In the past summer, as I was in Italy and I was doing my pastoral internship with Reverend Ferrari, we did something that he enjoyed quite well, which is hiking and going through mountains. And so we took the car early in the morning and we went all the way up to these mountains and we started to walk. bag on our shoulder and a staff guiding us through the thick and thin raising up and going down valleys and rockies and sweating and mosquitoes coming at you and hardship and you feel your feet hurt and you are almost tempted to give up and yet you press on and And you think that the final point of arrival and destination is coming, but instead it's still 20 minutes away, and then you finally come to the mountain peak. And you sit down. And what we did, we opened a psalm, and we read the psalm, and we enjoy this beautiful landscape before our eyes in a complete rest. And as I thought, as I was going through these steps, I thought, in many ways the Christian life resembles exactly that. As we face this, with journeying into this world, through many afflictions, through many perils, at times discouragement, wondering where is our true home, until we finally understand that our true home is in heaven. And that the more we face affliction, the more we are led to remind ourselves that our true home is in heaven. And that is our true promise land that tonight I would like to go with you. And John Calvin centuries ago was writing to Italian believers who were facing persecution and they were just embracing the Reformed faith. And he tells them this, even though you may be forced to resist unto the blood, unto death, think of the value of this heavenly life, which is reserved for us to the condition that we are transient, in this world as if leaving a foreign land to come to our true destination in heaven, our true inheritance. So I will ask you to open your Bible with me to the book of Hebrews where we find a description of these pilgrims who were journeying through the promised land. Hebrews chapter 11. We will focus on verse 13, which will be the text for us tonight, but we will read from verse 8 through verse 16. Hear now the reading of God's holy and infallible word. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance, and he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith, he dwelt in the land of promise, as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, their heirs with him of the same promise. For he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. By faith, Sarah herself also received strength to conceive a seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him, faithful, who had promised. Therefore, from one man and him, as good as dead, were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore. These all died in faith." Here's the words of a text. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly, if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them." Thus far the reading of God's holy and infallible Word. May God bless the meditation upon His Word tonight. Now the book of Hebrews is an interesting book in terms of a journey. A journey that already started in chapter 3. which was the journey of Israel in the desert, we are told in the beginning of that letter. And the author of Hebrew, which according to our confession is the Apostle Paul, is writing to Jews who were converted to Christ. And he is inviting them to persevere in faith, in the same faith they received until death. unto persecution, between affliction, and the center of this journey of Israel is the promise of an inheritance, an eternal and imperishable inheritance. And chapter 10 of this letter opens a concluding section to this letter. And the journey now leads us to the heroes of faith, that famous chapter 11 that we just looked at now. The heroes of faith, this number of clouds of witness who came before us, but especially Christ. The one that creates the faith in these heroes of faith. It is to Him that we need to look in our pilgrimage in this world. We must not look to ourselves. We must not look to our world in order to find hope. But on Him, Jesus Christ, because He is supreme. And the point of this long list of heroes of the faith is not just to give a praise of their own faith, although it's part of it. or to follow the moral example that they give us. Some of them had very little to offer on that. And yet, what is common to them is the constant and the perseverance of the saints from all ages, which were waiting for the full disclosures of God's glory with the coming of Jesus Christ. The full revelation of God. in the midst of this long list of heroes of faith we have this comment and this digression that the author is doing through our text a comment on the patriarchs Abraham, Jacob, Isaac the patriarchs died in faith and they had a faith on these promises But these promises were not related to earthly Canaan, but ultimately to their heavenly Canaan. And so from then we can learn three lessons tonight. The first one is that the promised land, contrary to our own expectation, the promised land is not found in the misery of here below. As we see this man of faith died in faith and we all sooner or later will face death and leave behind everything that we have built. Man in his condition is in a misery and he's already born in sin and ready to die one day. We are born in slavery under the tyranny of Pharaoh. which our catechism describes as the slavery to sin. And believers, even them, all the way from the beginning, from Adam