Faith's Triumphs and Tribulations (Hebrews 11:33-38) | Worship Service

You sought, I made the, with a, for you.

Joyful, joyful, we, heart some fold like flowers before you. Opening to the sun, depths of,.

Welcome and Congregational Singing

Welcome to Kootenai Church, we're glad that you're here today. Would you please stand as we sing All Creatures of Our God and King.

All creatures of our God and,.

You may be seated.

Announcements, we have the reformation coming up, you can register for that on the church website, and just remind you of that, and there are some brochures that are on the welcome table out there, if you'd like to hand those out to other people, or find out a little bit more about that conference.

And we have women's and men's Bible studies starting up this week, and the details for that are in your bulletin, so please pay attention to that. And a membership class on October 15th, so if you are interested in attending the membership class, there is a sign up sheet out in the foyer.

One other announcement, we had a church discipline issue about 20 years ago, as a church, and this last week we have had some progress in that issue, and so we need to have a meeting, if we can, with all of the people who were here 20 years ago for that issue, and that's only a handful of people, and so I will remind you of who it is that I'm talking about.

John and Andrea Kinney,.

Oh, by the way,.

None of these people are under church discipline, this is someone else, so this is not to discipline any of these people. John and Andrea Kinney, Tim and Tammy Shields, Jess and Marsha Wetzel, Vincent and Linda Trinidad, Mel and Tracy Jensen, and Diane Carlson.

So if you could, right after the service, meet us back in the team classroom back there, we just wanna bring you up to speed on some developments in that. Will you please turn in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews, to chapter 10, for the scripture reading.

The book of Hebrews chapter 10, and we're gonna read 32, verse 32, through the end of the chapter, and then a couple of verses in chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 32. But remember the former days when after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated.

For you showed sympathy to the prisoners, and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession, and a lasting one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. For yet in a very little while, he who is coming will come, and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith.

And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul. Chapter 11, verse one. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

In chapter 11, verse six. And without faith, it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. Will you stand with me as we pray?

Our gracious and merciful God, you are holy and majestic and great. You are great in your faithfulness, for you are faithful to your nature, to your word, to your character. We thank you that you do not change, and therefore we are not consumed.

We thank you that your purposes do not change, your promises do not change, your intentions and designs and the things that you have decreed, even from eternity past do not change. By your grace, you accomplish all that concerns us in Christ Jesus.

And by your grace, you work on behalf of those who are yours, and you are directing all of the affairs of men, all the nations of this world, all the kingdoms, and all the events in this world, even right now, and will so for all of time, to the accomplishment of your great purposes.

And so we thank you that we can trust in you, whatever our lot may be, whatever it is that you have designed for us and appointed for us, and we pray that by your grace, Lord, we would approach these things with faith, and that we would look with understanding upon your word, and we pray your blessing upon our worship.

Help us to lift our hearts, our minds, and our voices to your throne, to honor and glorify you, our great God in whom we trust. We ask these things in Christ's name.

Amen.

Father I have come to boast of thee My pride I strive to earn aside So I come and sit down and time will turn to dust Loss is gain for those who know

In 2 Corinthians 1, verses three to five, it says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

For just as the sufferings of Christ abound to us, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. We're gonna end our music service this morning by singing a new song, Jesus, I, My Cross Have Taken.

Jesus, I, my cross have taken All to leave and follow thee Destined to despise forsaken Now from hence my all shall be Perish every fond ambition I've sought for hope for how rich is my condition God and heaven are still mine The world despise and laugh my savior to Human hearts have his from men make trouble Joy unmade, something still to sight

Faith's Triumphs in Hebrews 11

Now you may be seated.

And please turn now to Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11. We're gonna begin reading at verse 32 and we'll read through the end of verse 38. Hebrews chapter 11, verse 32. And what more shall I say for time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets who by faith conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword.

From weakness were made strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection and others were tortured, not accepting their release so that they might obtain a better resurrection.

And others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword. They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated.

Men of whom the world was not worthy wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.

Let's pray together.

