Our passage of scripture this evening is going to be Hebrews chapter 11, verses 13 through 16. We're going to begin reading at verse 8 and go through verse 16, but our passage for the sermon is going to be Hebrews chapter 11, verses 13 through 16. So would you please stand now in reverence for God's word. Hebrews chapter 11, verses 8 through 16. This is the word of God. By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith, he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations. whose designer and builder is God. By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore, from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven, and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God. for he has prepared for them a city. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of God endures forever. Let's pray. Our Lord and our God, we give thanks to you for the revelation of your word, this word which brings life, this word which shows us your nature and which shows us your works in all of the world. We pray, our Lord, that you would give us careful attention to be able to pay careful attention to your word May your spirit work in us and help us to know and love you more fully and to be able to serve you, Lord. We pray these things through the mediation of Christ our Lord. Amen. Come here and sit up. What do you think of when you think of your homeland? Do you think of the place where you grew up? Do you think of a place where you raised your family and started your life? Often when we think of our homeland, we think of it as the place where we really and truly feel at home. We can think of someone who has immigrated to another country. They might feel a strong connection to the place where they grew up. They might feel like where they're at now that they're displaced in their new country. The values are different, the people are different. the customs are different. They might experience a feeling of not being at home where they're at now. I've even experienced this in moving here to Florida. You all have been so great to me in the church and Oviedo's been so great to me, but even having grown up in Ohio, I sometimes feel out of place here. The people can often be different from what I've experienced, the values can be different, and sometimes it feels like I'm not at home. And because I think of my homeland as the place where I grew up, I sometimes really want to be back there with the people I know and the things I'm familiar with. I sometimes long to be back in my homeland. As we look at our passage this evening, as we look at the lives of Abraham and his descendants, we see that they also longed for a homeland. But the homeland they longed for was not something they looked back to, but it was something that they looked forward to. Abraham was once a resident of Ur, but as we read in Genesis, he was called out of the land that he knew. He was called to go out of Ur by the voice of God. And as God called Abraham, he told him to go to a place that he would show him. Abraham never knew where he was going. But by faith, Abraham broke with his former home, and he followed the voice of God. He heard the promise of God and took him at his word. Abraham's faith looked to the future. His faith was a picture of that faith which is described in Hebrews 11. Faith which is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. The things that God had promised and Abraham had hoped for would be now the motivation of his life. As God called him out of his homeland, Abraham would now live exclusively by faith in the promise of God. He would live in hope, looking forward to the land that God had promised to give him as an inheritance. But we see in Abraham's life that something strange happens when he comes to the promised land. Abraham didn't set up a place of permanent residence. He didn't build a city for his family so they could live there forever. No, Abraham and his descendants lived in tents. even in the land that God had promised them. And their living in tents showed something about what their hope was. Their hope wasn't found in the promised land. Their hope wasn't in any earthly place of residence at all. They lived in tents, even in the land of promise, because they were looking forward to a city, a city that has foundations, whose designer Abraham's tent life showed that his faith looked to something beyond the world that he lived in. It looked beyond the promised land. It looked beyond any earthly reality. It looked to a place of eternal residence in the city that God would prepare for him. Abraham's whole life would bear witness that he longed for that greater city that was to come. That greater city whose foundation would be firm and eternal because its maker was no man, its designer and builder was God. That greater city that Abraham longed for became Abraham's ideal place of residence. His whole life would strive for that greater place that God would prepare for him. This would be Abraham's true homeland. For Abraham, his faith bore witness to the fact that he didn't belong on this earth. His homeland was something beyond what he experienced in his life. His homeland was with God and the world to come. And beloved, our homeland is the same. As we look at our passage this evening, we'll see that our faith must be the same as Abraham's faith. We too are strangers and pilgrims on the earth, because our home is beyond something that we can see. It's found in the city that is built by God. It's