and Eve, has to already die. Because sin has consequence to everyone. No one excluded, even these heroes of faith. No one in this list, if we accept Enoch, which was taken up into heaven, no one is excluded. And so we have to face with this reality of the misery of our life that is sooner or later will lead us to death. And how terrible is to come to that moment without faith, without true, genuine, saving faith. It is among the most miserable death. As the sin is taking hold of you and forever, an eternal misery open before our eyes. Death leaves us and judgment finds us. And many say they live with faith, but can they die with the same faith that they proclaim to live? If everything around you will die, all the things you most cherish and value, would your faith still stand? And yet, The death of the one who is born from above, from the one who is born again by the Holy Spirit, is the greatest of death. Because it is a gateway to glory. No one dies for something that he doesn't believe in. Although these patriarchs understood Christ only in part, this was enough for them to walk in faith. And how much more us who are living under the New Covenant, who are living under this display, the beautiful display of all the revelation of God, from Genesis to Revelation, and we have Christ displaced before our eyes. We have much more than them. And not only for himself, for Abraham, but also for his son and his nephew. You see, this is what every man would like to have, and yet we seek it in the wrong place. Sin, the poison sin betrays us. And from heaven all the way to Cain, we are like wanderer and pilgrims fleeing away from our true home, which is the glory of God and Eden, the presence of God. Because of sin. And we deserve only to be submerged by the flood of His wrath. And yet, His grace still reaches out. And He says, seek the Lord now that He may be found. Seek true religion, pure religion, walking before God, before your kids, before the people around you. And the shocking reality in the case of these heroes of faith is that they did not receive what they were promised. The fulfillment of the desires that we are looking for is not here below. The true happiness that every single man is looking for is not in this world. Throughout all their lives, no one, even among these heroes of faith, although they experienced blessings and victories and sacrifices, they worked and traveled and journeyed, and they faced sickness and awaited for this promise. None of them experienced in this life the substance of these promises. Majority of people are waiting for the perfect soul mate. Or they're looking for the perfect job that will solve their problems. Or maybe the house of their dreams. Or some sort of new methods to repair broken relationships. But none of them, none of these fathers of the faith received the fulfillment, the complete fulfillment of these promises. What is a promise? Well, a promise is what God promises, what God says and declares to us. And true faith is tested over and over again. Every time the patriarchs received a promise, they received a testing with it attached. And they were not fulfilled. So what promise is the author of Hebrew referring to here? Well, the land of Canaan. But most of all, salvation through a coming seed that Abraham, in whom seed all nations shall be blessed. Abraham was the father of all believers. And, of course, he was greatly blessed. He had livestock, wife, and servants, and a land. And yet, He leaves house, he leaves his home and his land without knowing even where he is going. He is assailed and tempted continuously concerning these promises. He flees from Canaan under a famine that takes over the land. And he awaits a innumerable number of descendants when he is without sons and he is old, advancing here as good as dead, the text says. And this promise, then his father tried again when finally received Isaac, and he has to sacrifice him on the altar. And later on, after Isaac, Jacob has to leave once again Canaan under the threat of his brother Esau. All of them, all the patriarchs sojourned as strangers. They paid the rent for the very soil that they were walking to. And they debated with the Canaanites even to dig a well that was good enough for their enemies. There was even taxes for their own tombs when Abraham had to bury Sarah. Abraham confessed to the people in Canaan, I am just a pilgrim passing by, in Genesis 23, verse 4. And Joseph, who was in Egypt, he asked that his bones may be carried back to the Promised Land. And he dies in faith that God would bring back his people out of bondage. And Moses himself, he died before, just on the verge of the Jordan, just before entering the Promised Land. for all their lives. These fathers of the faith saw these promises only from afar. Think of sailors who are approaching an island and they see land but it's fuzzy and it's full of fogs and they see in between. But this distance is not just a geographical distance in the case of the fathers of the faith. We are talking a temporal, of a time distance between them and the eschatological fulfillment in the coming of the Savior Jesus Christ. Abraham rejoiced at the dawn of the history of redemption in the awaiting of the day of Christ. He trusted with assurance that at the appointed time, the promises of God will be fulfilled. That this inheritance was actually a heavenly inheritance. And they were waiting for us. You see, the fathers of the faith were not complete until the fullness of the Israel of God