Every Picture Tells a Story (Part 1 of 2)

If you've ever needed encouragement to keep your spirits up to you during troubling times, you're not alone. Hebrews chapter 11 was written to spur on early believers who were overwhelmed by their circumstances.

Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg teaches us four key lessons that emerge from the inspiring accounts of faith described in this passage. I was given over simply to pictures. I don't have one—we have a couple of places that approximate to it—but I like just to have a wall for pictures.

Some of you do, I know, because I've been in your houses. And indeed, there was one memorable home where the couple have now moved since I conducted the funeral service for the lady years ago, but I can remember going to this home for the first time and being struck by the way they had taken a huge area of the house and turned it over simply to portraiture. It wasn't that the husband and wife were stuck on themselves—there were very few photographs of them, actually—but they had photographs that went way back down through the corridors of time—grandparents and great-grandparents—and then they had come all the way up to the contemporary life of their own grandchildren.

And there was profit in simply standing there and having them recount the various details of why a picture was there and what it meant and who that person was and where this scene had unfolded. And that is particularly the case, of course, where the individuals whose photographs or pictures appear there have been individuals of faith, because every picture literally tells a story that we do well to pay attention to. And it is, in one sense, that here in Hebrews chapter 11, we have one of those walls, as it were, where the writer has given us these wonderful portraits of individuals down through time. God has determined which one should appear in exactly what place, and the purpose of the writer is that we might attend to this gallery of portraiture and that we might learn by observation.

He is particularly concerned, because those to whom he writes are in danger of throwing away their confidence. They are in danger of being so overwhelmed by the circumstances that they face that they may capitulate to the culture around them and give up. Some of them have been tempted simply to lie down, as it were, on the grass, to take the baton of faith that they were supposed to put in the hands of a subsequent generation and throw it down on the ground and say, I'm finished. And the writer has been encouraging them by various means to ensure that, as he says at the end of chapter 10, we are not those who shrink back and are destroyed, but we are those who continue and are saved. And he is about, in chapter 12, to encourage them to turn their gaze not to the portraiture of chapter 11 but to turn their gaze to the only ultimate place where it should be—namely, focused on the Lord Jesus himself. But for the time being, he says, let me take you down through the corridor here, and let's pause before each of these paintings, because they are essential for our own edification and encouragement. And as we view them, they beckon us to daring exploits, and they encourage us to patient endurance. Because the fact is that despite the passage of time and the geographical separation between the initial readers and ourselves, many of us come to worship this morning in a similar experience to those to whom the letter was first written—tempted, buffeted, tried, discouraged, fearful, wondering if we can make it through another week—and looking very much to hear from God himself a word of direction, a word of encouragement, a word of strengthening, a word of rebuke, whatever it might be.

And that, of course, is why we turn to the Scriptures. So, we're on a field trip, as it were. We parked the bus.

We came in the gallery. There will be a bunch of snotty kids at the back that won't pay any attention to it at all. They're always there. They're always fiddling with wrappers and candy and stuff. And no matter what the teacher says to them, they never pay attention.

Despite the fact you tell them there will be a test on this, they never take any notes, and they always get close to the swats at the back of the bus later on so they can find out what you're supposed to know, so they can write up their paper afterwards, although they never paid attention to any of it. Now, none of you are like that. You're not those who shrink back and do those things. You are those who continue and are saved. So you're gonna pay attention with me to these various pictures. And what I want to do is to stop briefly at each one. And if I'm taking too long, then hopefully it will become apparent to me, and I'll move, you know, like the guide said, let's pick it up, let's move along, there are others coming behind. And it may be that someone will have to do that for me.

We'll wait and see. But the first picture here in verse 17 and following is grounded in Genesis 22. And indeed, it would be helpful for you to turn to Genesis 22 to see just exactly what it is that the picture contains. In Genesis 22 and verse 9, when they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.

Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. Picture number one. Now, try and visualize it just in your mind's eye for a moment.

You have the words in front of you, but just try and think about what this would look like. Can you see the altar made out of rough stone and the wood being placed on, the way that wood needs to be placed, in order that when it is kindled it will burst into flames? You see the son, who has now grown to manhood, being bound hand and foot and placed on top of the altar. Then can you look and see the way the artist has captured, as it were, the glint of the sun on the blade of the knife as it is poised in the hand of Abraham, ready to drop down into the very lifeblood of his only begotten son?