the place that Christ has secured for us by his perfect work. Our homeland is the kingdom that Christ has established, that we are members of now, yet looking forward to its fullness in the future. So we live as pilgrims and strangers on this earth, looking forward in faith to that greater world to come, when we'll be in God's very presence and favor forever. So let's begin looking at our passage by thinking about our first point this evening, being strangers and exiles seeking a homeland. Abraham's life might be thought of as a tragic life. He never received the full fulfillment of God's promises in his lifetime. As we read in Hebrews 11 and come to the end of verse 12, we realize that Abraham never got to receive the full fulfillment of what God had promised to do for him. God had promised that he would receive a promised land. God had promised that Abraham would have descendants that would number the stars of the sky and the sand of the seashore. But Abraham never got to see these promises in their fullness. God did work in Abraham's life to give him a descendant, even as he was as good as dead, but Abraham never got to see all of what God promised him. This made Abraham's life be a life of faith, even to the end. We read in verse 13, these all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar. Abraham and his descendants, never having received what God had promised to them, turned them to live exclusively by faith in God's promise to them. Their faith was persistent even through their death. But their faith only got to see and breathe the promises from afar. It never got to have them in their fullness. But this made Abraham and his descendants not doubt Not doubt God's promise to them, but instead it made them confess something about their experience of living by faith. They confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. And we can look back at Genesis and see how this happens. In Genesis 23, as Abraham is looking for a place to bury Sarah and her death, he confesses to the Hittites in the promised land that he is a stranger in an exile among them. Abraham, the one who had all the rights to be considered a permanent resident in Canaan, as it was promised to him by God himself, confessed that he was a stranger in an exile in that promised land. He confessed that he didn't belong there. What do we mean in saying that Abraham was a stranger in an exile? Well, a stranger is someone who is living in a foreign land. They're someone who doesn't belong in the place where they're living. They are a foreigner. An exile is someone who is a pilgrim. They're a temporary resident, like a refugee today. They're someone who is displaced from their homeland. They're someone who has no permanent place of residence where they live. And Abraham's confession that he's a stranger and an exile in the promised land He's confessing that the place where he's living is not his permanent home. He's someone who doesn't necessarily belong there. Confessing that he's in exile makes us understand that Abraham didn't consider the promised land his eternal home. But why would Abraham call himself a stranger in an exile in the promised land? Why would he confess that he didn't belong in the place that God had promised him? Well, we read in verse 14, for people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. Abraham, in confessing that he was a stranger in exile in the promised land, showed that he was seeking another place to be his permanent place of residence. He showed that he was seeking somewhere else that would be his permanent home. And the word that's translated here, homeland, is literally fatherland. This is a term that might seem strange to us because in modern life, we're constantly moving away from the place that we grew up. But a fatherland was a place of permanent residence. It was a place that a family would live in permanently. As your parents lived there and their parents lived there before, it was supposed to be a place that your family would continue to live in from generation to generation. And as we read of Abraham's life, we see that he wasn't seeking the promised land as that permanent place of residence. It wouldn't be the place that he ideally would settle down and build up his family. Abraham, as he confessed to be a stranger and an exile, showed that his fatherland would be something new. It wasn't found in the place that he went out from, It wasn't found even in the temporary stay in Canaan. It was found in something else beyond what he knew. By confessing that he was a stranger in an exile, even in the promised land, Abraham showed that he longed for a better world, something that was to come. So Abraham, having never seen the promises of God fulfilled having confessed that he looked forward to a better homeland, died in faith. Faith would be all that he had to live on as he went to his grave because he longed for something greater, something that God had promised would surely come. But what was that homeland that Abraham longed for? Was it the land that he had left? Was it somewhere else on the earth? Well, we'll see in our next point. that our homeland is heavenly and not earthly. Because Abraham longed for a homeland, we might think that he was looking back to that land from which he came. He had grown up in Ur as his family had lived there for generations. But was that the place that Abraham was looking to as he died and as he sojourned in Canaan? We read in verse 