Our Father, we pray now for the illuminating work of your Holy Spirit that you would shine the light of truth upon our minds, that we may understand your word and upon our hearts that we may love your word and upon our wills that we may obey your word.

We pray that you would be glorified through our study and the meditation now of our hearts. We ask this in Christ's name, amen. When we read the triumphs and accomplishments of the men and women of faith in Hebrews chapter 11, there is a subtle danger that presents itself to us.

And it is the danger of responding to these examples in the wrong way. We are tempted to compare ourselves with them, but in the wrong way, in an inappropriate way. It is tempting for us to take their accomplishments and their victories and the great things that these men and women did, and to single out their singularly great accomplishments and then select some of our worst failures and then to put them side by side with one another and then say to ourselves, I can't possibly measure up to that kind of faith.

Whatever faith it is that these great men and women had, it is obviously something greater than my kind of faith, the faith that I have, because I have never put foreign armies to flight. I have never conquered kingdoms.

I have never shut the mouths of lions. I have never quenched the power of fire. I've never received the promise of a land.

In the Middle East.

I've never received the promise of a lineage or a kingdom or anything like that. So whatever faith they have must be for the upper crust, the special, super spiritual element, the 1 of humanity that has that kind of faith.

And for the rest of us, the hoi polloi, those of us sitting in the cheap seats, we just have to be content with whatever kind of faltering faith and faltering trust that the Lord might give to us. We're tempted to think and to say, I could never aspire to that.

I could never accomplish that. And we ought to be encouraged. That would be a way of being discouraged by Hebrews chapter 11, but we ought to be encouraged by this list in Hebrews chapter 11, because the purpose of these notable examples is not to discourage us in that way, but rather to encourage us.

They serve as reminders that, yes, these men and women did great and mighty things. And yes, they believed God for impossible things and inexplicable things and extraordinary things. And God granted them that grace and God did those great things for them.

But we ought to be encouraged by the reminder that they were men and women of like nature as we are, fallen sons and daughters of Adam, ruined and wrecked people who were also physically weak and spiritually weak and emotionally weak and had their own issues, their own failures, their own disabilities.

And so we are just like them. Their faith was extraordinary. God did extraordinary things through some of these men and women. But the point is not for us to be discouraged, but for us to say, yes, this is what God can do through weak men and women, weak people, who likewise have the same kind of weaknesses and inabilities that these men and women in Hebrews chapter 11 had.

So far from being just the precious possession and blessing of a special few upper crust spiritual elite in Christianity, faith is the precious possession of all those whom the Lord draws to Himself. It is the precious blessing and gem that belongs to all believers.

It is the air we breathe and it is influencing and should influence our decisions and our works, our labors, our service, our giving, our sacrifices, our love for one another, our worship, and everything that we do each and every day because whatever is not of faith is sin.

There are those two categories, those things that we do in obedience to the Word of God seeking to bring His truth to bear in our lives and live in accordance with what He has revealed and then there is sin.

Everything else is sin. So that whatever is not of faith is sin. We have quite a list of heroes that we have seen mentioned in Hebrews chapter 11 and so far we have covered the verses that name all of them by name.

We finished verse 32 last week and that was the list of people, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets. Those are the last ones that are named by name in Hebrews chapter 11 and now there remains for us in the discussion of faith in verses 33 through 38 only this list of accomplishments.

Some of these things we are familiar with, conquering kingdoms, shutting the mouths of lions, quenching the power of fire. Some of these things we are not as familiar with. We don't know exactly who it is that the author has in mind specifically for each one of these things but he is listing here things without much comment because he is aware that he could go on and on and run out of paper and patience before he exhausts the examples of faith that he could give to this first century believing community.

So the point herein and herein lies the encouragement that by faith you and I join ourselves to this list, to this company of people. It is by faith that we are willing to bear faith's reproach and thus it is by faith that we will receive faith's reward.

If we with them bear faith's reproach then we with these men and women will gain faith's reward. And so we are joined to this group in Hebrews chapter 11 by virtue of a like precious faith that God gave to them even if what God does through our lives is not as history altering as what he does through the lives of the people who are mentioned in Hebrews chapter 11.