That's the picture. Now, why is it there for us? What is the point of emphasis?

Now, we need be absolutely no doubt about that, because the writer to the Hebrews gives us the commentary notes in much the same way that you get notes when you go to a gallery, especially if they're trying to sell you the paintings. And they have a little description as to what is there and the significance of the scene. He tells us that the real issue here, in this dramatic scene, was not the moral incongruity of a father about to kill his son. In other words, the response to this scene is not supposed to be, first of all, a response of sentimentalism—"Oh, dear, oh, dear! What a dreadful situation to get oneself into!" or, oh, I feel so dreadfully sorry for the father and for the son.

That is a different consideration altogether. The issue before us here is the issue of Abraham's faith. Now, in Genesis 21, God has said to Abraham, It is going to be through your son Isaac that all of your seed will be reckoned, which being interpreted means that Isaac is the key to the promises I have made to you. What were the promises that he had made to him? He had promised Abraham that through his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed. He had promised Abraham that his posterity would be as numerous and as uncountable as the sands on the seashore.

That was his promise. Now, here comes his command. Take your son, your only son, to the place that I tell you, and kill him.

Now, is that not a direct contradiction? Here is the key to the future of my promises. Here is the promised son for whom you have waited all this time.

Now, I want you to take this same son, and I want you to kill him. The fulfillment of God's promises depended upon Isaac's survival. If Isaac was to die, how could the promise be fulfilled? But Abraham took him and was about to do with him what God told him to do. He refused to allow his obedience to the command to cancel his trust in the promise. He didn't say, Oh, well, I guess that puts an end to all the other stuff.

No! By faith, he said, God has a plan in this. His promise is that through Isaac all the nations of the earth will be blessed, that in his seed will be all the posterity of the future. God wants me to kill him.

Fine! He must be going to resurrect him. He must have a plan to raise him up from the dead.

How do we know that's the case? Because if you read in Genesis, he says to the servants who are with him, Now you guys have come far enough. If you will stay here, Isaac and I will go forward, and when we've done our business, we will return to you. Is that not an expression of faith? From the lips of an individual who knows that the reason for his journey onto the hillside is in order to take a knife and drive it through his son. Now, I don't want to make more of this than it is, but I don't want you to miss the point. When the command was given to Abraham, he set about obeying it, and although it was in direct contradiction to the promise God had made, he did his business, and he determined to let God do his.

And loved ones, that is true at so many junctions in our life. There's hardly a week passes that somebody doesn't come to me and say, Is it true that God elects people to salvation? Yes. Is it true that he has promised to save his own? Yes. Is it true that we are supposed to preach the gospel and that as a result of our preaching of the gospel, men and women will come to repentance and faith?

Yes. Oh, well, they say, isn't that a bit of a problem, that God has promised to do this, and he's commanded us to do that? Well, how does the promise fit with the command?

The answer is, that's not my problem, and it's not yours either. Our problem is, obey the command. Leave God to fulfill the promise. And indeed, he has purposed that in our obedience to the command, there is the very fulfillment of the promise—by faith. Stand and look up at this scene, and you're looking there at a man who waited all of these years for the gift of his son, who had changed his whole life on the basis of God's Word to go into a place that he would tell him of. And the fulfillment of the promise is before him on all these sticks, and his hand is above him to kill him, and he is about to do it because his faith is such that he reckoned that if he were to kill him, God would raise him from the dead. Now, why is it here?

It's here for the encouragement of the readers. Their faith is faltering. What, how does your faith, when it's faltering, get made strong? By looking in on itself? No, not at all.

No more than plants get strong by digging in the ground and pulling them up and seeing how the root structure does. That's no help to them at all. You'll kill them. Don't be going digging in the ground to see if you still have a faith. You know you have faith. God granted it to you. You are stimulated in your faith by looking at the examples of others who are holding the course along the journey. Obey the command, trust the promise.

That's portrait number one. Let's move quickly to the second one, Isaac and his sons. We stand here and we look. By faith, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future. Now, I'm not gonna delay on these, because we dealt with them in the studies in Joseph.