15, If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. It wasn't the land of Ur that Abraham left that he looked to. It wasn't the place that he had gone out of that he was seeking. We read in Genesis that Abraham never went back to that former homeland, and he made sure that Isaac, his son, wouldn't live there either. Abraham made a complete cut, a complete separation from that former life that he lived. he and his children completely cut themselves off from that former land in which they lived. Abraham's faith could no longer look backward for its permanent home. God had called him out to go to a place that he would show him. God had called Abraham to something forward, something future, something beyond even the horizon of the promised land. God had called them to look forward to a greater world above. A plot of land wouldn't be Abraham's permanent place of residence. No place on earth could fulfill the desires of Abraham's heart. What Abraham desired and what we have now in Jesus Christ is something better than a plot of land. Abraham sought a better country, that is, a heavenly one. as nothing on earth could fulfill the desires of Abraham's heart. As he had been called by God to go to a place that God would ultimately show him, as he had been carried by God through his pilgrimage in the promised land, the place that Abraham longed for would be in the city with foundations, whose designer and builder is God. It would be something beyond what he could see on the earth. It would be something heavenly. Abraham lived as and confessed himself to be a stranger in an exile, not just in the promised land, but on the earth. This meant that his life had longed for something beyond the earth. It longed for heaven, the city that God had designed. In Church of Christ, this is the city which we have now in Jesus Christ. That city that Abraham longed for, beloved, is the city that we have through Christ, and the city that we also long for as we make our earthly pilgrimage in this life. As we share in the faith of Abraham, who longed for a place of permanent residence, not on earth, but in God's eternal city, we too find our homeland, not in any plot of land here. We don't find our homeland in anything that we can even see now. we know that our homeland is with Christ in the heavenly places. Christ has brought a new and better order to the world. He has brought the new covenant. He has brought the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven. And because we are members of that kingdom by faith in Jesus Christ, we live as citizens of that kingdom now. Paul calls us citizens of heaven. This makes our lives now primarily members of that greater world above. We live in light of the reality that we are residents of God's city, and this makes us too strangers and exiles on this earth. We find this idea all throughout the New Testament, from Jesus telling us to store up treasures in heaven where neither rust nor moth destroy, to Paul telling us to seek the things above where Christ is in the heavenly places, Peter telling us that we are God's elect strangers and exiles on earth. We see all throughout the New Testament that our lives are to be lived in the reality that we belong to God's city now, and we long for the fullness of that city to come. Now this might make us think that we have no responsibility in this world now, but God's word shows us that this is the furthest thing from the case. We live now as citizens of that kingdom above, but our life now is lived in the light of it. What we do now matters in light of eternity. We live as strangers and exiles in the midst of this world, seeking the things that are above where Christ is, and serving him with all of our life now. This leads us not to live a life separated from the world, but living in the midst of it as strangers and pilgrims, with a sense of a greater responsibility to God above. We live, as one theologian says, an elevated life because of our citizenship in heaven. This means that as we live in the midst of the world, we live with greater love and care because we are serving our God and are empowered by the Spirit to serve Him. We are passing through this world looking to that greater world above and a life of self-conscious service to our God. As we share in Abraham's faith, we have our desires rightly ordered. We serve God in that eternal kingdom that he has brought through Christ above all else. And this means that there is no turning back to that old life, because we have been made new through Christ. Abraham, a stranger in an exile, could have went back to that land that was his old homeland. But his old homeland was no longer his home. God had promised something greater for him, and he has given something greater to us. And this makes our faith look forward and perhaps onward to that greater kingdom which has come and will come in its fullness at the return of Christ. Church, this kind of faith, this upward and forward-looking faith will not go without reward. But as we see at the end of verse that is pleasing to God. At the heart of this heavenly calling, this heavenly citizenship and sin, is the reality that we are living before the presence of our God. If there is any greater motivation for our forward and upward-looking faith, I don't think I can think of any in all of Scripture than the simple words at the end of verse 16. