Hebrews 11:14

Hebrews 11:14

The Expectants.

I. One of the marks of the saints of God is their heavenward look. They are in the world, but not of the world; strangers, not citizens. Their acts, their failures, their sacrifices, their sufferings, are here,but their hearts and their treasures are above. But now, can it be that in urging this I have in reality been condemning them? In presuming to admire their upward hopes, have we in truth been branding them with selfishness? There are some who seem to think so. They urge that the dimmer the hope, the nobler the sacrifice; the more bounded the vision, the grander the energy of those who will labour while it is called today. Strange, indeed, is the revolution of thought when the dearest of blessings is stigmatised as the most perilous of tempters; and when the chief glory of faith, the sure and certain hope of immortality, is not merely discredited as a dream, but branded as a weakness from which true manhood would be proud to be exempt. Compare, it is said, the sacrifices of the Christian with the sacrifices of him who has the Christian morality, and the Christian self-denial, without being cheered or encumbered by the Christian's hope. The one devotes himself to the service of humanity, asking for nothing again; the other fixes his eyes on the glories of heaven, and calculates the overplus of future happiness which will more than compensate for present suffering. Which is the nobler? To-day we fix our eyes on the true champions of our faith, on those who have made full proof of their ministry, and have shown the world, by visible proof, what it may be to be a follower of Christ. Would they have been more disinterested, would they have been intrinsically nobler, if they had seen noheaven beyond? That upward expression, that unsatisfied air of aspiration, that expectant look as of the servant waiting for his Lord is it, as great painters have taught us to imagine, the dawn of the eternal day already irradiating the horizon, or is it, rather, the last lingering stain of a refined selfishness, all the more perilous because it is unconscious? No, my brethren; let us never be ashamed of the heavenward heart, as though it detracted from a perfect disinterestedness. Man is born for immortality; that is part of his being, the noblest part, and it cannot be selfish to crave the happiness for which we were created and designed.

H. Montagu Butler, Harrow Sermons,2nd series, p. 282.

References: Hebrews 11:15; Hebrews 11:16. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xviii., No. 1030. Hebrews 11:16. Church of England Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 289; W. M. Taylor, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 113; T. Hammond, Ibid.,vol. xxi., p. 54; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 455.Hebrews 11:17. C. Kingsley, Village Sermons,p. 99.