicit, and affectionately recommended to her the study of the Scriptures, which, as he stated, uniformly represent faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as the only means to make a death-bed easy. “Ah!” said she, bursting into tears, “that is what my grandfather often told me; but then he used to add, that, besides reading the Bible, I must pray for the Holy Spirit to understand its meaning.’

Strangers and Pilgrims.—Leighton had been used to say that if he were to choose a place to die in it should be an inn, for that would look so like a pilgrim’s going home, to whom this world was all as an inn. It was his opinion, also, as we read in the memoir of him by Aikman, that “the officious tenderness and care of friends was an entanglement to a dying man, and that the unconcerned attendance of those who could be procured in such a place would give less disturbance.” He had his wish. At the Bell Inn, Warwick Lane, Robert Leighton, in his seventy-fourth year, stranger and pilgrim, drew his last breath.—Jacox.

A City that hath Foundations.—

Beyond the dark and stormy bound

That guards our dull horizon round

A lovelier landscape swells;

Resplendent seat of light and peace,

In thee the sounds of conflict cease,

And glory ever dwells.

For thee the early patriarch sighed,

Thy distant beauty faint descried,

And hailed the blest abode;

A stranger here, he sought a home

Fixed in a city yet to come,

The city of his God.

Anon.

Citizenship in Heaven.—A Christian man’s true affinities are with the things not seen, and with the persons there, however the surface relationships knit him to the earth. In the degree in which he is a Christian, he is a stranger here and a native of the heavens. That great city is, like some of the capitals of Europe, built on a broad river, with the mass of the metropolis on the one bank, but a wide-spreading suburb on the other. As the Trastevere is to Rome, as Southwark is to London, so is earth to heaven, the bit of the city on the other side the bridge.—A. Maclaren, D.D.

The City yet to come.—We do belong to another polity or order of things than that with which we are connected by the bonds of flesh and sense. Our true affinities are with the mother-city. True, we are here on earth, but far beyond the blue waters is another community of which we are truly members; and sometimes in calm weather we can see, if we climb to a height above the smoke of the valley where we dwell, the faint outline of the mountains of that other land, lying dreamlike on the opal waves and bathed in sunlight.—Ibid.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

III

Renewed glance at the Patriarchs, with special emphasis laid on the act of faith performed by Abraham

Heb_11:13-19

13These all died in faith, [as] not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off [from afar], and were persuaded of them [om. and were persuaded of them11], and embraced [saluted, hailed] them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. 14For they that say such things declare [show] plainly that they seek a 15[their] country. And truly, if they had been mindful of [And if, indeed, they had had in mind] that country [om. country] from whence they came out,12 they might 16[would] have had opportunity to have returned [to return]. But now [as it is], they desire [are aspiring after] a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath [om. hath] prepared for them a city. 17By faith Abraham, when he was tried [hath] offered up Isaac: and he that had received 18[accepted] the promises offered up his only-begotten son, Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: 19Accounting that God was [is] able13 to raise him [om. him] up,14 even from the dead; from whence also he received him [back] in a figure.

[Heb_11:13.—Κατὰ πίστιν, in accordance with faith, emphatic.—μὴ λαβόντες, as not receiving, stating the fact subjectively: οὐ λαβ. would state it objectively, simply as a fact.—πόῤῥωθεν αὐτὰς ἰδόντες, from afar seeing and saluting them, and thus dying, κατὰ πίστιν; πόρ. belongs equally to both Participles.—ἀσπασάμενοι beautifully of saluting in the distance one’s native land or shore; not embracing.

Heb_11:14.—Ἐμφανίζουσι, make it plain, point out clearly.—πατρίδα, not χώρα, a region, territory, but a native land, an ancestral home. German, Vaterland. Alf. renders “home.” We might, perhaps, express it by the possessive Pron. “their country.”—ἐπιζητοῦσιν, are seeking after.

Heb_11:15.—Καὶ εἰ μέν ἐμνημόνευον—εἶχεν ἄν, and if, indeed, they had had in mind—they would have had. Alf. remarks that the “two imperfects in this sentence present some little difficulty,” as both events “are past and gone,” while the customary construction of such imperfects is with the present time. But while the latter is, perhaps, the more frequent construction, the Imperfect, in this class of hypothetical propositions, is not unfrequently used equally of past time, provided the action expressed be habitual. Thus Xen. says of Socrates, οὐκ ἂν ἔλεγεν—ἐν μὴ ἐπίστευεν, which might be rendered, “he would not be saying unless he believed,” but which in the connection can only be rendered, “he would not have (habitually) said unless he had (habitually) believed.” The construction is not uncommon enough to create any difficulty. Nor does it seem to me to involve “a harsh ellipsis” to understand ἐμνημόνευον, with Bl., De W., Del., Moll, etc. of mentioning, meaning in their utterances, rather than simply to be mindful of.—ἀνακυμψαι, to return back, to return.

Heb_11:16.—νῦν δέ, but as it is, as the case stands.—ὀρέγονται, they are reaching out after, are aspiring to.

Heb_11:17.—Προσενήνοχεν, hath offered up, stands recorded as having offered up, which he did virtually and in intention, “as if the work and its praise were yet enduring,” Alf.—Προσέφερεν, was offering up: proceeding to greater detail, the author makes a more exact statement of the fact by exchanging the present for the past, and then employing not the Aor., which would have implied it as done, but the Imperf., which implies that it was only commenced, not carried through.—ὁ ἀναδεξάμενος, he who had accepted, not, received.

Heb_11:18.—Πρὸς ὃν ἐλαλήθη, In respect to whom it was said. So I decidedly prefer to render with the Eng Ver. (of whom), referring the whom to Isaac, rather than with Moll, Alf., and most modern intpp., to render it to whom, and refer the whom to Abraham. That the πρός will equally well bear either rendering, needs no argument (see Heb_1:7-8; Heb_1:13); and the citation seems to me thus more thoroughly pertinent.

Heb_11:19.—Ὅτι ἐκ νεκ. δυνατὸς ὸ θεός, that God is (not was) able to raise, etc., a general statement (with Alf.).—For ὅθεν ἐκομίσατο see Exeg. notes.—K.].

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Heb_11:13.—Inasmuch as dying is not an effect of faith, but in the case of the Patriarchs took place in a way that bore the impress of faith, we have here κατὰ πίστιν, in accordance with faith, and not, as elsewhere, πίστει, by faith. And as the words are not οὐ, but μὴ λαβόντες, followed by a contrasted ἀλλά (Kühn., II. 408), the sense is not, as commonly supposed, “they died in faith, not in sight, inasmuch as they did not receive the blessings promised; and this dying in faith corresponded to their life in faith;” but the meaning is, as pointed out by Schultz, Win., and Lün., that their dying, occurring as it did, before the anticipated fulfilment of the promises, corresponded to the character of faith; just as already, even in life, their hope was fixed not on the earthly, but, in faith, on the heavenly father-land, and they, pilgrims, were journeying towards it. The whole clause stands in the closest connection, and the emphasis lies on the words introduced by ἀλλά. With this, too, best harmonizes not merely the reason assigned, Heb_11:14 ff., for the patriarchal confession of Heb_11:13, and for the author’s interpretation of its import, but also the believing act (Heb_11:17) of Abraham in his offering of Isaac. The reference to the ‘promises,’ commencing with Abr., and to the declarations of the Patriarchs, Gen_23:4; Gen_47:9, does not allow us, with Primas., Œc., etc., to refer οὗτοι πάντες to all the previously named, from Abel down, Enoch, of course, being in this case excepted.

Heb_11:15. Had in mind.—Μνημονεύειν is generally, as at Heb_13:7; Luk_17:32; Act_20:31; Act_20:35, taken intransitively=be mindful of; here, however, and Heb_11:22, 1Th_1:3, it is better taken by Bl., De W., Del., etc., as transitive=make mention of, soil, in the declaration just referred to.