So we read here before we started verses 33 through 38 and I'm gonna handle this list in the same way or similarly to it that I did to the list last week in verse 32 of the people. I don't think that the point of the author is to be gleaned in an exhaustive deep dive into each one of these things that these people accomplished or did by faith but rather from the list itself.

And so we are going to in keeping with our pattern we're gonna have kind of a high flying overview as it were through verses 33 through 38. I want you to notice that there are two statements in the list that are parenthetical statements.

They're kind of explanatory statements that the author gives as he's listing these things. The first is in verse 35. Women received back their dead by resurrection. That's something that they did by faith but look at the parenthetical description and others were tortured not accepting their release so that they might obtain a better resurrection.

A sort of a parenthetical explanation. There's another one down in verse 38. Men of whom the world is not worthy. It seems like parenthetically inserted into this list each one of them does. So here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna go through the list today and then next week we're just gonna take those two statements that they may obtain a better resurrection and they are men and women of whom the world is not worthy.

And I have no idea what the outline is going to be but we're gonna pull those two from out of this list and we're just going to look at the significance and what we learn from each of those two parenthetical phrases.

But now we turn our attention to the list and we see here that the list is easily divided up into two sections or two different kind of groupings of things. First you have in verses 33 through 34, actually 35a, the role of faith or the work of faith in effecting great triumphs.

And then in verses 35b and following all the way through the end of verse 38 you see the work of faith in enduring great tribulations. Effecting great triumphs and enduring great tribulations. So let's look at first at this list of great triumphs beginning in verse 32.

You'll notice the phrase who by faith. That connects the list that he's about to give generally speaking or in a very loose way back to verse 32 where you have this list of men because it is the continuation of the sentence that begins in verse 32.

You have Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets. Generally this list and there are others that we could put into that list. Elijah and Elisha and others like that. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Jonah, Joel.

All of those great men of the Old Testament. You could put more kind of like minded similar men into that list. Who these men and others that are like them did these things and other things like them.

So he's simply describing generically the kind of men he's talking about and then generically the kind of things that they did or endured by faith. So some of these men in verses 32 through 33 and others who are like them did more than a couple of things that are listed on the list.

Some of these men, some of the things on the list describe more than just one man. So there's not a one-to-one correspondence between the list of men and the list of accomplishments or triumphs but it is rather a loose connection.

These men and men like them accomplished these kind of things and things like them by faith.

That's the idea.

So let's look now at the list. The purpose is to show the power of God and the value of trusting and walking in obedience to him. First up, they conquered kingdoms. This is something that could be affirmed of all the judges in Israel's history.

It could be affirmed, of course, of David and in some sense, Samuel, who himself also led the nation over certain military triumphs. There are many times in Israel's history when God would raise up a deliverer, a king, a judge, somebody unique who would lead against an army of people who were oppressing them or oppressing them or taking things from them and ruling them.

So that phrase, conquered kingdoms, would apply to more than just the men on that list, certainly, and it would apply to a number of men on that list. Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David. Second, performed acts of righteousness.

Now, this does not mean that they were inherently righteous nor that these men were perfect in their righteousness. Remember, we closed last week by observing that these were men, in many cases, who were marked by grievous failure, morally speaking.

Samson and David had moral blights upon their character and their record. So it doesn't mean that these men always did righteousness, but rather that they did, in spite of their flaws, do righteous things.

David ruled the people righteously. 2 Samuel 8, verse 15, David reigned over all Israel and David administered justice and righteousness for all the people. Generally speaking, writ large, the story of David's life is, is yes, he had a moral failure, but when you consider everything, he ruled the people in justice and righteousness.

He was a godly man who was after God's own heart. He did righteous things. So generally speaking, we can say that these men, in obedience to the Word of God, in righteousness, mortified sin, denied themselves, served others, acted in righteousness, in obedience to the Word of God, and they were driven and motivated by their faith.

Third, they obtained promises. That's the third thing on the list. They obtained promises. Now, some vaguely imagine that there's a contradiction in this list, and in fact, a contradiction in Hebrews 11 itself.