and the New Testament, that in you all the nations will be blessed, so that the milk and honey of Canaan was just a foretaste, the true food of the heavenly table, so that A little foretaste of these promises was enough for them to quit everything, to consider the treasures of Egypt as something to be taken away because their eyes were on the heavenly promises. And all the tabernacles, the earthly tabernacles that they established was only pointing in a rusty and imperfect way to the glories of God that they were believing by faith and longing to face. And so we must as well live in this expectation of greater things to come, and to grab with confidence, and meditate, and apply, and store in our hearts these promises that God gives us in His Word, in the Scriptures. As we can open the Scripture wherever we are, and we can pray through those promises. We can utilize them in our daily conversations with one another. How much more us that today are living in an age when the Christ incarnate has been fully shown to us. He has already come and we have the sacraments. Sacraments which are visible signs of this invisible reality of salvation. Where there is more knowledge of the promises of God, there should be more obedience. There should be more excitement. And yet, if Abraham rejoices for this, where is our joy? Unfortunately, there is another gospel that has developed through North America, in the world which has contaminated the Church, which uses the same vocabulary of promises and focuses always on an earthly side of it, for a here and now type of promise, for an immediate research and quest for material goods, riches, and wealth, without heaven, without the glory of Christ. All these promises have no value whatsoever. Faith in Christ doesn't free us, in fact, from difficulties. These fathers in the faith died not having received this fulfillment. Sometimes faith actually guides us right in the middle of the hurricane of life as the world mocks us, as they mock the patriarchs as unworthy or the heroes of faith. But what matters is what God thinks of me. who has far greater things in store for me and you in heaven. And so between the clouds of this world, these fathers in the faith fly away into heaven by believing in these promises. How much us to whom Christ reaches us with His hands today, and He gives us His promises. Many instead are building an earthly kingdom in this land. An earthly inheritance. And we take the wrong turn. We make the same mistake that was done by Christians through the centuries past. Thinking that the kingdom of God was of this world. And we have lost the reality of the things as they are. I think especially of Catholicism. in my own country, where there is great talk about God, great crosses, great churches, cathedrals, and all sorts of things. And yet, it is a good thing to live as a Catholic, but is it a good thing to die as a Catholic? Where is your, when you face death, despite all the religion and all the practices that you may have done, is this enough to get you into heaven? Now the fathers of faith died before seeing the promises realized, and yet they embraced them. They embraced them. They hugged, in one sense, you could say, those promises in Christ. And so if this is the misery of down below, where shall we look to find our hope? It's the promised land. If it's not down here, where is it? Well, our text tells us that faith is the only way out. How did these heroes of faith die? According to faith. In faith. They continue to look ahead, behind death, to the fulfillment of these promises. In the same way they lived, so they died by faith. It is only through faith in Christ Jesus that we can come out of this slavery of sin. It is only the shield of faith that grants us to protect us from the arrows of the evil one. And only the person that is regenerated through true faith Then the blind sinner can receive his sight. Then we can look with joy even into death, the last enemy to be conquered by Christ. Because we have by grace our promised land and stored for us in heaven. Because the Son of God faced the death of death in the most terrible instrument of punishment paying for our sin and bearing God's wrath on our behalf so that me and you who should have experienced such atrocities because of our sin know through His sacrifice we have access to the throne of grace through the covenant of His blood and in Christ Jesus every promise is yes This is not something far away from you. This is before your eyes. Christ crucified for you. May this righteousness of Christ become yours at the cross through the faith. Because faith is substance of things unseen, evidence of things that you cannot see. And yet, That is the key, the way out of this misery. Now if it's already obtained, you don't have to believe it anymore. Don't you know that in heaven there will be no faith? Yes, there is no faith in heaven because we have the substance of things that we hoped for now. It is as if I can give you a pair of keys and tell you there is a beautiful mansion that will open those keys in this town. But you have to find it. A person may go and come back and say, I don't find it. I don't think it exists, but it could exist. And that's what people do. They choose for becoming agnostic or atheist. A true faith is persevering. That is the patience that is required in true faith, which is developed through tribulations, which accompanies faith, and then leads to virtue, and virtue leads to patience, and patience then leads to hope, and