Heb_11:19. From whence he also received him back in a figure.—In all other passages of our epistle ὅθεν, whence, is taken logically=for which reason. Thus it has generally been taken here, and ἐν παραβολῇ has been explained of Abraham’s taking back Isaac as symbol and type, either of the resurrection generally (Bald., Mich., Böhm., etc.), or of the suffering and resurrection of Christ (Chrys., Prim., Erasm., Ebr., Bisp., etc.), or of both together (Theod.). Luther moreover erroneously renders ἐν παραβ., “zum Vorbilde,” for a type, after the false reading of the Vulg. in parabolam. But so important typical references the author would scarcely have indicated to his readers in so incidental and obscure a manner, if he had had them in his mind. Yet it does not follow from this that we need depart from the customary meaning of παραβολή, parable, (found also in our epistle, Heb_9:9), and, with Camerar., Krebs, Raphel., Loesn., go back to a rare signification of the verb παραβάλλεσθαι, deliver up, expose, put to hazard, and, with Thol., translate, “in bold venturing,” or, with Lün., “for which reason he even on the ground, or by means of, his yielding him up, bore him off thence as a spoil.” The term ἐκομίσατο can hardly be alleged in support of this meaning; for this word, though used, indeed, frequently of booty and spoils of conquest, is employed still more frequently of that which one previously possessed and has received back. Precisely in respect to Abraham and Isaac, Josephus (Antt. 1, 13, 4) employs this word, and Philo (II. 74, 4) makes use of it to designate the recovery of Joseph by his father. Ὅθεν easily admits of being taken locally, which meaning many able interpreters, following Calv., Bez., Schlicht., Grot., have assigned to it. We must not, however, render by way of comparison, or in some measure, or so to speak, but in a likeness or figure; and we must not, with Schultz and Steng., following Lambert Bos and Alberti, refer the language to the birth of Isaac, whom Abraham had obtained from himself, as νενεκρωμένον, but to the saving of his life. He received him from the dead in a figure in that Isaac resembled a person who had been put to death and re-awakened (Theodore Mops., Calv., etc., more recently Bl., De W., Stier, Hofm., Del.). The explanation of Paulus, by virtue of a substitute, that is in exchange for the substituted ram, is unnatural; and unnatural, also, Bengel’s supplying of ὤν with ἐν παραβολῇ, “Abraham ipse factus parabola.” [Alford takes nearly the view of Paulus; “the true identification of the παραβολή is, I am persuaded, to be found in the figure under which Isaac was sacrificed, viz., the ram, as already hinted by Chrysostom. Abraham virtually sacrificed his son; God designated Isaac for the burnt-offering, but provided a ram in his stead. Under the figure of that ram Isaac was slain, being received back by his father in his proper person, risen from the death which he had undergone ἐν παραβολῇ, in and under the figure of the ram. It is an obvious, though perhaps not fatal objection to this explanation that it applies ἐν παραβολῇ, directly to the death of the ram, and only indirectly to the restoration of Isaac, to which the author directly applies it. According to Alford’s explanation, it would seem much more natural for the author to have said that Abraham sacrificed Isaac ἐν παραβολῇ, than that he received him back ἐν παραβολῇ.—K.].

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. If believers know that the fulfilment of God’s promises is still remote, nay, that they will never live to enjoy them personally upon the earth, this knowledge neither shakes their confidence nor troubles their joy. Time and space, uncertainty and doubt, disappear to the eye of faith. The promised blessings, faith views as the only actual and true ones, and rejoices in their future, indeed, but still certain attainment.

2. Even death changes nothing in this relation. The dying of believers bears in itself the character of faith, and on this is impressed most clearly the fact, that believers rejoice over their entrance into the heavenly home, which, during their earthly pilgrimage (Gen_47:9), they have known indeed, but only seen and saluted from afar.

3. There are also promises of God which refer to temporal blessings and earthly goods, whose fulfilment can be attained here below, as the increase of posterity, the inheriting of the promised land, victory over hostile nations. But believers have, from early times, regarded these promises and their fulfilment only as parts and stages of the one great promise of salvation which God has destined for His people; which the fathers waited for in faith (Gen_49:18), and which is the essential link between the old and new Covenant.

4. The wandering of the patriarchs is not a mere restless roaming, or an aimless change of dwelling-places, but under Divine guidance is a discipline of obedience, a proving of faith, and a type and example for those who seek the abiding home; and for this reason they do not turn their eyes backward to the perishable world, and what they possess, gain, and lose therein; but forward to the promised and enduring good, whose attainment is certain, because God has already prepared it for them, and is no mere transitory good, but has come into a permanent relation to them, so that God is not ashamed to be called their God (Mat_22:31 ff.).

5. During our pilgrimage to the heavenly home, trials of our faith do not cease, nay, they may even be heightened to temptations, if there seems to arise between the Divine demands and the Divine promises, and thus, in God Himself, an antagonism, a contradiction, which threatens also to divide and rend asunder the believer. The unity, however, remains preserved on both sides, and in all respects, if the believer on his side turns to nothing but the express and clear Word of God, and confidently leaves it with God, by virtue of His omnipotence, at all times to evince Himself as the true and faithful One.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Strangers on earth, at home in heaven, hence called to a pilgrimage.—The aspirations of believers turn not backwards, but forwards.—What believers have experienced in life, turns to their benefit in death.—The latest trials are not always easiest, but along with experience faith has also increased in power.—God acknowledges those who acknowledge Him, and leads them to the enduring city which they are seeking.—He who in the obedience of faith can give to God what God demands, in him the promises of God will find overwhelmingly their fulfilment.

Starke:—They who acknowledge that their citizenship is in heaven (Php_3:20) will easily forget what is behind, and press forward to that which is before (Php_3:13).—He who has once escaped from the vanity of the world must not allow himself again to be entangled therein; even to look back is dangerous (Luk_9:62; Luk_17:32).—Where faith is there is also obedience to God.—God takes the will of man, where outward hinderances prevent the execution, for the accomplished deed.—God has free power to bless and exalt one child of a father above another.—Faith must be simple that it may not too nicely quibble and dispute over things that appear unreasonable and impossible, and may assure itself that nothing is lost of all that is offered to God (Mat_16:25).—Faith must cling to the truth and omnipotence of God.

Rieger:—Unbelief easily vexes itself in regard to death, as in regard to all the earlier humiliations of the cross; faith adheres to the word, and with this passes, as through all preceding struggles, so also through the humiliation of death.—Faith, through the word, brings near to itself the promised good, approves the entire arrangement of God in this respect, and is not vexed and discouraged by delay.—From the tranquillity of faith springs the willing confession that one is a stranger; but that in all his action and suffering he is led on by the hope of reaching his father-land.—In faith we learn to reconcile things which seem directly hostile to each other, as “dying and behold we live.”—The obedience of Abraham springs not from a capricious self-persuasion, or from the power of a heated imagination; it is the fruit of a reflection and a mature judgment, which comprehends and sums up all good in the ways of God.

Hahn:—The extent of our self-denial bears witness how deeply the sense of heavenly things has its lodgment in the heart.

Heubner:—Never has the pious man completely realized on earth the longing of his heart; he is always hoping for something better.—The crown of all hopes is the city of God, where God in the most glorious manner will dwell among His saints.—Faith makes us strong to offer up that which is dearest to us.

Footnotes:

[11]Heb_11:13.—The Rec. καὶ πεισθέντες is to be rejected by the unanimous testimony of MSS. except a few minusc.

[12]Heb_11:15.—Instead of ἐξῆλθον read, with Sin. A. D*. E*., 17, 73, 80, ἐξἐβησαν. In the Sin. ἐξῆλθον is added by the correct., as also ἐμνημόνευον instead of μνημονεύουσιν.

[13]Heb_11:19.—Instead of δυνατός Lachm. reads δύναται after A. D**.

[14]Heb_11:19.—The Rec. ἐγείρειν is sustained by Sin. D. E. K. L. and nearly all the minusc. The Reading ἐγεῖραι [Lachm.] by A., 17, 71.

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Hebrews

THE ATTACHMENTS AND DETACHMENTS OF FAITH

Heb 11:13 {R.V.}

THE great roll-call of heroes of faith in this grand chapter goes upon the supposition that the living spirit of religion was the same in Old and in New Testament times. In both it was faith which knit men to God. It has often been alleged that that great word faith has a different signification in this Epistle from that which it has in the other New Testament writings. The allegation is largely true; in so far as the things Believed are concerned they are extremely different; but it is not true in so far as the person trusted, or in so far as the act of trusting are concerned. These are identical. It was no mere temporal and earthly promise on which the faith of these patriarchs was builded. They looked indeed for the land, but in looking for the land, they looked ‘for the city which hath foundations’; and their future hopes had the same dim haze of ignorance, and the same questions unresolved about perspective and relative distances which our future hopes have; and their faith, whatever were its contents, was fundamentally the same out of a soul casting itself upon God, which is the essence of our faith in the Divine Son in whom God is made manifest So with surface difference there is a deep-lying absolute oneness in the faith of the Old Testament and ours, in essential nature, in the Object which they grasp, and in their practical effects upon life.

Therefore, these words of my text, describing what faith did for the world’s grey forefathers, have a more immediate bearing upon us than at first sight may appear, and may suggest for us some thoughts about the proper, practical issues of Christian faith in our daily lives.

I. I take two or three of the points which come most plainly out from the words before us, and ask you to notice, in the first place, how faith fills eye and heart with the future.

