THE WORLD WAS NOT WORTHY OF THEM

Hebrews 11:32-40

Key Verse 11:38a

The world was not worthy of them.

Today, we would like to think about the last portion of the faith chapter (Hebrews 11) with the title, “The World Was Not Worthy of Them.” In reading this passage we see that there is an element of suddenness in facing the remark, “The world was not worthy of them.” As we read the passage this statement suddenly hits us unexpectedly, for the writer of Hebrews has been describing the heroic acts of the heroes of faith, and then all of a sudden says, “The world was not worthy of them.” Then he continues on with what he has been saying.  

“The world was not worthy of them.” The heroes of faith described in the passage were too good for the world to have them. So the Lord God prepared something better for them. In the eyes of unbelievers, they must have looked like a bunch of losers. But they were not so to God.  In God’s eyes, these people stood out and above the multitude of people who bury their noses in what the world has to offer.  They were of such fine quality that the Lord decided to richly reward them with the special gift which is compatible with their quality. Certainly, to God these heroes of faith were like stars in the sky. 

What made them so valuable in God’s eyes? The answer is their faith in the Lord. Let us think about the passage with three questions in mind.  First, who are they?  Second, what enabled them to fulfill what they achieved? And third, and how did the Lord reward them? 

First, who are they? 

Were they born heroes? Surprisingly, the answer is no. Look at v. 33a. “And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets….” 

These people were not special. They were a bunch of ordinary people. In fact, they had many weaknesses, perhaps more weaknesses than average people of their own generation. When we think about each of them, we quickly find that each of them had their own weaknesses. Gideon was a very fearful man. He was a man of all kinds of fears. He was afraid of so many small harms or dangers. Barak was a man without a backbone. He said to Deborah the prophetess, “Unless you go to the battlefield together with me, I won’t go.” Samson had a lust problem. Jephthah made the excuse, “Well, my family background is not that good, so please leave me alone.” David was the youngest son of the eight sons of Jesse. Samuel was only a baby when he was called to serve the Lord as a preacher. 

Their examples open our eyes to the way to see ourselves, particularly our weaknesses. In the first place, we should not feel fatalistic about our weaknesses. In the second place, we should not try to hide our weaknesses. Rather, we must bring them to the Lord for his help. In the third place, we should not use our weaknesses to excuse ourselves and run away from God’s call to service. Rather, we must say, “I am the weak, but the Lord is strong.” Then we say, “I can do nothing, but the Lord can do everything.” Then we must go by what the Apostle Paul said: “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).

The other day, in order to develop summer programs for JBF and HBF members, several of us went on a hiking trip to a place called Santa Paula Creek. As we got into the area called Santa Paula, I was reminded of St. Paul, for Santa Paula means St. Paul. In addition, right before the trail began there was the St. Thomas Aquinas College campus. This campus was nestled in such a quiet, cozy environment that we felt like staying there for good. Dr. Abraham Jeong then suggested that we better have a Bible conference there. I thought that it was a good idea. Then as I remembered what Paul said—“I can do everything through him who gives me strength”—faith arose in me that we can even pray to build a UBF disciple training center in a place like the St. Thomas Aquinas College campus! 

Second, what enabled them to conquer the world? 

At Downey UBF there are many talented people. I could see this to be the case from watching the play He Has Risen. Remember the play we saw at the Sheraton Hotel in Cerritos last spring? We have talented people gifted in all different areas – music, art, literature, science, acting, and much more. But to be gifted is one thing; to have faith is another. When talents meet faith, miracles happen. 

It was the same with the heroes of faith of the past. Despite their weaknesses, because they had faith in the Lord, the Lord fanned into flame the gift of God (2 Timothy 1:6). All of a sudden, heroes were born; they fulfilled heroic deeds.  

Sadly, however, many say, “Oh well, we are living in a generation where heroes are dead.” They also say, “The generation of heroes is gone; the generation of small citizens is come.” But this is not the case with those who have faith in the Lord. Why? It is became for those who believe in the Lord, the Lord is their true hero, and yes, more than a hero, for the Lord is the maker of all heroes—heroes of the past, heroes of the present, and heroes of the future.

The Bible is not for one special race or one specific group of people or civilization or people of one generation, but it is the book for all humanity. It is the manual of life for all peoples. It is to be read and followed by all. Precisely for this very reason the language of the Bible is framed in such a way that all could read it and be inspired by it. In the passage as well, we see the writer of Hebrews describing in abstract categories the heroic deeds which the heroes of faith accomplished, for each category of these deeds is exclusive in contents, and is loaded up with limitless possibilities. The categories are: 

1) Conquering kingdoms;

2) Administering justice; 

3) Gaining what was promised;

4) Shutting the mouths of lion;

5) Quenching the fury of the flames; 

6) Escaping the edge of the word;

7) Turning one’s weakness into strength; and

8) Becoming powerful in battle and routing foreign armies. 

The scope of the possibilities in each category is as vast as the universe. Consider the possibilities envisaged in the first category “Conquering kingdoms.” The word “kingdom” itself represents a huge category. A kingdom comes with towns and villages, cities and states. It consists of a vast number of people and systems; systems come with walls and roads, buildings and markets. It comes with armies and tanks. And we have it in the plural “kingdoms.” Kingdoms include not only political kingdoms but intellectual kingdoms, indicating that as we pray, God would produce prominent scholars, thinkers, and scientists in the fields of the arts and sciences. 

