and the selfsame chapter of Ephesians tells us that what we have here and now is "the

earnest of the inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession". Is it not

truer faith to bear the reproach of Christ, and be a mere tent-dweller with this "earnest",

than to look upon the city and the plain of Jordan, making oneself believe that it is like

the "garden of the Lord" (Gen. 13: 10)? Since the events of Gen. 3:, should we not

view any appearance of Eden with suspicion? A paradise this side of resurrection is but

the devil's millennium that has captivated preacher and politician throughout the ages.

The dwelling in tents was a "confession":

Here we have two sides of the story. Merely to become strangers and pilgrims may

indicate that we are but moral Ishmaels, and prefer the desert to human society, but to be

strangers and pilgrims because we seek that city and country of God is the true thing. For

the member of the Body of Christ, all this teaching of Heb. 11: is found in doctrinal

language in Philippians.  The Hebrews were exhorted concerning the things that

accompany salvation (Heb. 6: 9), as the Philippians were to "work out their own

salvation" (Phil. 2: 12). The Philippians were assured that it was God Who "worked in

them both to will and to do of His good pleasure" (Phil. 2: 13), even as the Hebrews were

told to rest in the God of peace, Who "worked in them that which was well-pleasing in

His sight" (Heb. 13: 21). Paul was confident that God would "perfect" the good thing

He had begun in the Philippians (1: 6), as in the Hebrews (13: 21). Phil. 3: speaks of

Paul, the Hebrew, and his loss for Christ's sake, and the Hebrews are given both example

(11: 26) and precept (10: 34-36) to the same end. The Philippians were exhorted to press

toward the mark (3: 14), and the Hebrews were exhorted to run the race (12: 1-3), and

both with the personal example of Christ before them. Both Philippians and Hebrews

were warned concerning those who were enemies of the cross of Christ (Phil. 3: 18;

Heb. 10: 29), the great incentive in Philippians being the "citizenship which is in heaven"

(3: 20), with a like incentive of the heavenly Jerusalem before the Hebrews (11: 10). The

cities are not identical, the prizes are not the same, but the principles are exactly parallel

in their outworking. The tent-dwelling, the sojourning, the pilgrimage, are re-interpreted

for us in Phil. 2: and 3:

We now come to the incentive that was operative in Abraham: "He looked for a city"

built by God. He had no faith to build a city for himself. It is the Cains, the Nimrods and

the Hiels that found cities rather than the Abrahams of Faith. Abraham was concerned

about the city's "foundations". He looked for the city having "the foundations". The

order of words in the original is suggestive: "He looked for the foundations-having city".

"To look for" is strictly "to expect", as the only other reference in Hebrews is translated

(10: 13). Abraham shared the same spirit of patient waiting as his Lord manifested. "The

foundations" are described in Rev. 21: 14, 19, 20; they bear the names of the twelve

apostles of the Lamb, and like the whole purpose of the ages, rest upon the

unimpeachable righteousness of God.