The second trio lists some of the forms of personal deliverances that they experienced: "who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of flames, and escaped the edge of the sword" [vv. 33b, 34a]. Samson, David and Beniah all shut the mouth of lions through physical force. Samson, barehanded, took a charging lion by the jaws and ripped it apart. David grabbed a sheep-stealing lion by the beard and thrust it through. Beniah descended into a pit on a snowy day and dispatched another king of the beasts. But Daniel is the preeminent example, through his faith and prayer [Daniel 6:17, 22]. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego trusted God, and thus cooly conversed in a blazing furnace while the awe-struck king looked on [Daniel 3:24-27]. King David, as well as the prophets Elijah and Elisha, escaped the sword, as did many others [1 Samuel 18:10; 1 Kings 19:8-10; 2 Kings 6:31, 32; Psalm 144:10].
The third triad tells about the astounding power that came by faith "whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again" [vv. 34b-35a]. Elijah stretched himself out three times on the dead form of the son of the widow of Zarephath and cried to God for his life -- and then carried the child alive down to his grieving mother [1 Kings 17:17-24]. Elisha, his understudy, accomplished a similar feat for the Shunammite woman's son -- "mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands ... the boy's body grew warm" [2 Kings 4:34].
Three triads -- nine empowerments -- what power comes through faith! This, again, was important for the fledging church to know and believe under the darkening skies Nero's impending genocide. Clearly, God delights to effect mighty triumphs through His people of faith. It is faith that pleases God [and really nothing else ... for anything not done through faith is ultimately sin] ... and faith empowers that empowers His people. God can deliver the faithful anytime He wants from anything! Noah's family was delivered from a flood that drowned the all the rest of humanity. Moses and Israel walked through the Red Sea. Joshua and Israel crossed the flooded Jordan. Rahab survived the fallen walls. Gideon prevailed while outmanned a thousand to one. God can deliver us triumphantly from anything if He so pleases -- sickness, professional injustice, domestic woe, the growing oppression of a neo-pagan culture -- whatever, whenever! And He will do it again, and again. But remember, it is always "by faith" in His Word!
But the parallel truth glares out as well, God has not promised wholesale deliverance in this life for His people at all times and in every situation. Not all of us will be "winners" in this life. From the world's perspective some people of faith are huge "losers." To balance the record, the writer of Hebrews changes the emphasis as he completes his chapter by showing that faith also provides a different empowerment -- the power to persevere to the end. "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" [vv. 35, 36].
R. Kent Hughes asserts that the apparent reference here is to the Maccabean persecution because "the word for tortured has etymological reference to the tympanum, a large drum or wheel on which Maccabean victims were stretched and beaten or even dismembered. 2 Maccabees details the gruesome torture of a 90 year-old priest, Eleazar, who refused to eat swine's flesh [6:18-31], and then goes on to recount the even more revolting accounts of systemic torture of seven brothers for the same reason [7:1-42]." Each of them could have been released if they had compromised, but each categorically refused -- the reason being, as our text explains, "so that they might gain a better resurrection" [v. 35b]. Better? How can one resurrection be better than another? The answer lies in that it is a "better resurrection" because it is a resurrection not just back to life on this earth, as happened to the women's sons mentioned above, but a resurrection to everlasting life in the world to come. Significantly, the Maccabean accounts of the torture of the seven brothers carry the words of heroic encouragement by their mother based on her hope of the resurrection: "I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in His mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of His laws" [2 Maccabees 7:22, 23].
The writer now moves on to explicitly remind his little church that some of the faithful persevered even to death: "They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword" [v. 37a]. Since stones are plentiful in Palestine, they were often the murderous weapons of choice against the prophets. It was none other than Jesus who mourned this fact, when He cried out: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often have I longed to gather your children together" [Matthew 23:37]. There is an extra-biblical account that asserts the prophet Isaiah was sawn in two by the false prophets of Manasseh, who stood by "laughing and rejoicing," and that "he neither cried aloud nor wept, but his lips spake with the Holy Spirit until he was sawn in twain" [Ascension of Isaiah 5:1, 2, 14 as quoted by R. H. Charles]. And, of course, untold numbers of the faithful were slain in a more conventional manner, by the sword. So we see that although some "escaped the edge of the sword" through faith [v. 34], others, equally faithful, suffered its pain. But through faith they persevered to death whether stoned or sawed or stabbed. What power!
Lastly, there were those of the faithful who knew deprivation: "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" [vv. 37b, 38]. The calculated irony here is that the world has rejected such people, and yet the world does not deserve to have them even if were to accept them! Also this verse skewers what we today call the "prosperity gospel!" Here saints who are so holy and so full of faith that the world is not worthy to contain them, and yet they are called to persevere in persecution, deprivation and death. Not only that, but the reason they are able to persevere IS their great faith! Christians under the oppressive old paganism of Roman culture were to take note, and so must we in the growing neo-pagan darkness of our day.
Now, what was the outcome for those who were faithful in persecution, deprivation and even death? Amazingly, it was and is the same for those who experienced great public triumphs in their lives [the Noahs, Moseses and Gideons]. First, they were "all commended for their faith" [v. 39a]. Recall that this is how the chapter begins -- "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for" [vv. 1, 2] -- and this is how it ends. All the faithful [the known and the unknown, the famously triumphant and those who anonymously persevered in suffering] were "commended for their faith." God forgets no one who loves and serves Him! It is His great pleasure to commend their faith!
The second result is that "none" -- that is, none of the great triumphant members of the Hall of Faith or those who persevered without earthly triumphs -- "none of them received what had been promised" [v. 39b]. Although many promises had been given and fulfilled in their lifetimes, they did not receive the great promise -- namely, the coming of the Messiah and salvation in Him. Every one of the faithful [sans Enoch and Elijah] in Old Testament times died before Jesus appeared. They entered Heaven with the promise unfulfilled. Why? "God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect" [v. 40]. No one was "made perfect" under the Old Covenant, because Christ had not yet died. They were saved, but not until Jesus' work on the cross was complete could salvation be perfect. Their salvation looked ahead to what Christ would do. Ours looks back to what He has done -- and ours is perfect.
All the faithful through all the ages are made perfect in Christ. We are all in this together -- from Abel to Rahab -- from Paul to us. And the message to the embattled little church, and to us is: how great our advantage! Right here, while we walk this earth, we have the perfection of Christ available to us. And it is so much better under the New Covenant than it ever was under the Old. We now have a high priest who has offered a perfect sacrifice for our sins once and for all. Our Saviour and our Priest sits at the right hand of the Father and prays for us! We have, then, a better hope! How much easier then is it for us to walk in faith -- even if we must walk down the shadowy roads of a neo-pagan, post-modern culture. We must not succumb to the delusion that a gentle rain and perpetual sunshine will continue to fall on the church in America as the culture continues to sink into the morass of post-modern relativism and neo-paganism. What foolishness! How ahistorical. What ego! What hubris to imagine that the church will continue to sail untouched through the bloody seas of history. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear God's steeling Word through the saints of old!
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