The Thursday after Sexagesima Sunday
Posted on February 27, 2025 by under
Scripture: Hebrews 11:32-40 (NKJV)
11:32 And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: 33 who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 35 Women received their dead raised to life again.
Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. 36 Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented—38 of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth.
39 And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, 40 God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.
Devotion
“And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise…”
The letter to the Hebrews is encouraging converted Jews not to forsake the holy Christian Faith. In this section, the writer is explaining to his readers that in the Old Testament people were saved not by works or all the sacrifices, but by faith alone; faith in the promises of God. They died with those promises unfulfilled, because Jesus is the fulfillment of all the promises.
Nevertheless, they trusted God’s promises, and so they died in a state of saving faith. And they are now used as examples to those who have come to faith in the New Testament. What those people faithfully longed for and trusted in, we have! Christ has come! And so we are encouraged to take to heart the example of the faithful men and women of the Old Testament, and trust. We are to trust that, as Christ has come in fulfillment of God’s promises, so too Christ will come again in glory, and we will receive the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.
They had less, but they stood fast. We now have more. Therefore, may God grant us grace, through their example and the example of many saints down through the ages, to stand fast our whole life in the confidence that God will deliver on everything He has promised in Christ.
Collect: O Lord God, Who seest that we put not our trust in anything that we do: Mercifully grant that by Thy power we may be defended against all adversity; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