You will have observed that I have read my text somewhat differently from the form which it assumes in our Authorised Version. Observe that the words ‘And were persuaded of them,’ in our Old Version are a gloss, - no part of the original text. Observe, further, that the adverb ‘afar off’ is intended to apply to both the clauses: ‘Having seen them,’ and ‘embraced them.’ And that, consequently, ‘embraced’ must necessarily be an inadequate representation of the writer’s idea; for you cannot embrace a thing that is ‘afar off’; and to ‘embrace the promises’ was the very thing that these men did not do. The meaning of the word is here not embraced, but saluted or greeted; and the figure that lies in it is a very beautiful one. As some traveller topping the water-shed may see far off the white porch of his home, and wave a greeting to it, though it be distant, while his heart goes out over all the intervening, weary leagues; or as some homeward-bound crew catch, away yonder on the horizon, the tremulous low line that is home, and welcome it with a shout of joy, though many a billow dash and break between them and it, these men looked across the weary waste, and saw far away; and as they saw their hearts went out towards the things that were promised, because they ‘judged Him faithful that had promised.’ And that is the attitude and the act which all true faith in God ought to operate in us.

So, then, here are two things to think about for a moment. One, Faith’s vision; the other, Faith’s greeting.

People say, ‘Seeing is believing.’ I should be disposed to turn the aphorism right round, and to say, ‘Believing is seeing.’ For there is a clearer insight, and a more immediate, direct contact with the thing beheld, and a deeper certitude in the vision of faith than in the poor, purblind sight of sense, all full of illusions, and which has no real possession in it of the things which it beholds. The sight that faith gives is solid, substantial, clear, certain. If I might so say, the true exercise of faith is to stereoscope the dim ghostlike realities of the future, and to make them stand out solid in relief there before us. And he who, clasping the hand, and if I might so say, looking through the eyes, of God, sees the future, in humble acceptance of His great words of promise, in some measure as God sees it - has a source of knowledge, clear, immediate, certain, which sense with its lies and imperfections, is altogether inadequate even to symbolise. The vision of Faith is far deeper, far more real, far more correspondent to the realities, and far more satisfying to the eye that gazes, than is any of the sight of sense. Do not you be deceived or seduced by talk that assumes to be profound and philosophical, into believing that when you venture your all upon God’s word, and doing so say, ‘I know, and behold mine inheritance,’ you are saying more than calm reason and common-sense teaches us. We have the thing, and we see it, if we believe Him that in His word shows it to us,

Well, then, still further, there is suggested that this vision of faith, with all its blessed clearness and certitude and sufficiency, is not a direct perception of the things promised, but only a sight of them in the promise. And does that make it less blessed? Does the astronomer, who sits in his chamber, and when he would most carefully observe the heavens, looks downwards on to the mirror of the reflecting telescope that he uses, feel that he sees the starry lights less clearly and less really than when he gazes up into the abyss itself and sees them there? Is not the reflection a better and a more accurate source of knowledge for him than even the direct observation of the sky would be? And so, if we look down into the promise, we shall see, gleaming and glittering there, the starry points which are the true images adapted to our present sense and power of reception of the great invisible lights above. God be thanked that faith looks to the promises and not to the realities, else it were no more faith, and would lose some of its blessedness.

And then, still further, let me remind you that this vision of faith varies in the measure of our faith. It is not always the same. Refraction brings up sometimes, above the surface of the sea, a spectral likeness of the opposite shore, and men stand now and then upon our southern coasts, and for an hour or two, in some conditions of the atmosphere, they see the low sandhills of the French or the Belgian coast, as if they were at arm’s length. So faith, refracting the rays of light that strike from the Throne of God, brings up the image, and when it is strong the image is clear, and when it flags the image ‘fades away into the light of common day’; and where there glowed the fair outlines of the far-off land, there is nothing but a weary wash of waters and a solitary stretch of sea.

My brother! do you see to it that this vision of faith is cultivated by you. It is hard to do. The pressure of the present is terribly strong; the chains of sense that hold us are very adamantine and thick; but still it is possible for us to cultivate the faculty of beholding, and to train the eye to look into that telescope that pries into distant worlds, and brings eternal glories near. No pair of eyes can look the one at a thing near, and the other at a thing afar off; at least if they do the man squints. And no soul can look so as to behold the unseen glories if its eye be turned to all these vanities here. Do- you choose whether you shall, like John Bunyan’s man with the muckrake, have your eyes fixed upon the straws and filth at your feet, or whether you will look upwards and see the crown that is glittering there just above your head, and ready to drop upon it. ‘These all in faith saw the promises.’

Yes! And when they saw them they greeted them. Their hands and their hearts went out, and a glad shout came to their lips as they beheld the fair vision of all the wonder that should be. And so faith has in it, in proportion to its depth and reality, this going out of the soul towards the things discerned. They draw us when we see them,

One of our seventeenth-century prose writers says: - ‘Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.’ It is true. If we see, we cannot choose but love. Our vision will break into desire, and to behold is to yearn after. Oh, Christian men and women! do we know anything of that going out of the soul, in a calm transport of deliberate preference to the things that are unseen and eternal. It is a sharp test of the reality of our Christian profession; do not shrink from applying it to yourselves.

II. And now in the next place, we see here how faith produces a sense of detachment from the present, ‘They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.’

The writer is, no doubt, referring to the words of Abraham when he stood up before the Hittites, and asked for a bit of ground to lay his Sarah in - ‘I am a stranger and a sojourner with you’; and also to Jacob’s words to Pharaoh, ‘The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years.’ These utterances revealed the spirit in which they looked upon the settled order in the midst of which they dwelt, They felt that they were not of it, but belonged to another.

Now there are two different kinds of consciousness that we are strangers and sojourners here. There is one that merely comes from the consideration of the natural transiency of all earthly things, and the shortness of human life. There is another that comes from the consciousness that we belong to another kingdom and another order. A ‘stranger’ is a man who, in a given constitution of things, in some country with a settled government, owes allegiance to another king, and belongs to another polity. A ‘pilgrim’ or a ‘sojourner’ is a man who is only in the place where he now is for a little while. So the one of the two words expresses the idea of belonging to another state of things, and the other expresses the idea of transiency in the present condition.

But the true Christian consciousness of being ‘a stranger and a sojourner’ comes, not from any thought that life is fleeting and ebbing away, but from the better and more blessed operation of the faith which reveals the things promised, and knits me so closely to them that I cannot but feel separated from the things that are round about me. Men who live in mountainous countries, be-it Switzerland, or the Highlands, or anywhere else, when they come down into the plains, pine and fade away sometimes, with the intensity of the ‘Heimweh,’ the homesickness which seizes them. And we, if we are Christians, and belong to the other order of things, shall feel that this is not our native soil, nor here the home in which we would dwell Abraham could not go to live in Sodom, though Lot went; and he and his son and grandson kept themselves outside of the organisation of the society in the midst of which they dwelt, because they were so sure that they belonged to another. Or, as the context puts it, they ‘dwelt in tents because they looked for the City.’ It is only sad, disheartening, cutting the nerve of much activity, destroying the intensity of much joy, drawing over life the pall of a deep sadness for a man to say, ‘Seventy years are a hand- breadth. I am a stranger and a sojourner.’ But it is an ally of all noble, intense, happy living that a man should say, ‘My home is with God. I am a stranger and a sojourner here.’ The one conviction is perfectly consistent with even desperate absorption in present things. ‘Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,’ is quite as legitimate a conclusion from the consciousness of human frailty, as, ‘Let us live for heaven, for to-morrow we die.’ It all depends upon what is the source and occasion of this consciousness, whether it shall make us bitter, and shall make us cling to the perishable thing all the more because it is going so soon, or whether it shall lift us up above all these transient treasures or sorrows and fill our hearts with the glad conviction, ‘I am a citizen of no mean city, and therefore here I am but a stranger.’

My brother! does your faith lessen the bonds that bind you to earth? Does it detach you from the things that are seen and temporal, or is your life ordered upon the same maxims and devoted to the pursuit of the same objects, and gladdened by the same transitory and partial successes, and embittered by the same fleeting and light afflictions which rule and sway the lives that are rooted only in earth as the tempest sways the grass on the sandhills? If so, what business have we to call ourselves Christians? If so, how can we say that we live by faith when we are so blind, and so incapable of seeing afar off, that the smallest trifle beside us blots out from our vision, as a fourpenny piece held up against your eyeball might do the sun itself in the heavens there. True faith detaches a man from this present, If your faith does not do that, look into it and see where the falsity of it is. III. And, lastly, my text brings out the thought of how this same faith triumphs in the article of death. ‘These all died in faith.’