I want you to look back at verse 13. All these died in faith without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

Then Hebrews 11, 33, which we just read, says, who by faith obtained promises. And then look down at verse 39. All these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised because God had provided something better for us.

So apart from us, they would not be made perfect. So verse 13, they died without receiving the promises. Verse 33, they obtained promises. Verse 39, they did not receive what was promised. So did they obtain the promise or not?

Is the author schizophrenic here? Does he forget what he wrote in one verse? Some vainly imagine a contradiction there because it's really not a contradiction. It depends on what you mean by obtaining promises, and it depends on what you mean by which promises we're talking about, doesn't it?

Just take Abraham, for instance. Was Abraham promised things? He promised a lot of things. He promised a land that he never possessed in his lifetime and a son that he did see in his lifetime, right? So would you say that Abraham received the promises or not?

Well, you'd say, yeah, he did receive the promise of a son, but there are other promises that he did not receive in his lifetime. David was promised a kingdom. Did God give him the kingdom?

He did.

David was also promised a son who would sit on the throne of that kingdom and rule and reign over the house of David forever and ever. Did David ever in his life see that son? He did not. That was the greater son of David, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Gideon was promised that if he obeyed the Lord, that he would defeat Midian with 300 men. Did he receive that promise?

He did.

See, you and I have been promised a whole lot of things, some of which we receive in this life. Forgiveness of sins, a measure of sanctification, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, illumination from the Word of God.

There are all kinds of things that we could list that you and I receive in this life. Adoption of sons, justification, but there are things that we, promises that we do not receive in this life like our ultimate glorification and our ultimate sanctification and seeing the Lord's faith and inheriting that kingdom that is promised in the Old Testament.

So there are things that are promised to us that we do not receive. There are things that are promised to us that we do receive. And the point of Hebrews chapter 11 is that some of these men received the things in their lifetime that they were promised and they received them in their lifetime.

And some of these men were promised things that we still have not seen realized even today. We have not seen them realized. And yet they died in faith having not received the promise. Other men received everything that they were promised in this life that God specifically promised them.

Fourth, they shut the mouths of lions. Who does that refer to? Of course, instantly we think of Daniel, don't we? But David killed a lion, and Samson killed a lion. So in a sense, David and Samson also shut the mouths of lions, but Daniel believed and had faith and the lion's mouths were shut because he just trusted in God's sovereignty.

Number five, they quenched the power of fire. Since we're talking about Daniel, who would that refer to? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Notice it says that they quenched the power of fire and it doesn't say that they quenched the fire because they endured the fire, didn't they?

But what they were delivered from was the effect or the power of the fire. Fire's power is the power to consume, the power to burn, the power to destroy what is there. They quenched the power of the fire though they stood in the midst of the flames themselves.

And don't forget, remember if you will, their statement of faith in Daniel chapter three, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not give you an answer, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter.

If it be so, God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if he does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods and worship the golden image that you have set up.

That is an amazing statement of faith. For that one statement, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego deserve to be on this list name by name. Our God is able to deliver us from you, O king, and he will deliver us one way or another.

He will either take us out of the power of the fire and deliver us safely through the fiery furnace or he will allow us to be consumed in the flames and to die, in which case he will deliver us out of your hand and into his own.

It's an amazing statement of faith. But Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said, no matter what it is, whether it is that I face a supernatural triumph or the tragedy of death in a fiery furnace, whichever way this falls out according to the plan of God, we are not gonna bow down and serve your golden image.

We are going to remain faithful and obedient and we will leave it into the hands of God to sovereignly dispose of us however he might see fit. That is an amazing statement of faith. They quench the power of fire.

Number six, they escape the edge of the sword. Through various, at times, through various national and military victories, Israel and those who led Israel escaped the edge of the sword. Individuals escaped execution or enemy threats at times.

We could say that this is true of Elijah and Elisha and Jeremiah and Isaiah, all of them, all of whom had narrow encounters with death and just by faith and by the grace of God escaped execution. From weakness, they were made strong.