In addition, each campus can be compared to a kingdom, and each person is born with God-given potentials. God created each person in his image. This means that each person is born with the potential to become like God and function like God. Man is not God. But man can grow to be and function like God. God is the King of universe. He is the true King of kings, and every one of us is born with his image, the image of the King of the universe. So is it strange, or too much to say, that by faith you too can and should conquer not just a kingdom but kingdoms? No. Never. 

One day, one missionary I respect shared a prayer topic with me to establish 500 USC students as disciples. He then built his vision into his e-mail address. He has his name, then the number 500, then the @ sign, and then yahoo dot com. By any account, to establish a disciple out of a volatile college student is more difficult than to conquer a political kingdom. We know that a man named Augustus Caesar conquered an empire. But he did not make a disciple. In fact, with military power and political abilities, George W. Bush was able to conquer the kingdom of Saddam Hussein. But I have not heard yet that he made a disciple out of students at Baghdad State University in Iraq. But this one missionary has the vision to establish 500 disciples. When you think about it, building one disciple is in the will of God – it is God’s purpose, for Jesus commanded us to make disciples of all nations. 

Let us think about the remaining categories – administering justice, gaining what was promised, shutting the mouths of lion, quenching the fury of the flames, escaping the edge of the sword, turning one’s weakness into strength, and becoming powerful in battle and routing foreign armies. Each category contains limitless possibilities. Of course these are just possibilities. They are not realities. Each possibility comes with its own challenges. For example, gaining what is promised sounds good, but it also comes with challenges. Please consider how much Abraham had to struggle to live by faith in God’s promise until he was able to receive a son. He received Isaac after a long period of living by faith – twenty five long years. Nowadays everyone wants to get everything quick. I have also developed this habit. Because of the general tendency of people to want everything now, people, especially newly emerging generations, find it really difficult to wait. This is true especially for waiting for a marriage partner. The other day, one prominent journalist shared on a talk show program that an increasing trend in this nation is that 80 percent of kids aged 18 have no college degrees, no job skills (and therefore no jobs), so far not so bad, but a majority of them have kids themselves, and of course lots of credit card debt. They are adult kids with no income and no character to support their kids. Increasingly, kids are having kids. And what will happen to the kids that are born to the kids who don’t know how to take care of their kids? My point is that by faith Abraham overcame the test of time. He waited for 25 long years, and then he gained what had been promised.

Look at v. 35a. “Women received back their dead, raised to life again.” This passage refers to the two miracles recorded in 1 Kings 17:1-24 and in 2 Kings 4:8-37 in the Old Testament Scriptures. The first woman who received her dead back to life was a widow at Zarephath. It was the Prophet Elijah who performed the miracle. This widow got her son back thanks to her faith in the Lord. But to her, the challenge to live by faith did not come as a mere intellectual exercise. The challenge to live by faith came to her with the Lord’s request to first feed God’s servant and then herself and her son. To understand what I mean, let us all read 1 Kings 17:12-16. Then when her son died, with the same faith she asked the Prophet Elijah for help. Elijah then came and raised her son back to life. 

This miracle took place again, that is, under the ministry of the Prophet Elisha, the disciple of Elijah. The woman involved the second time was the Shunammite. She too had the faith to open a guest house for God’s servant to stay and find rest and comfort. Let us read 2 Kings 4:8-10. Here a small room on the roof means a penthouse with the best view and ventilation. No doubt this room had a 360-degree view, and the environment must have been perfect for meditation. Being a materially rich woman, she could have become materialistic. But she did not. She knew what it is to honor God with money. Had she lived in Downey, she would have opened the best part of her house as a place for young disciples’ to live together. Blessing her faith, the Lord helped her to experience the power of resurrection by raising her dead son back to life again! 

In vs. 35b-38, we see another batch of heroic deeds performed by heroes of faith. “Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated – the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. “

We can sum up their heroic acts with one word: endurance. They endured hardships. To believe in Jesus and follow Jesus to the end is not an easy thing. It comes with lots of difficulties. This is true with young college students. It is even more so with high school students. The peer pressure is tremendous. If you do not have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, you are considered abnormal. If you keep your virginity and refuse to have premarital sex you are considered an ape with only one eye living among apes with two eyes, so to speak. The question then is, “How can a young man keep himself pure?” The answer is obvious. It is only by faith in the Lord. But to recite the phrase “by faith” is far easier than to actually live by faith. But we do not lose heart. Why? There are heroes of faith who endured hardships. And certainly their hardships were not just physical but also spiritual.

Third, how did the Lord reward them?  

Faith is not an empty proposition with no results. It comes with a lasting reward. What kind of reward is it? Look at vs. 39-40. “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.” The reward for them was God’s approval of their faith. In God’s school of faith called “life” they graduated with an A+. 

Strangely, though, we are told that none of them received what had been promised. What does this mean? In view of the generality of the promises recorded in the Bible, we can say that “what had been promised” or “something better” refers to Jesus Christ, who is the best gift we can expect to receive from God. The heroes of the past in the Old Testament period longed for the day of the Messiah to come. But they all died without seeing it. They saw this promise from a distance. But we are lucky, for we already know that the Savior Jesus did come. In this way, the Lord God planned to make both them and us perfect at the same time, celebrating the perfect redemption in one big family celebration. 

In conclusion, we learn that like the heroes of faith described in the passage, by faith we too can overcome ourselves (particularly our many weaknesses) and the world. We then can meet the challenges of our own generation. By faith we can fully serve the Lord, bearing fruit that lasts forever. And in Jesus, who is truly good to us all, filling all of our needs for life, we have already received all the reward, although the true nature of the blessedness of this reward, that is, Jesus Christ, and all the blessings that are to come and be fulfilled in our lives through him is to be revealed in the days to come. 

One Word: The world was not worthy of them 

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