Faith's Grand Narrative - Hebrews 11:32-40

Scripture

• Hebrews 11:32–40

About this sermon

One of the things that we should strive to do in preaching is to let the emphasis of a particular passage be the emphasis of our sermon. When we come to the closing verses of this tremendous chapter, it is tempting to want to descend into a search for a detailed look at each of the people mentioned in the 32nd verse, namely, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David and Samuel. It should be clear to us, however, that this is not the writer’s interest. In fact, he specifically says that time does NOT PERMIT him to go into detail about each one. Certainly he assumes a knowledge of these six men. He means to prompt certain thoughts by making mention of them, but he doesn’t go into detail. So at the start of this last section we find a tension. On the one hand, he must have mentioned these men for SOME reason. He could have mentioned a whole host of others, but he mentions these. At the same time, he specifically says that he doesn’t have time to detail each of their lives, so he must have selected them to make a general point as they are considered together. And now in this final section all of these pictures are tied together. In this final section we are meant to see just how ALL ENCOMPASSING GENUINE FAITH IS.

Topics

• Faith