then you had that, and then you come to perfect love, so that you inherit these true promises of God by diligently seeking for Him. And in fact, it is exactly for the things that you lack. It is interesting how in the patriarchs and even in our life, God usually goes right there in the things that you lack the most. And He uses them. He uses your want. He uses the things that you lack to create in you a thirst for something more. For God. For a heavenly inheritance. Understanding that your home is not here below. God has not abandoned you. Understanding that you can trust in his promise. And that is the difference between true faith and presumptuous faith, where one can understand and even listen Day after day, this promise is given to us and even lean upon the church, become a member outwardly. But if you don't mix this with faith, you remain in unbelief. And there is no access to this promised land. People will be submerged by the waves of the Red Sea, like those Egyptians or like the Israelites could not enter, that whole generation could not enter into that land, into that heavenly rest. Instead, the patriarchs, just as they were, sinners saved by grace, greeted these sweet promises and greeted their sweet Savior. And in Italy, we know very well how much important these greetings are when you meet somebody and somebody that you know. And in this case, Abraham is rejoicing and greeting Christ from afar. They were not foreign to Christ. They already greeted Christ even before his incarnation. And they embraced by faith the same Savior. The same inheritance that we have in our weak vessels. The same spiritual riches by which we are blessed in heavenly places in Christ are ours and Abraham's. Because they leaned upon the merits of Jesus Christ. How much more us who are invited to grow in faith, taking hold of His promises, not just in the act of believing, but listening to His Word and spending time in prayer with Him. As the patriarch rejoiced to the sight of Christ, how can we be cold and disenchanted as we face Him Sunday by Sunday? We who live in the fullness of time, we who are so close to his kingdom, that we are aided and helped in thousands way through sacraments and through shepherds and Bibles and the fullness of the promises right before our nose. This proves that we do not rejoice at the sight of Christ as the patriarchs did. It is like we are ending down a handshake like a dead fish. And why not? Why not let trials come through my life if they help me to grow in this faith through continuous afflictions. And we go to Him and we depend upon Him because we don't rely on ourselves. And the more trials come, the more I depend upon Christ. And we bear the reproaches of Christ. And so, at the only sight of Jesus, our hands greeted Him. and we see Him before our eyes. But lastly, this text also tells us that as pilgrims in the world, believers are journeying on to their promised land. They confess, which is a central aspect of faith that we just did, confessing the Apostles' Creed. We confess to be Pilgrims and strangers, not because of some unwanted consequence of our nature, but this is a public confession of faith. It's not just accepting the fact of being pilgrim, but recognizing it before the world. There is an evangelistic aspect to this. The true believer, through his mouth and through his hands, through words and through deeds, he's showing to the people around him enemies, friends, neighbors, nations, that my identity is Jesus Christ, that my home is heaven. Calvin in his opening to the book of Psalms in commentary says, God guided me in such a way that beyond all this turning and changes, he did not allow me ever to rest in any places until despite my natural disposition, he brought me to public notoriety. You see, living a life of faith, It is not in some sort of optimistic tomorrow on earth for something of this world, but it's looking ahead to heavenly promises, and it's looking at the author and the perfecter of our faith, our only Lord and Savior, and not only as an individual, but as part of a church, as we are. This is why we confess the Apostle Creed, because we are speaking those words with people from every age, Christians from every age, that we believe in this Triune God. And Abraham confessed to the Canaanites to be a pilgrim. So his nephew Jacob, before Pharaoh, confessed to be a pilgrim and a stranger. My years are not as long as my forefathers. And how much more us, we must not be ashamed to bear this identity in Christ. And so this confession requires from us to understand that we are in the desert of this world, so to speak. We have a thirst for heaven. The Church of God is called to live this Christian life in thankfulness for these promises, instead of complaining as we are often prone to do. No, don't be tempted like Israel was in the desert. But you can avoid these mistakes if you fix your eyes upon Christ. Christ himself was tempted by the devil into the desert. Forty days for every year of our unfaithfulness, He fulfilled the law. But then they proclaim to be strangers, which are dwelling on a land that is not theirs. Visitors, in one sense, without civic rights, in a status that is inferior compared to people who are from that place. That's the definition of a stranger. People who appear to be unusual type of people before others. There's something different about them, those Christians, which are not of this world. But instead, when the life will come, the life to come, the true strangers to the presence