That is a very grand thought as applied to those old patriarchs, that just because all their lives long God had done nothing for them of what He had promised, therefore they died believing that He was going to do it. All their disappointments fed their faith. Because the words on which they had been leaning all their lives had not come to a fulfilment, therefore they must be true. That is a strange paradox, and yet it is the one which filled these men’s hearts with peace, and which made the dying Jacob break in upon his prophetic swan-song, at the close, with the verse which stands in no relation to what goes before it, or what comes after it. ‘I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord.’ ‘These all died in faith’ just because they had not ‘received the promises.’

So, dear brethren, for us the end of life may have a faith nurtured by disappointments, made more sure of everything because it has nothing; certain that He calls into existence another world to redress the balance of the old, because here there has been so much of bitterness and weariness and woe. And our end like theirs may be an end beatified by a clear vision of the things that ‘no man hath seen, nor can see’; and into the darkness there may come for us, as there came of old to another, an open heaven and a beam of God’s glory smiting us on the face and changing it into the face of an angel And so there may come for us all in that article and act of death, a tranquil and cheerful abandonment of the life which has been futile and frail, except when thought of as the vestibule of heaven. Some men cling to the vanishing skirts of this earthly life, and say, ‘I will not let thee go.’ And others are able to say, ‘Lord, I have waited for Thy salvation.’ ‘Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.’

‘These all died in faith’; and the sorrows and disappointments of the past made the very background on which the bow of promise spanned the sky, beneath which they passed into the Promised Land. ‘These all died in faith’; with a vision gleaming upon the inward sense which made the solitude of death bliss, and with a calm willingness ‘to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better.’

Choose whether you will live by sense and die in sorrow, or whether you will live by the faith of the Son of God, and die to enter ‘the City which hath foundations,’ which He has built for them that love Him, and which even now, ‘in seasons of calm weather,’ we can see shining on the hill top far away.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

11:13-16 The author pauses to point out general principles evident in the lives he has highlighted thus far.

11:13 Abraham’s family lived in the land of promise as foreigners and nomads (see Gen 23:4; cp. 1 Chr 29:15; Ps 39:12; 1 Pet 2:11).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Heb 11:13. Κατὰ πίστιν, according to or in faith) He does not say here, πίστει, by faith, for κατὰ πίστιν, in faith, accords better with the word, ἀπέθανον, they died. Comp. κατὰ, Mat 1:20.—ἀπέθανον, died) Faith becomes very strong at the hour of death; Heb 11:20, etc.: and at that period hope with respect to things invisible and future is most resplendent.—οὗτοι, these) The pronoun is to be referred to the persons who are mentioned from Heb 11:8, being those who obtained more distinct promises.—τὰς ἐπαγγελίας, the promises i.e. the things which had been promised, Heb 11:39: good, nay, heavenly things, Heb 11:13, at the end.—ἰδόντες καὶ ἀσπασάμενοι, having seen and embraced them) This expression makes an Oxymoron with πόρρωθεν, afar off, in which Paul delights; for Eustathius explains ἀσπάζεσθαι, to clasp or draw a person to one’s self by grasping his hand, and to embrace him; and this is the custom of friends when they meet. The faith of the ancients is thus exquisitely described; and the passage seems plainly to refer to Joh 8:56, Abraham saw Christ’s day, and was glad.—ὁμολογήσαντες, having confessed) willingly. The confession of being strangers arises from their embracing heavenly things.—ξένοι καὶ παρεπίδημοι) Gen 23:4, πάροικος καὶ παρεπίδημος ἐγώ εἰμι: ibid. Gen 47:9, αἱ ἡμέραι ἅς παροικῶ—ἃς ἡμέρας παρῴκησαν: παρὰ in παρεπίδημοι, diminishes the signification. Worldly men hold fast the world; believers scarcely cling to it in any part, either in deed, or at least with their heart.—ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, upon the earth) An antithesis to ἐπουρανίου, heavenly, Heb 11:16.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Heb_11:13. Κατὰ πίστιν] is ordinarily (by Bleek, too, in the larger commentary) conjoined exclusively with ἀπέθανον. According to this, the dying conformably to faith, in distinction from the faith already manifested during life, would become the main idea of the verse, and the participial clauses would be made to contain the proof for the κατὰ πίστιν ἀποθανεῖν. The sense would be: they died in faith (not in sight), since they had not received the promises, but only saw them from afar, etc. (Bleek). Against this apprehension of the words, however, decides the subjective negation μή before λαβόντες, instead of which (particularly in the case of the opposition following with ἀλλά, see Kühner, II. 408) the objective negation οὐ must have been placed. We have therefore, with Schulz, Winer (Gramm., 7 Aufl. p. 376), Moll, Bleek, Vorles. p. 434, Kurtz, Ewald, to refer κατὰ πίστιν to ἀπέθανον in close comprehension of the latter with the participles. The sense is: In accordance with faith these all died without having received the promises, but as those who, etc.; i.e., it was conformable to the nature of faith that they, without having attained to the possession of the promised blessings themselves, beheld them only from afar and greeted them, and witnessed the confession that they are strangers and pilgrims upon earth.

οὗτοι πάντες] is referred by Oecumenius, Theophylact, Primasius, Ribera, Justinian, Drusius, and Bloomfield to all the before-mentioned persons, from Abel onwards, with the single exception of Enoch. Nevertheless, as is evident from the contents of the following verse, only those among them can have been thought of to whom promises were given, thus Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob. Comp. specially Heb_11:15.

μὴ λαβόντες] see at Heb_6:15.

τὰς ἐπαγγελίας] in the objective sense, as τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν, Heb_9:15.

πόῤῥωθεν] belongs equally to ἀσπασάμενοι as to ἰδόντες.

ἀσπάζεσθαι] joyfully greet or welcome, as the traveller the longed-for journeys end. Comp. Virg. Aen. iii. 522 sqq.:

Quum procul obscuros colles humilemque videmus

Italiam.… Italiam laeto socii clamore salutant.

καὶ ὁμολογήσαντες, ὅτι ξένοι καὶ παρεπίδημοί εἰσιν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς] Reference to the utterances of the patriarchs in the Book of Genesis, particularly Gen_23:4, where Abraham says to the children of Heth: πάροικος καὶ παρεπίδημος ἐγώ εἰμι μεθʼ ὑμῶν, and Gen_47:9, where Jacob, in addressing Pharaoh, describes his own life in general as a pilgrimage: αἱ ἡμέραι τῶν ἐτῶν τῆς ζωῆς μου, ἃς παροικῶ, ἑκατὸν τριάκοντα ἔτη. Comp. LXX. Psa_39:13; Psa_118:19; 1Pe_2:11; Philo, de Agricult. p. 196 E (with Mangey, I. p. 310): παροικεῖν οὐ κατοικεῖν ἤλθομεν· τῷ γὰρ ὄντι πᾶσα μὲν ψυχὴ σοφοῦ πατρίδα μὲν οὐρανόν, ξένην δὲ γῆν ἔλαχεν; De Confus. Ling. p. 331 C (I. p. 416): Διὰ τοῦτο οἱ κατὰ Μωϋσῆν σοφοὶ πάντες εἰσάγονται παροικοῦντες· αὑ γὰρ τούτων ψυχαὶ στέλλονται μὲν ἀποικίαν δή ποτε τὴν ἐξ οὐρανοῦ.