It's hard not to see multiple ways in which this is true of various characters in the Old Testament. Of course, Samson lost his strength because of his foolishness and then he regained his strength because of his faith.

So in a very real and physical sense, Samson was made strong even after he had been weak. David was just a shepherd boy whom God used to defeat a giant, Goliath. That's a way of being made strong after being weak.

Gideon, remember, was the least in his father's household, a poor household at that. He was the least of his brethren, yet he became a leader in the nation of Israel. Number eight, they became mighty in war and put foreign armies to flight.

This would describe military victories, great deliverances and accomplishments in Israel's history. It's one of continual oppression by enemies and so there are a lot of opportunities you read through the Old Testament to see times in which men rose up and became mighty in war and put foreign armies to flight.

Number nine, women received back their dead by resurrection. There are specifically two instances of this in the Old Testament. And by the way, since I'm talking about women, I need to make a clarification, something I said last week.

I don't mind being disliked for something I believe, but I don't want to be disliked in a way in which I'm misunderstood. To clarify, I mentioned last week about women ruling men and leading in positions and everything.

I just want to clarify, I have no problem with women leading where God allows women to lead. I do have a problem with women leading where God prohibits women from leading and where men should be leading.

In instances where that happens, it is always the case that men are weak and cowardly, apathetic, and spiritually negligent and indolent. So that should make that clear.

Where were we?

Yes, women received back their dead by resurrection. They received back their dead by resurrection. There are two instances of this in the Old Testament. The widow of Zarephath received a child back from resurrection under Elijah, and then Elisha raised the Shunammite woman's son from the dead.

So there are two instances in the Old Testament. You'll notice that the next phrase, others were tortured not accepting their release so that they might obtain a better resurrection. There is a contrast here between that resurrection and a better resurrection.

So that is the triumphs of faith, effecting great triumphs. Now look in verses 35 through 38 of enduring great tribulations by faith. Verse 35, women received back their dead by resurrection and others were tortured not accepting their release so that they might obtain a better resurrection.

Now you kind of feel like the tone has changed a little bit in the chapter, don't you? From these great triumphs to now these great tribulations and trials, and the rest of this list, all the way through the end of verse 38, is the list of trials and tribulations that the righteous in every age have had to face and endure.

But in the middle of verse 35, you feel like we've just taken a hard right turn somewhere. The tone has changed, we have flipped around, gone 180 degrees the other direction. We read of shutting the mouths of lions and we think, yeah, that's right, shut the mouths of lions, conquer kingdoms, put foreign armies to flight, from weakness are made strong.

That's where we're at, that's what we want. And others were tortured. Yeah, wait, hold on, wait, tortured? How did we get to torturing? We were talking about putting foreign armies to flight, overthrowing kingdoms, great deliverances and triumphs, and now suddenly we're talking about being tortured and stoned and sawn in two and tempted and burned and dying by the edge of the sword.

The tone of this has radically changed. The being tortured is something that can only be endured if you have hope in a better resurrection. And now the question, and we're gonna look at that phrase again next week in more detail.

The question is, what instance does the author in Hebrews 11 have in mind when he describes being tortured and not accepting their release because they had hope in a better resurrection? There really is no clear example from the Old Testament of what the author might have in mind, so it is likely not an Old Testament example.

Instead, it is likely that he had in mind an example which would have been familiar to all of the Jews because it was a matter of their most recent, relatively speaking, recent history. It comes, most people think, and I would agree with this, it comes from an incident that had happened between the Testaments, the intertestamental period, between the completion of events of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament.

There's 400 years in there called the 400, we refer to them as the 400 silent years, years in which God gave no divine revelation. But they are not years in which no books were written. There are a number of books that were written, we refer to them as, some of them, as the Apocrypha.

And they do tell Israel's history, sometimes accurately, sometimes fancifully, and they're not regarded as scripture by the Jews, the Apocrypha, they're not regarded as scripture by the Jews, they were not regarded as scripture by the disciples of the Lord, or by the Lord, or by the early church, or by any Christian until about the 16th century, when the Roman Catholic Church decided to refer to them as scripture so that they had something to argue with this up-and-coming monk named Martin Luther.

