Monday, September 4, 2006
By Faith... Abraham - Part II, Part 5 of 79
TEXT: "By faith [Abraham] dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise . . . they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth" (Hebrews 11:9, 13b).
IDEA: We are strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
PURPOSE: To help listeners realize that while we're in the world, we're not of it.
What is it like to visit a foreign country?
What is it like to live in a foreign country?
I. Christians are called citizens of another realm with strong implications that we are strangers and pilgrims where we are now. What does that look like?
We can see in the life of Abraham what that could consist of.
Hebrews 11:9 and 13 speak of dwelling in a foreign land as "strangers and pilgrims."
What does the writer mean by "strangers" (xenoi)? In the ancient world the stranger was regarded with hatred, suspicion, contempt.
Centuries later in Sparta, the word stranger was equivalent to barbarian, and it's still the same today.
What does he mean by "sojourner" (paroikein)?
This same term was used of the Jews when they were captives in Egypt and later in Babylon. A sojourner was not much above slaves in the social scale.
A sojourner had to pay an alien tax, a kind of license. He was always an outsider.
To dwell in a foreign land was more humiliating then than it is now. A stigma is attached.
In a Letter to Aristeas, the writer said, "It is a fine thing to live and die in one's native land; a foreign land brings contempt to poor men and shame to rich men, for there is a lurking suspicion that they have been exiled for the evil they have done."
In ancient days the bitterness of humiliation was added to the natural unhappiness of being in a foreign land.
When people live in a foreign land and feel as if they are strangers and pilgrims, what do they want to do?
They want to go back home.
But the point that the writer in Hebrews 11 makes is that their home was not back in Ur of Chaldees. It was one that God promised them.
II. For Christians, being a stranger or a pilgrim pictures the Christian life.
We take seriously the fact that we're on our way to someplace else.
The world is a bridge: a wise person will pass over but will not build his house on it.