But for those who may be unfamiliar, Genesis 27 is where you need to look. And indeed, you can read the whole wonderful story there of Jacob getting the blessing that was due to Esau. And if you remember from Sunday school, Jacob was a smooth man, and Esau was an hairy man, as it says in the King James Version. And they got up to a little bit of jiggery-pokery by making Jacob appear hairy, although he was very smooth and so on. And the whole story unfolds in Genesis 27, with us looking at it and saying, My, my, this is more to do with the deception and the deceit of Jacob! What a rascal Jacob! And I don't really fancy his mother that much either!

Goodness, what a pair they were when they got together! And yet what does it say in the commentary notes here in Hebrews 11? It just simply records it. And when you read the story in Genesis 27, Isaac does not recant of his blessing going to Jacob. He doesn't change his mind, he doesn't change his plans. He recognized that Esau, as his firstborn, should have received the blessing, Jacob, by his deceit, received the blessing, and God used Jacob's deceit to accomplish his ultimate purpose. Whose deceit was it? Jacob's. Was God responsible for it?

Not an iota. Did Jacob and his mother cook it up? They absolutely did. Did it take God by surprise?

Not for an instant. It actually unfolded the eternal plan of God. Human responsibility, divine sovereignty, and amazing mercy all interwoven in the unfolding package of his purposes. No wonder when Paul, pondering such things in Romans 11, comes to the end of it, he says, Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his paths beyond finding out!

Raymond Brown, who was at one point the principal of Spurgeon's College reflecting on this, has the most choice sentence—two sentences, actually—that I want to read to you. Although Jacob was so desperately unkind to his father, so pathetically misled by his mother, so astonishingly jealous of his brother, yet God helped him, used him, and blessed him. He was desperately unkind to his dad, pathetically manipulated by his mom, astonishingly jealous of his brother, and God says, I'm gonna bless him, help him, and use him. Then says Raymond Brown, God's blessings are given, not because we deserve them but because we need them. Wouldn't it be dreadful if we only received God's blessings on the basis of our deserving? How much blessing would there be in your life?

There wouldn't be much in mine. But God blesses on the basis of our need, not on the basis of our deserving. Look at the next picture quickly. Jacob and his grandsons. You can see this in Genesis 48. He has the boys on his knees, and then he takes the boys off his knees, and then they bow down before him.

It is a wonderful scene. He's now an old man. If you were painting this, you'd paint him as an old man with a weak frame. His face would be wizened, his shoulders would be a little crumpled.

All the lines of life would have been creased into his face like one of those pug dogs, and all the sand of the desert that had weathered him and beaten him over time. Oh, I wish I could paint. If you could paint, and you've never painted religious pictures, paint Hebrews 11. Here's a series of religious portraits that'll be fantastic.

But if you could paint this picture, you would paint this old man, wouldn't you? And somebody would say to you, now, make sure you get his staff in there. Make sure you get that thing that he's always carrying around with him. Because he had it with him in Genesis 32 when he crossed the Jordan. And make sure you get something of the picture of his blessing, as it were, graphically descending upon these his grandsons. And again, remember, you would get this picture of his hands crossed.

How again, in this great mystery of God's providence, Jacob fiddled it so that he would get the blessing that was to be Esau's. And now, he switches hands on his grandchildren's heads, and at the protest of his son, who says, Dad, you're putting your wrong hand on the wrong head, he says, don't you worry about that. I'm doing what is right to do.

And it will become apparent. What a wonderful blessing to be a grandpa that can bless his grandchildren. What a wonderful privilege to have had such a grandfather. Some of your children here this morning, and you go to grandpa's house, and you make memories. And if in the grace and providence of God there are memories like this in your environment, then you will one day be thankful even if today you wonder.

We've got to keep moving. Next portrait, we stop and look at Joseph and his bones. Joseph and his bones. By faith, Joseph, verse 22, when his end was near. You can read of this in Genesis chapter 50. Joseph spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones. Why does he mention this? Well, he mentions this because it's within his purpose. The people of God were buffeted.

They were getting ever smaller in number, it would seem. They were saying to themselves, I wonder if there is a future. And so he says, Listen, there's a future. Abram says there is, Isaac says there is, Jacob says there is, and there is a future as well.