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God. for he has prepared for them a city." The greatest reality that we can know is that we are in the favor of the God who made heaven and earth. And because Abraham and his descendants followed God and have faith that looked beyond the world, looked beyond what they could see and followed them, God is not ashamed to be called their God. Can you think of the glory of such a statement as this? God is not ashamed to be called God. In the various changes of life, in the midst of our pilgrim existence, in the midst of living in a world that has turned away from God and has turned away from His church, what greater reality can you know? You love it. And as you share in the faith of Abraham and his descendants, as you look for a greater world beyond what you presently experience, you will not be put to shame. But God considers you his own. What's better than that? And not only does he consider you his own, but he prepares for you a city, a city that has foundations, a city that doesn't change, a city that is firm and stable and kept for you, and a city whose great crown is the presence of the God who made it, and the God who's given you his everlasting love and salvation through Christ. So Church of Jesus Christ, Abraham and his descendants had a beautiful faith, a faith that looked forward in certainty to the hope that was set before them. They lived in the promised land in tents, They heard the voice of God and followed without any earthly certainty. They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims in this world, and they longed for a homeland that was beyond anything that they experienced. They longed for and looked forward to something greater. They sought a homeland that was built by God himself, in which he would be its crowning resident. But these all died, not having received what was promised. They saw and greeted the promises from afar. They died never seeing their descendants fill the earth. They died never having seen the homeland that they longed for. But beloved, we have the eternal kingdom and heavenly hope that Abraham looked forward to in the person and work of Jesus Christ. or know that Christ himself was the perfect pilgrim. He knew that his life was lived as an outcast in this world. His place of citizenship, his homeland, was in heaven above. But church, Christ became a pilgrim so that we could have our homeland in his very presence forever. Christ, the Son of God, the eternal God, was not ashamed to be called our brother. He took on our flesh became like us in every way except for sin. He lived a perfect life, fulfilling the law in our place, where he went to the cross, bearing the curse and wrath for the sins that we've committed. In church, he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, where he is now, ever interceding for us at the Father's right hand. He has brought us into that eternal kingdom which Abraham longed for and which we long for as we make our pilgrimage through this earth, waiting for our eternal hope in heaven. Because Christ became the perfect pilgrim and was not ashamed to be called your brother, if you share the faith of Abraham, a faith which looks to the promise of God, which longs for his presence, which longs for the eternal city to come above all else, then God is not ashamed to be called your God. Church, this is the greatest privilege that we can imagine. As we live now in a world that is turned away from God, as we bear the reproach and scorn of the world, this is the greatest thing that we can know. The Church of the Hebrews understood this. They had lost their earthly possessions, were thrown in prison, and were cast out of their homes. But they understood that they had a greater homeland, a better possession, and a life to come. They had the favor of God, as they shared in the faith with Abraham. Do you share that same faith, church? If you do, you will have something greater than anything this world can offer. You will have something greater than the favor of this world. You will have the favor and love of God. And you will have something greater than any plot of land on earth. You will have an eternal homeland that God has prepared for you, where you will dwell for all of eternity. God is not ashamed to be called our God because we long for that greater city. And at that last day, Church, when we close our earthly pilgrimage, we will be inhabitants of that greater city which comes from above. As John gives us a picture in the book of Revelation of that last day when Christ comes again, he says, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God." We will no longer be strangers and exiles in this world, but we will be with our God, and we will finally be at home. Let's pray. Our Lord and our God, we give thanks to you for the revelation which you've given us in your word this evening. We give thanks to you for the way in which you worked in Abraham's life, showing him that his hope was found in heaven. In your very presence, our God, We give thanks to you for the faith which you worked in His heart. We pray, O Lord, that you would work that same faith in our hearts, that we would look forward to that eternal city to come, that we would not be ashamed of you and that eternal city, so that you would not be ashamed of us, as you have called us to be your own. We pray, O God, that you would work that faith in us, that we would love and serve you now as citizens of your heavenly kingdom, and that we would grow in our love for you every day. We pray these things, O Lord, through the mediation of Christ our Lord. Amen.