They needed a way of answering his arguments, and so they said, well, they grabbed these books and said, well, these are scripture, too, so you can't say scripture doesn't teach what we teach, because here we have some stuff in these books that we can say teach this.

So the Apocrypha, those books written during that intertestamental period, there's an incident from 2 Maccabees, chapters six and seven, where the very same word, torture, is used of an incident, and I'm not gonna go into graphic detail about this.

But under persecution, during the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, and if you were here for Sunday school, you learned a little bit about Antiochus Epiphanes this morning. The Jews were forced to renounce their allegiance to their God, and one of the ways that Antiochus Epiphanes tried to force the Jews to apostatize and to renounce their allegiance to Yahweh was to force-feed them swine's flesh.

Now, that might sound like a nice Sunday afternoon to you and I, but that was for the Jews who were adhering to the word of God and the Old Testament dietary laws. That was not something that was appealing at all.

And so many of them would refuse to eat swine's flesh and remain faithful to God, even under threat of death. This incident was well-known to Israel, to the first century Jews, because it was a matter of their recent history in terms of within the last couple of hundred years.

It would have been as well-known to them, and they would have been as familiar with this as we are with George Washington crossing the Delaware River or the heroic actions of Paul Revere. The readers would have known this.

There's a story of a mother with seven sons, all of whom died rather than disobey God by eating swine's flesh. And the confessions of these seven sons are recorded in 2 Maccabees. Here's one example of it.

2 Maccabees 7 verse 9. Now, listen to the confession of this son regarding a future resurrection. And when he was at the last gasp, he said, thou miscreant. That's a good word that we should use more often, by the way, for children.

Consider it a word you should put in to employ with your children. Thou miscreant dost release us out of this present life, but the king of the world shall raise us up who have died for his laws unto an eternal renewal of life.

Do you hear what they're saying? We have hope in a resurrection, and therefore, put us to death because we will not turn away from the truth, and we would rather face death because we believe that the king of all the world will raise us up to eternal life.

2 Maccabees 7 verse 14. And being come near unto death, he said thus, it is good to die at the hands of men and to look for the hopes which are given by God that we shall be raised up again by him for as for thee, thou shalt have no resurrection to life.

Close quote.

So that was the confession. It's good to be put to death by men, knowing that the king of the world will raise us up to eternal life, and thou miscreant will not be raised up to everlasting life. That was the confession.

These men were tortured. They could have secured their release if they just apostatized from the faith. If they just ate swine's flesh and disobeyed the word of God and the law of God, they could have secured their own release.

But instead of doing that, they were faithful unto the end because they were looking forward to a better resurrection. Second on this list of horrible things is mocking and scourgings. This was the common response to the prophets in the Old Testament.

Elijah and Elisha were mocked. Jeremiah was beaten, thrown into prison, thrown into a cistern. Chains and imprisonments. Joseph was thrown into prison for his righteous conduct. Micaiah refused to cater his message to the king.

Do you remember that? So he was put into prison. And Scripture records that the king said to him, feed him with bread and water until I return safely. And that king did not return safely. So either somebody recognized that the king was foolish and let Micaiah go, or Micaiah died in prison eating bread and water because that king never did return safe.

Jeremiah was thrown down into a cistern. This idea of being imprisoned and chained for your faith was something that would have been very meaningful to the Hebrew audience. We read back in chapter 10, verse 34, for you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession than the lasting ones.

This is a comfort. Some of the people reading this letter to the Hebrews, they knew people who had been thrown in prison. They had friends, they had family members, they had fellow church members who at that very time were suffering in prison, being in prison simply because of their faith.

And here's the reminder in Hebrews chapter 11 that some people by faith are in prison. Some people by faith are in prison. Some were stoned. Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, was stoned in the temple. 2 Chronicles chapter 24 says this.

The Spirit of God came upon Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, the priest, and he stood above the people and said to them, thus God has said, why do you transgress the commandment of the Lord and do not prosper?