Heb_11:13-16. General observations with regard to the fore-mentioned patriarchs.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Heb 11:13 . Not only in life was the faith of the patriarchs manifested, it stood the test of death, κατὰ πίστιν ἀπέθανον οὗτοι πάντες , in keeping with their faith (see Winer, p. 502) these all (that is Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Jacob) died, and the strength of their faith was seen in this that although they had not received the fulfilment of the promises (Heb 11:39 and Heb 10:36 ) they yet had faith enough to see and hail them from afar. As Moses endured because he saw the Invisible (Heb 11:27 ) so the patriarchs were not daunted by death because they saw the day of Christ (Joh 8:56 ), that is to say, they were so firmly persuaded that God’s promise would be fulfilled that it could be said that they saw the fulfilment. They hailed them from afar, as those on board ship descry friends on shore and wave a recognition. [Wetstein cites from Appian, De Bell. Civ. , ver. 46, p. 110 where it is said that the soldiers τὸν Καίσαρα πόῤῥωθεν ὡς αὐτοκράτορα ἠσπάσαντο .] “Such an ἀσπασμός we have in the mouth of the dying Jacob (Gen 49:18 ): For Thy salvation have I waited, Jehovah” (Delitzsch). This they might have done had they merely believed that the promises would be fulfilled to their descendants, but that their faith extended also to their own enjoyment of God’s promise was testified by their confessing that so far as regards the land ( τῆς γῆς ) of Canaan they were pilgrims and foreigners. This confession was made no doubt by their whole conduct, but as the aorist indicates it was made verbally by Abraham on the occasion of Sarah’s death (Gen 23:4 ), πάροικος καὶ παρεπίδημος ἐγώ εἰμι μεθʼ ὑμῶν , cf. Gen 47:9 , etc. The article before γῆς , together with the sense of the passage, shows that the land of promise, Canaan, was meant. ἐπὶ γῆς in the same connection is used for “the earth,” cf. 1Ch 29:15 . Philo ( De Agricult. , p. 196) refines upon the same idea, παροικεῖν οὐ κατοικεῖν ἤλθομεν · τῷ γὰρ ὄντι πᾶσα μὲν ψυχὴ σοφοῦ πατρίδα μὲν οὐρανὸν , ξένην δὲ γῆν ἔλαχεν . Cf. De Conf. Ling. , p. 331. But such a confession implies that those who make it ( οἱ γὰρ τοιαῦτα λέγοντες ) have not yet found but are in search of a fatherland, πατρίδα ἐπιζητοῦσιν . [ Cf. Rom 11:7 , ὃ ἐπιζητεῖ Ἰσραὴλ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐπέτυχεν . Frequent in N.T., to seek, search for. “The ἐπὶ is that of direction, as the ἐκ in ἐκζητεῖν (Heb 11:6 ) is that of explanation” (Vaughan).] The acknowledgment, cheerful or sad, that such and such a land is not the home-country makes it manifest ( ἐμφανίζουσιν , Joh 14:21 , Act 23:15 ) that they think of and have in view and are making for a land which they can call their own. [“Si hic peregrinantur, alibi patria est ac fixa sedes” (Calvin).] And that this home-country of their desire is not that from which Abraham and the patriarchs were really derived (Mesopotamia) and which they had abandoned, ( ἀφʼ ἧς ἐξέβησαν ) is also evident, because had they cherished fond memories of it they would have had opportunity ( εἶχον ἂν καιρὸν , cf. Act 24:25 ; 1Ma 15:34 . The imperfects indicate that this was continuous) to return ( ἀνακάμψαι , Mat 2:12 ; Luk 10:6 ; Act 18:21 ; frequent in LXX). νῦν δὲ , “but as the case actually stands” (Heb 8:6 , Heb 9:26 ; 1Co 15:20 , etc.) putting aside this idea that it might be their old home they were seeking, κρείττονος ὀρέγονται , τοῦτʼ ἔστιν ἐπουρανίου , it is a better, that is, a heavenly they aspire after. That which in point of fact provoked in the patriarchs the sense of exile was that their hearts were set on a better country and firmer settlement than could be found anywhere, but in heaven. And because they thus proved that they were giving to God credit for meaning by His promises more than the letter indicated, because they measured His promises by the spirit of the promises rather than by the thing promised, He is not ashamed of them, not ashamed to be called their God; and the proof that He is not ashamed of them is, that He prepared for them a city. The patriarchs showed that they understood that in giving these promises God became their God; therefore God was not ashamed of them, and this showed itself especially in His naming Himself “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (Exo 3:15 ). Cf. with this verse, Heb 8:10 and Mat 22:31-32 . And that He was truly their God He showed by preparing for them a city which should justify the expectations which they had based upon His power and goodness.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For the Patriarchs were wont when they received the promises, to profess their religion, by building of altars, and calling on the name of the Lord.

In faith, which they had while they lived, and followed them even to their grave.

This is the figure Metonymy, for the things promised.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Verse 13. These all died in faith] That is, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob, continued to believe, to the end of their lives, that God would fulfil this promise; but they neither saw the numerous seed, nor did they get the promised rest in Canaan.

Strangers and pilgrims] Strangers, ξενοι, persons who are out of their own country, who are in a foreign land: pilgrims, παρεπιδημοι, sojourners only for a time; not intending to take up their abode in that place, nor to get naturalized in that country.

How many use these expressions, professing to be strangers and pilgrims here below, and yet the whole of their conduct, spirit, and attachments, show that they are perfectly at home! How little consideration and weight are in many of our professions, whether they relate to earth or heaven!

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

13. These all died in faith, etc. He enhances by a comparison the faith of the patriarchs: for when they had only tasted of the promises, as though fully satisfied with their sweetness, they despised all that was in the world; and they never forgot the taste of them, however small it was either in life or in death.

At the same time the expression in faith, is differently explained. Some understand simply this that they died in faith, because in this life they never enjoyed the promised blessings, as at this day also salvation is hid from us, being hoped for. But I rather assent to those who think that there is expressed here a difference between us and the fathers; and I give this explanation, — “Though God gave to the fathers only a taste of that grace which is largely poured on us, though he showed to them at a distance only an obscure representation of Christ, who is now set forth to us clearly before our eyes, yet they were satisfied and never fell away from their faith: how much greater reason then have we at this day to persevere? If we grow faint, we are doubly inexcusable”. It is then an enhancing circumstance, that the fathers had a distant view of the spiritual kingdom of Christ, while we at this day have so near a view of it, and that they hailed the promises afar off, while we have them as it were quite near us; for if they nevertheless persevered even unto death, what sloth will it be to become wearied in faith, when the Lord sustains us by so many helps. Were any one to object and say, that they could not have believed without receiving the promises on which faith is necessarily founded: to this the answer is, that the expression is to be understood comparatively; for they were far from that high position to which God has raised us. Hence it is that though they had the same salvation promised them, yet they had not the promises so clearly revealed to them as they are to us under the kingdom of Christ; but they were content to behold them afar off.

And confessed that they were strangers, etc. This confession was made by Jacob, when he answered Pharaoh, that the time of his pilgrimage was short compared with that of his fathers, and full of many sorrows. (Genesis 47:9.) Since Jacob confessed himself a pilgrim in the land, which had been promised to him as a perpetual inheritance, it is quite evident that his mind was by no means fixed on this world, but that he raised it up above the heavens. Hence the Apostle concludes, that the fathers, by speaking thus, openly showed that they had a better country in heaven; for as they were pilgrims here, they had a country and an abiding habitation elsewhere.

But if they in spirit amid dark clouds, took a flight into the celestial country, what ought we to do at this day? For Christ stretches forth his hand to us, as it were openly, from heaven, to raise us up to himself. If the land of Canaan did not engross their attention, how much more weaned from things below ought we to be, who have no promised habitation in this world?

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(13) These all died in faith.—We must not change the order of the original. Seven verses up to this point have begun with the emphatic words “by faith.” There is a change here, but not in the emphasis of this thought. We should not expect to read “By faith these died;” what is said is, “In accordance with faith all these died;” faith had been the support and guide of their life, and their death was in accordance with the same principle. That is, they (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah) did not die in possession of what had been promised (Heb_11:39), but saw at a distance the blessings of which God had spoken (Heb_11:1).

And were persuaded of them.—These words do not belong to the true text; and the word “embraced” should be rendered “greeted,” or “saluted.” We read, therefore: “Not having received the promises, but having seen and greeted them from far” (Gen_49:18), “and having confessed that they were strangers and sojourners upon the earth” (Gen_47:9; Gen_23:4). (Comp. 1Ch_29:15; Psa_39:12; Psa_119:19; Psa_119:54; also 1Pe_1:1; 1Pe_2:11. The verses which follow are a comment on this. For the last words, “on the earth.” see Heb_11:16.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

13. in faith] Lit. “according to faith.”

not having received the promises] They received the promises in one sense, as promises (Heb_11:17), but had not yet entered upon their fruition (comp. Heb_11:39 and Heb_9:15).

and were persuaded of them] These words are not found in all the best mss.

and embraced them] Rather, “saluting them” (Gen_49:18). “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad” (Joh_8:56).

confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims] Gen_23:4; Gen_47:9; 1Ch_29:15; Psa_39:12, &c.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For they that say such things,.... That they are strangers and pilgrims on earth:

declare plainly that they seek a country; heaven, so called, for the largeness of it; it is a good land, a land of uprightness; a pleasant land, a land of rest, though a land afar off; here the Father of Christ, and Christ himself, and all his people dwell: the Syriac version renders it, "their own city"; the place of their nativity, of which they were citizens: the act of "seeking" it supposes some things, with respect to the place where they were, as that they were in a strange land, had no settlement there, nor satisfaction in it, and that they sat loose to the world, and the things of it; and some things respecting the country sought after, as that they were not in it; that it was at a distance from them; that they had some knowledge of it, and of the way to it; that their desires were after it, and that they had a strong affection and value for it: the right way to this country is not mere civility and morality, nor legal righteousness, nor birth privileges, nor submission to outward ordinances, nor a mere profession of religion, but the Lord Jesus Christ; he is the true way to eternal life; it is his righteousness which gives a title to it, and on account of which believers expect it, though not without holiness, nor without trouble. The right manner of seeking it is, in the first place, above all things else, with the whole heart, by faith, and by patient continuance in well doing. Many are the reasons which may induce believers to seek it; it is their own, and their Father's country; it is a better one than that in which they are; and because of the company they shall there enjoy, and the work they shall be employed in; and because of the happiness they will be possessed of; and because their inheritance, riches, and treasures, lie here.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

Ver. 13. And embraced them] Gr. Saluted them, kissing Christ in the promises, and interchangeably kissed of him, Son 1:1, being drawn together (as the word signifies) by mutual dear affection, αοπασαμενοι ab α simul et σπαω, traho.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

These all died in faith - That is, those who had been just mentioned - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sarah. It was true of Abel and Noah also that they died in faith, but they are not included in “this” declaration, for the “promises” were not particularly entrusted to them, and if the word “these” be made to include them it must include Enoch also, who did not die at all. The phrase used here, “these all died in faith,” does not mean that they died in the exercise or possession of religion, but more strictly that they died not having possessed what was the object of their faith. They had been looking for something future, which they did not obtain during their lifetime, and died believing that it would yet be theirs.