Joseph says so. Because those people were trapped. Those people could see no way ahead, and Joseph said, God will take you up, and when he takes you up, make sure you take me up, so don't put me in a very elaborate tomb here in Egypt, which I could obviously have, but just keep my bones in the box. So in years to come, the people would ask, Why are the bones in the box?

And they said, The bones are in the box. Because we're going to the promised land. And Joseph wanted us to be reminded of that. And he reckoned that by his faith he would speak in this way.

And you perhaps recall our studies then, when we talked about preparing for death. Let's pause for a moment before these five pictures of Moses, which begin in verse 23. First of all, we have Moses in a basket. That's the first picture.

Actually, you could do a picture not of Moses in a basket but of Moses in a cupboard, because when you read in Exodus 2, it says that his mom and dad sequestered him away and kept him out of sight, hidden for three months, and when they could no longer hide him for three months, then they put him in a basket and put him by the bull rushes. It's a great story, if you haven't read it for a while. I haven't read it. I have it in my mind from Sunday school. But I reread it, and I was just walking up and down.

I was so jazzed by it. Such an amazing story. If you think about it, the king establishes an edict—"Drown all the Hebrew boys, keep the Hebrew girls." So they have a baby—that is, Amram, Amram, and Jacobed. Unfortunate names, but nevertheless. This Mr. and Mrs. have a baby, and they look on this boy, and there's just a stamp of something on him, and so the edict says, You've got to kill him, drown him.

They said, Forget that. We're gonna keep him. And we'll keep him and hide him. And so they hide him, and for three months they managed to keep him in the house. Then they put him in the basket, put him in the bull rushes, send his big sister to kind of stand around the bull rushes while Moses is in the basket. She's standing around the bull rushes, down comes this big entourage out of the Egyptian headquarters, and suddenly she's in the company of Pharaoh's daughter. Pharaoh's daughter pokes her nose around, opens the basket, finds the boy, says, Oh, I'd like to take him home with me.

Quick as a flash, the big sister says, Hey, how about this? How about I get a Hebrew woman to nurse him? Oh, says Pharaoh's daughter, that's a splendid idea. So she runs home, gets Moses' literal mother to be his nursemaid. She looks after him, weans him, gets him to the position where he needs to be, then he goes into the custody of Pharaoh's daughter.

God is so good, isn't he? Takes care of all the details. Baskets and cupboards and bull rushes and mothers and sisters and stepbrothers and all of these things under his control. Don't be lying awake in your bed worrying about everything. Oh, what will I do, and where will I go, and what will happen? Listen, relax.

Lie on the floor and rest in the fact that your Father knows best. He moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. The deceit of Jacob—Jacob's own deceit—is in the unfolding plan.

The strange experience in the bull rushes is part of his purpose. That's the first little picture that we have, and it is a picture of not Moses' faith but the faith of his mom and dad. And it is a reminder in passing how important it is for us as young families to establish the parameters for our kids in such a way that they grow up with this kind of history. There is a lot for us to learn from these remarkable stories of faith, and we'll continue tomorrow in Part 2 of this message.

You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. If you're enjoying listening to the current series titled Fix Our Eyes on Jesus, we want to encourage you to make the complete study in the book of Hebrews your own. We have a USB drive that covers the entire book of Hebrews.

You can visit truthforlife.org slash store to find out more about the USB or find this study on the app. To complement this series today, we're recommending a book titled God Does His Best Work with Empty. The book is written by Nancy Guthrie, and she explains in the book how we are to view our feelings of emptiness in a positive light. Nancy writes that emptiness provides the perfect platform for God to teach us, to fill us with his spirit, and then to accomplish his purposes through us. Each chapter in this book recalls how God has provided for his children throughout history, how they could trust in his promises.

These are promises that still hold true for us today. You will appreciate the tremendous encouragement you'll find in the book God Does His Best Work with Empty. Request your copy when you donate to Truth for Life today. Online giving is quick and easy. You can visit truthforlife.org slash donate.

I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for joining us. Hope you can listen tomorrow as we find out why faith will sometimes call us to leave what is secure and comfortable as we focus on the portrait of Moses. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.