of God will be those who rejected Jesus Christ. I never knew you and he will tell them to depart from his presence to the eternal fire while the true believer will be accepted at that gate. Like in that Pilgrim Progress of John Bunyan, that novel, he received that letter of invitation. And so, even though we are strangers, we have our heavenly passport through Jesus Christ. And so, While I stay here in America, I see a lot of patriotism, I have to say. A lot of unbelonging to this nation, and that is definitely good, but there is a heavenly patriotism that is far greater, and it will never fail us. Never. We are only tourists, and we are going through this world, our true heaven. Our true home. And also, they have this destination. These pilgrims had a destination. And their destination was the eternal rest, which is already given to us. For those who believe, they already have this eternal rest. They already look beyond that Jordan, after this life, and they looked at heavenly Jerusalem. No, I'm not saying and I'm not suggesting by what I just said that we should live as somehow going to the monasteries and do some extraterrestrial type of lifestyle. No. We are in the world but not of it. The balance is that we are in this world and we bring actually a light in this world. We have been entrusted with resources that God has given us for His kingdom, and yet We have to maintain the right balance of affection. Every time we are leaning toward too much of love of this world, then we are doing the wrong thing. And we see this as a result even in our spirituality, how we get dry and we see that we are not content. Even if we achieve much, We must almost treat everything that we own as not ours. It has been entrusted from the Father, and we must use it for His glory. And yet, what we tend to do instead is to put roots down here, being captivated by the logic of this world. And there's many seeds of the Word comes to them, but then thorns come and suffocate those seeds. by the worries of this life, by the riches, and then all the worries, and we lose sight of our true home. From being friends of God, we become friends of the world. And so we must realize that this life is transient. The only thing that they don't want us to see is the only thing that matters, and there is a death. And all the temporary blessings that we receive, we must thank the Lord, but treat them as they are not ours. Not lay treasures upon earth, but lay treasures in heaven. That should change the whole perspective we see our lives. And so, like the pilgrim must bring into his baggage only the things that are necessary for him. not to carry too much burden. I remember in the airport I had this bag and I was going through the flight and my bag did not fit in the corridor because it was too big and I was stuck. And in many ways that is what we need to avoid in our pilgrimage toward heaven. We must lay aside every burden of sin, which is hindering our race. And we must, like 1 Peter says in chapter 2 verse 11, as strangers and pilgrims, we must abstain from the fleshly lusts which assault our soul. In the pagan world that is around us. In the bombarding of social media that we experience. We must lay it aside. As long as we have the scripture. As long as we have what matters. And we focus on those things. And we focus in growing in Christ. And so let us run with perseverance and patience this race. Not going back to deadly ways of life. But understanding that our true dwelling is above. My region has been affected by an earthquake years ago. And there is a beautiful little town which is there since probably a thousand years. And yet the earthquake came and destroyed everything. All the art, all the cathedral, all things were just gone. And yet we must understand that we have a heavenly home. that will never be destroyed. And that should be our true focus. So that even if we face shame, even if we face all sort of challenges, we look and lay aside those things. And the question is, are we growing in holiness? Are we making and storing treasures for the life to come? Growing with thoughts of heaven. considering Christ, which he himself has nowhere to lay his head. And so, like in a race, we get ourselves ready. Ready to the understanding that our home is in heaven. And then we start realizing that only through the faith of Christ we can access to that land. And then we arrive after a a pilgrimage which time may be slow as we await our heavenly promised land. So, let us do this pilgrimage with perseverance, brothers and sisters, understanding that home, sweet home, is not down below. Let us march on because our true home is our heavenly home. Let us pray. Oh God, we thank you. You are the God that leads us through this journey of life. We thank you most of all, Lord Jesus, for the example set before us of those who came before us, who died without having received the fulfillment of those promises. And yet, The faith that they had as they greeted from afar our Lord Jesus Christ was enough. And we pray that we will have the same mindset, that we will use the things that you give us as steward for your glory, that we may not lose sight of where we stand and where our true home is, and that we may be, therefore, witness to the world around us that there is something different about us there are values are the things that we value and the things that we put first are your kingdom and your righteousness we ask you these things in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ amen