Not having received the promises - That is, not having received the “fulfillment” of the promises; or “the promised blessings.” The promises themselves they “had” received; compare Luk 24:49; Act 1:4; Act 2:39; Gal 3:14, and Heb 11:33, Heb 11:39. In all these places the word “promise” is used by metonymy “for the thing promised.”

But having seen them afar off - Having seen that they would be fulfilled in future times; compare Joh 8:56. It is probable that the apostle here means that they saw “the entire fulfillment” of all that the promises embraced in the future - that is, the bestowment of the land of Canaan, the certainty of a numerous posterity, and of the entrance into the heavenly Canaan - the world of fixed and permanent rest. According to the reasoning of the apostle here the “promises” to which they trusted included all these things.And were persuaded of them - Had no doubt of their reality.

And embraced them - This word implies more than our word “embrace” frequently does; that is, “to receive as true.” It means properly “to draw to oneself;” and then to embrace as one does a friend from whom he has been separated. It then means to greet, salute, welcome, and here means a joyful greeting of those promises; or a pressing them to the heart as we do a friend. It was not a cold and formal reception of them, but a warm and hearty welcome. Such is the nature of true faith when it embraces the promises of salvation. No act of pressing a friend to the bosom is ever more warm and cordial.

And confessed that they were strangers - Thus, Abraham said Gen 23:4, “I am a stranger and a sojourner with you.” That is, he regarded himself as a foreigner; as having no home and no possessions there. It was on this ground that he proposed to buy a burial-place of the sons of Heth.

And pilgrims - This is the word - παρεπίδημος parepidēmos - which is used by Abraham, as rendered by the Septuagint in Gen 23:4, and which is translated “sojourner” there in the common English version. The word “pilgrim” means properly “a wanderer, a traveler,” and particularly one who leaves his own country to visit a holy place. This sense does not quite suit the meaning here, or in Gen 23:4. The Hebrew word - תּושׁב towshaab - means properly one who “dwells in a place,” and particularly one who is a “mere” resident without the rights of a citizen. The Greek word means a “by-resident;” one who lives by another; or among a people not his own. This is the idea here. It is not that they confessed themselves to be wanderers; or that they had left their home to visit a holy place, but that they “resided” as mere sojourners in a, country that was not theirs. What might be their ultimate destination, or their purpose, is not implied in the meaning of the word. They were such as reside awhile among another people, but have no permanent home there.

On the earth - The phrase used here - ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς epi tēs gēs - might mean merely on the land of Canaan, but the apostle evidently uses it in a larger sense as denoting the earth in general. There can be no doubt that this accords with the views which the patriarchs had - regarding themselves not only as strangers in the land of Canaan, but feeling that the same thing was true in reference to their whole residence upon the earth - that it was not their permanent home.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

All these died in the faith of God’s promises; that is, of their posterity, being to be introduced into the promised land of Chanaan [Canaan], but chiefly into the happy country of heaven. For had they only aspired and wished for the country of Chaldea, out of which Abraham came, they had time enough to have returned thither. (Witham) --- A metaphor taken from sailors, who, after a long and dangerous voyage, no sooner descry their native country, but they hail it with transports of joy: this in Virgil: Italiam, Italiam, primus conclamat Achates.

Thus the Patriarchs, when beholding at a distance, and through faith, their heavenly country, hailed it with joyous and repeated accents, eagerly desiring to reach the envied port.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

These all died in faith; all these, Abragam, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob, &c., who were heirs of the same promises, and who had opportunity to return to the same country from which they came forth, as Heb 11:15; they did not only live according to faith, walking with, worshipping of, and waiting on God, testifying against sin, but finished their course by dying according to faith; by faith, as the instrumental efficient of it; in faith, as the regulating cause of it; according to faith, as in the state of believing. Faith was immortal in them as their souls, making their death a covenant dissolution, Luk 2:29, a voluntary, hopeful, blessed death, as 2Co 5:8; 1Th 4:13.

Not having received the promises; not receiving actually, and in sense, the things promised, which were a numerous offspring, the literal Canaan, the Messiah in the flesh, and a glorious resurrection; but departed triumphing, and in the faith of all, and that they would be made good to theirs; and this they discovered by the blessings they left on each other, as Isaac on Jacob, and Jacob on the patriarchs.

But having seen them afar off; but faith brought all these promises into their view, though so far off; so did Abraham see by it the Messiah, Joh 8:56. They all had a real, clear, and strong prospect of them, the inheritance temporal in its time to come, and the heavenly rest beyond the grave, seeing the resurrection, heaven, and glory, by faith, when they died, Gen 49:18.

And were persuaded of them, and embraced them; by a powerful impression of faith on their souls, of the truth, goodness, and certainty of the things promised, on their minds, with a mighty apprehension of and assent to them in their wills, to the choosing of and closing with them in their affections; cleaving to them in love, desire, and delight, as surely to be accomplished; having their souls thankfully receiving them, graciously returning to God for them, with the greatest satisfaction embracing them, as are welcome friends or relations long absent from us; hugging Christ, saluting heaven, and embracing glory in the promises by faith, when dying.

And confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth; in word and deed; while they lived they published it to the world, as Abraham, Gen 23:4, and Jacob, Gen 47:9; keeping themselves free from all entanglements of this earth, as became those who are strangers, having no possession of, nor intimacy with, this earth; incorporating with no other people, but as pilgrims wandered from place to place, took up and pitched their tents when and where God would have them, unpeopled as to this world, and desiring to be peopled with the Lord, Psa 39:12; 105:12,13; compare 2Co 5:6,8. They were all of the same mind, loose from and above this world, and longing to remove to their own country and be with God.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

13. These all died in faith—They not only lived faithful lives, but in (not by) faith they died. The fact that they saw not the fulfilled promises shook not their final faith. From their dying beds they looked forward to the heavenly country. To the all, here, some commentators note Enoch as an “exception,” who did not die. Others say, all who really died, died in faith. Perhaps the all, however, refers only to Abraham’s descendants, of whom alone 12-16 seems to speak. Received (the fulfilment of) the promises.

Seen them afar off—As a ship’s company descry a distant lighthouse: or as Moses, from the summit of Nebo, surveyed the distant hills and plains, and cities and rivers, of the land to which he was heir, but must never in life possess.

Embraced—Or, saluted them. So Xenophon’s army of the ten thousand, when they arrived at the Euxine, which was to terminate their wilderness wandering, shouted—the first giving the word to all the rest—”Thalatta! thalatta!” the sea, the sea.

Pilgrims on the earth—Having a land in heaven, of which this promised land was type and earnest.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

These all (i.e. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the nomadic patriarchs, not in-eluding the antediluvian heroes, to whom what is further said does not apply) died in faith (literally, according to faith, kata pistin , as in ver. 7), not having received the promises, but having seen and greeted them from afar off (omitting the ill-supported kai peisyentev of the Textus Receptus), and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. The reference is to the confession of Abraham to the sons of Heth, (Gen_23:4) "I am a stranger and a sojourner with yon," together with Jacob"s words to Pharaoh, (Gen_47:9) "The days of the years of my pilgrimage," etc. The import of such confession, intimated in the preceding part of the verse, is now educed.

Vers. 13, 14. The Christian"s condition in this world.

"These all died in faith, not having received the promises," etc. By "these all" we understand Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Jacob. They died in faith. Their faith, though at times it was sorely tried, continued unto death. And their death was according to or consistent with their faith. They departed this life still believing in the promises, and anticipating their fulfillment in the life beyond. We take what is said of the patriarchs in these two verses as descriptive of the Christian"s condition in this world.

