Boys and girls, we cannot read these verses without learning how cruel is the world we must pass through!

Look especially at the verses again and let us read them and take careful note of what they say.  Every child of God will feel something of this cruelty. Even today in this land it is not unknown for a person having taken Christ as Saviour, to be forced out of the home! The measure of cruelty may not reach the level recorded here but it is there nonetheless. In case we fail to understand the cruelty of the world, come with me to Calvary. Isaiah 52:14; 53:3-8. This is what the world did to the sinless, crimeless, faultless Son of God!

Please learn what a debt we owe to former generations for establishing and maintaining freedom to worship God aright.

Many of the struggles of Christians in the past purchased the freedoms we enjoy today. Note the words ‘subdued’, ‘obtained’, ‘stopped’, ‘quenched’, ‘turned’. These words record the struggle to get what we enjoy today.  What digging and lifting and carrying and labouring and generous giving went into building this school for you!!!

They did all this because they saw eternity ahead of them.

“Not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection,” verse 35. They refused ‘release’ from their torments in order to stand before Christ unspotted by surrender. This was the spirit of Paul, 2 Tim 4:7. Let it be your spirit also.

Despite what the world thought of them, they were better than the world.

“Of whom the world was not worthy,” verse 38. Despised and miscalled by the world but seen by the Lord as a very much superior people. It is the Lord’s opinion of us that counts. How important it is to hear: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” Matthew 25:34.

These who thus were despised in this world are today in glory!

“And these all, having obtained a good report through faith,” verse 39. This the testimony they left behind.