I THE CHRISTIAN DOES NOT REALIZE HIS GREAT HOPES HERE, BUT ANTICIPATES THEIR REALIZATION HEREAFTER. The patriarchs "all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar." They did not inherit Canaan. The promises of God to them were not fulfilled in this life. The hopes which those promises awakened were not realized when they died. But our text teaches:

1. That they firmly believed in the blessings promised to them. By faith they saw them from afar.

2. They anticipated the possession of these blessings. They "greeted them." "From afar," says Delitzsch, "they saw the promises in the reality of their fulfillment; from afar they greeted them as the wanderer greets his longed-for home, even when he only comes in sight of it at a distance, drawing to himself as it were magnetically and embracing with inward love that which is yet afar off. The exclamation, "I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord, (Gen_49:18) is such a greeting of salvation from afar." "The image is that of sailors who, catching a glimpse of the shores they wish to reach, salute them from a distance." Cowper expresses the idea. He speaks of "The savage rock,... That hides the seamen in his hollow clefts Above the reach of man. His hoary head, Conspicuous many a league, the mariner, Bound homeward, and in hope already there, Greets with three cheers exulting.

Such was the attitude of the patriarchs to the blessings promised unto them by the Lord. And in this respect Christians to some extent resemble them. The highest and brightest hopes of the Christian are not attained here. This world is the scene of the pursuit rather than the attainment of the divinest satisfactions. Is there any one whose brightest and best hopes have been realized in this world? Is our life as good and glad and great a thing as we pictured it in our early days? Are we as true and pure, as brave and noble, as we hoped and expected to be? Verily, we have not attained; we are not satisfied; we have not received the promised blessings. But these blessings still beckon us onward. We long and hope for the realization of them. Dr. Martineau profoundly and truly says, "So far as we are religious, we are in a state of aspiration and unsatisfied desire In disappointment ever renewed, in thoughts and affections ever transcending all our possibilities, consist all the noble unrest, the progressive goodness, the immortal capacities of our nature, rendering it the creator of poetry and the moral creature of God." We anticipate the fruition of our hopes hereafter. "As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.

II THE CHRISTIAN IS NOT A RESIDENT HERE, BUT A SOJOURNER A PILGRIM. "Confessed that they were pilgrims on the earth", (cf. Gen_23:4 Gen_47:9) All men are pilgrims in this world. David, in the height of his power, confessed this. (1Ch_29:15) Whether they will or not, every man is moving ever onward from the seen to the unseen, from the temporal to the eternal. Some are unwilling pilgrims. If they could they would be citizens here, not sojourners. But if they attempt to settle down, some sharp shock soon reminds them that their condition here is not stationary, but itinerant and changeable. The Christian cheerfully recognizes the fact that he has no continuing city here; he confesses that he is a pilgrim on the earth. Mark some of the features of this pilgrimage.

1. It is irretraceable. There is no opportunity of going back to past scenes and experiences. The movement is invariably onward.

2. It is continuous. There are no stoppages on this journey. Life never pauses in its motion.

3. It is rapid. Compared with the work to be done in it, and with the boundless and solemn future to which it leads, how brief is life!

III THE CHRISTIAN IS NOT AT HOME HERE, BUT A STRANGER SEEKING HIS HOME ELSEWHERE. "Confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek after a country of their own." They seek a fatherland, a home. There is much in this world which is uncongenial to the true Christian. He has desires which this world cannot satisfy. He does not want to stay here permanently, He does not feel at home here. But he is seeking his home in heaven; he is pressing onward to his Father"s house. There many of his best and dearest friends have already entered; there many of his spiritual kinsfolk dwell; there the elder Brother and the heavenly Father are at home; and as he journeys thither he singsThere is my house and portion fair, My treasure and my heart are there, And my abiding home.

While on the journey let the Christian pilgrim rejoice:

1. In the excellence of the way on which he travels. "A highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness," etc.

2. In the attractiveness of the prospects which beckon him forward.

3. In the delightfulness of the companionships of the journey. He himself shall be with them, walking in the way the redeemed shall walk in it.

4. In the blessedness of the destination to which He travels. They "shall come to Zion with songs," etc. (Isa_35:10)

Vers. 13-16. The two fatherlands.

I THAT FROM WHICH THEY HAD COME. The writer of this Epistle has been a student of the recorded experiences and habitual feelings of his devout ancestors. Many of the descendants of Abraham had no devoutness in them. They cared nothing where they lived so long as they could get gain and their fill of the pleasures of life. Such were really not reckoned in the exceeding multitude at all. They that are of faith are the children of faithful Abraham. And few as they were probably out of the bulk of Abraham"s descendants according to the flesh, nevertheless they may have been a great number, more than we have any idea of. The Lord"s people, though far from being as many as they ought to be, are yet more numerous than we think. Remember Elijah"s ignorance of the seven thousand who had not bowed to Baal. Such people must ever express their longings for something far beyond what any earthly locality can supply. And as the writer says, these longings are ever expressed in the spirit of faith. Looking away from earth, and from self, and from the present, they see what an abundance of promises is theirs. They dwell in Canaan as strangers and sojourners dwell in a land. They pass through it as seeking something which they do not expect to find in it. It is part of the necessary way; it does not contain the journey"s end. All travelers have a choice; they can press forward into the unknown or they can go back. Israelites might have sought the home of Abraham, on the possibility that there might be found a peace and satisfaction not to be found in Canaan. There is something in the power of fatherland. Englishmen will go to live abroad for many years, but they like to come back for the last chapter of life. We all know the popular belief that people out of health may benefit by going to their native air.

II THE HEAVENLY FATHERLAND. Our Father in heaven makes in heaven the satisfying provision for his children. All the meaning of the passage here is only to be apprehended by bearing in mind the fatherhood of God. Spiritual relations are more than natural ones; heavenly relations than earthly ones. Abraham left the land of his fathers because only by doing so could the seeds of a new, a better condition of things be sown. And then little by little it must have become clear that outward change was to make clear the need of something more individual, inward change. Spiritual aspirations, strongly expressed because they are deeply felt, draw forth God"s response of special interest in those who cherish such aspirations. God holds forth the heavenly land, the land of his full manifestation and his unobscured glory, before all believers. Prophecy is full of that which encourages faith in this respect. As to the nature of the heavenly state, the Lord"s true people may have been in much ignorance; but as to the satisfying reality of it they were fully assured. God never asks for faith without giving something corresponding to cheer his people, to lift them above the attractions, the delusions, and the temptations of the present. Y.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

All these - Mentioned ver. 7-11. Died in faith - In death faith acts most vigourously. Not having received the promises - The promised blessings. Embraced - As one does a dear friend when he meets him.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

confessed

i.e. acted upon them.

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

An application of the truths here offered:

v. 13. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

v. 14. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.

v. 15. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.

v. 16. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city.

The sacred writer here shows that his definition of faith applies well in the case of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob: These all died in keeping with their faith, although they had not become partakers of the promises, but had seen them from afar and hailed them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. As the patriarchs had believed during their lives, so they died in their faith, as it behooved men that had seen the day of the Lord, the coming salvation, from afar, through the promises of the Lord, Joh 8:56. They were so firmly persuaded that God would fulfill His word in every particular that they actually saw the fulfillment. They hailed the promises from afar, as people on board of a ship may wave recognition to a group of friends on shore. The fact that the Gospel-promises were not fulfilled while they lived, and that they did not see the Messiah in person, did not influence their faith. They cheerfully confessed and called themselves strangers and pilgrims here on earth, a fact for which their being sojourners in the Land of Promise was a type. See Gen 23:4; Gen 47:9; Psa 39:12; 1Pe 1:1; 1Pe 2:11.

This open confession of the patriarchs, as evidenced in their lives, is further discussed: For they that say such things plainly show that they are in search of a fatherland. The acknowledgment and confession of the patriarchs that they were strangers and sojourners here on earth, that this world was not their home country, made it very evident that the true homeland must be elsewhere, that they are eagerly awaiting their entrance into that promised place. They think of, have in view, and are making for, a land which they can call their own, which is their own by the gift of God. Their entire attitude agreed with this state of mind: And if, indeed, they had cherished memories of that land which they had left, they would have had opportunity to return; but now they aspire after a better one, which is the heavenly one. If at any time during their sojourn in Canaan and also in Egypt the patriarchs had had regrets on account of their having left Mesopotamia, if they had cherished fond memories of that earthly country from which Abraham had gone forth, if their sighing had concerned itself with a mere earthly paradise, then it would have been an easy matter for them to return to their former homeland. But it was not an earthly country that their faith was aspiring after with such eager sighing, but the promised heavenly land, the city whose possession was assured by virtue of the Messiah’s merits. Thus the cordial relationship between God and them is brought out: Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them. Because the faith of the patriarchs in the promises of God was so implicit, because they credited His promises even though they themselves did not actually become partakers of them while living here on earth, therefore God was not ashamed of them, did not hesitate to confess them, was willing to be called their God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Exo 3:15. For this reason, also, He was preparing for them a city, the heavenly Jerusalem, the mansions above, which would in every way satisfy the hopes and expectations they had held all their lives, Joh 14:1-3. This is also the goal of the hopes, the expectation of the faith, of all believers to this day—Jerusalem, the city fair and high.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

That is, all the before-mentioned saints, Abel, Noah, Abraham, and Sarah, they all died in the faith of the promised Messiah, believing he should come, and expecting salvation by his coming. It is not enough for a Christian to live in the faith, but he must also die in the faith; and to die in the faith is an honourable happy manner of dying; it is a greater happiness to die in the Lord, than to die for the Lord; if a man die for the Lord, and be not in the Lord, he is not blessed in his death: a man may die for the Lord’s cause, yet not for the Lord’s sake, but out of vain glory.

Observe here, the great trial which the faith of the Old Testament saints was put unto: they died, not having received the promises; that is, they went to their graves before the great blessings God had promised were accomplished. Faith is contented with the promise, though it wants actual possession of the good things promised. God would have believers in all ages of the church to live by faith, and promises not actually performed: and it is a great honour to God, when we are ready to die, to go to the grave with assurance, and to profess our confidence that God will make them good: These all died not having received the promises.

Yet observe, The actings and exercises of their faith towards these promises, which they had not yet received in their accomplishment:

1. They saw them afar off: at a great distance: it is the property of faith to eye the blessings promised at a distance; so that no distance of time or place can weaken faith as to the accomplishment of divine promises.

2. They were persuaded of them: this imports the mind’s satisfactory acquiescing in the truth of God for the accomplishing of his promises; a firm persuasion of the truth of God’s promises, and a quiet waiting for the accomplishment of them at a great distance, is an eminent fruit of faith.

3. They embraced them; the word signifies, they saluted and hugged them.

Whence note, That faith is an act of the will, as well as of the understanding; there is in faith adherence as well as assent; an embracing as well as a persuasion; the heart cleaves to the promise with love, delight, and complacency.

And confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth; so they were in outward condition, wandering from place to place; so they were in affection and disposition, looking upon this world as their pilgrimage, and heaven as their home and proper country, because thence they are born; there lies their inheritance, there are all their kindred, there is their longest abode. Christians should not only account but confess themselves pilgrims, and discover it by their journeying and mending their pace heavenward.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

13–16. These all died in faith. All the patriarchs named. They died without the fulfillment of the promises, either those of a temporal possession or of an innumerable seed. Having seen them afar off. They beheld them in the future by faith. Confessed. By their whole lives that they were pilgrims. They had no fixed home and were waiting for a country.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

without receiving the promises

This speaks of promises as if they are objects that a person receives. AT: "without receiving what God had promised them" (See: Metaphor)

after seeing and greeting them from far off

Future promised events are spoken of as if they were travelers arriving from far away. AT: "after learning what God will do in the future" (See: Metaphor)

they admitted

"they acknowledged" or "they accepted"

they were foreigners and exiles on earth

Here "foreigners" and "exiles" mean basically the same thing. This emphasizes that this earth was not their true home. They were waiting for their true home that God would make for them. (See: Doublet)

a homeland

"a country for them to belong to"

translationWords

faith

die

promise

alien

earth

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

13. Κατὰ πίστιν. Lit., “According to faith.”

μὴ κομισάμενοι. They received the promises in one sense, as promises (Heb 11:17), but had not yet entered upon their fruition (comp. Heb 11:39; Heb 6:15, and Heb 9:15).

ἀσπασάμενοι. “Saluting them” (Gen 49:18). “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad” (Joh 8:56).

παρεπίδημοι. Gen 23:4; Gen 47:9; 1Ch 29:15; Psa 39:12, &c.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

13-16.] Before the Writer passes on to more examples of faith, he looks back over the patriarchal age, and gathers in one the attributes of their faith.

13.] In (according to, consistently with, in the course of: not this time πίστει, because their deaths were not the results of their faith, but merely according to and consistent with it) faith died these all (there is no need to say with Œc., Thl., Primas., al., ἐξῃρημένου τοῦ Ἐνώχ: the promises began with Abraham, and it is evident from the end of our verse, and from ver. 15, that the reference is solely to the patriarchs), not having received (the participial clause conditions and substantiates the κατὰ πίστιν … ἀπέθανον: and for this reason it is μὴ λαβ. and not οὐ: ‘as those who did not receive’ &c.) the promises (plur., because the promise was again and again repeated to the patriarchs, see the citations from Gen. above, and add Gen 17:5-8; Gen 26:3, Gen 26:4; Gen 28:13, Gen 28:14. The ἐπαγγελία, here as so often comprehends τὸ ἐπηγγελμένον), but having seen them from afar (καὶ πεισθέντες, see var. readd., has come in from a gloss: so Chrys., οὗτοι πεπεισμένοι ἦσαν περὶ αὐτῶν ὡς καὶ ἀσπάσασθαι αὐτάς: Œc., καὶ ἀσπασάμενοι· πεισθέντες), and greeted them (“From afar they saw the promises in the reality of their fulfilment, from afar they greeted them as the wanderer greets his longed-for home even when he only comes in sight of it at a distance, drawing to himself as it were magnetically and embracing with inward love that which is yet afar off. The exclamation, ‘I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord,’ Gen 49:18, is such an ἀσπασμός, such a greeting of salvation from afar.” Delitzsch. Wetst. quotes Virg. Æn. iii. 522, “Quum procul obscuros colles humilemque viderem Italiam.… Italiam læto socii clamore salutant”), and confessed that they were strangers and sojourners upon the earth (this Abraham did, ref. Gen., to the children of Heth, πάροικος καὶ παρεπίδημος ἐγώ εἰμι μεθʼ ὑμῶν: and Jacob, Gen 47:9, to Pharaoh, αἱ ἡμέραι τῶν ἐτῶν τῆς ζωῆς μοι ἃς παροικῶ κ.τ.λ. See Psa 118:19: Ecc 12:5: Philo de Agricult. § 14, vol. i. p. 310, τῷ ὄντι πᾶσα μὲν ψυχὴ σοφοῦ πατρίδα μὲν οὐρανόν, ξένην δὲ γῆν ἔλαχεν: and Confus. Ling. § 17, p. 416, διὰ τοῦτο οἱ κατὰ Μωυσῆν σοφοὶ πάντες εἰσάγονται παροικοῦντες· αἱ γὰρ τούτων ψυχαὶ στέλλονται μὲν ἀποικίαν δή ποτε τὴν ἐξ οὐρανοῦ. In Wetst., several citations are given from the classics where human life is called a παρεπιδημία. The word is found in Ælian (V. H. viii. 4) and Polybius (xxxii. 22. 4), and παρεπιδημέω and -μία often).

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

In faith [κατα πιστιν] . See on ver. 7.

Not having received [μη κομισαμενοι] . See on ch. Heb 10:36. They died according to faith, inasmuch as they did not receive. They died under the regimen of faith, and not of sight. For the phrase komizein tav ejpaggeliav to receive the promises, comp. ch. Heb 10:36; Heb 11:39.

Having seen them afar off [πορρωθεν αυτας ιδοντες] . By faith; from afar.

Were persuaded of them and embraced them [ασπασαμενοι] . The A. V. completely destroys the beauty of this verse. It reads were persuaded, following T. R. peisqentev, and translates ajspasamenoi embraced, which is a sort of inferential rendering of the original sense to salute or greet. Rend. "having seen them from afar and greeted them" : as seamen wave their greeting to a country seen far off on the horizon, on which they cannot land. L?n appropriately quotes Virgil, Aen. 3. 522 :

"Cum proculi obscuros collis humilemque videmus Italiam. Italiam primus conclamat Achates, Italiam laeto socii clamore salutant."

Confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims [ομολογησαντες οτι ξενοι και παρεπιδημοι] . They admitted and accepted the fact with the resignation of faith, and with the assurance of future rest. Comp. Gen 23:4; Gen 24:37; Gen 28:4; Gen 47:9; Psa 39:12; Psa 119:19, 54. For parepidhmoi sojourners, see on 1Pe 1:1. In the anonymous Epistle to Diognetus, an apologetic letter, probably of the second century, and one of the gems of early Christian literature, occur the following words concerning Christians :

"They inhabit their own country, but as sojourners : they take part in all things as citizens, and endure all things as aliens : every foreign country is theirs, and every country is foreign."

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.