Introduction
Will you still trust Jesus and obey Him when your prayers seem unanswered and your pain doesn’t let up? The central teaching of Hebrews 11:35–40 is that real, Hebrews-11 faith endures, even when deliverance doesn’t come in this life, because God is leading His people toward a better resurrection and a better promise than present relief. Hebrews 11 is famous for stories of victory, kingdoms conquered, lions’ mouths shut, impossible odds overcome. But the Spirit ends the chapter with something we don’t expect: suffering saints who were commended for their faith and yet “did not receive what was promised” (Heb. 11:39). That ending forces a discipleship question on us: What will we do with God when faithfulness hurts?
Main Points
Will you still trust Jesus and obey Him when your prayers seem unanswered and your pain doesn’t let up? The central teaching of Hebrews 11:35–40 is that real, Hebrews-11 faith endures, even when deliverance doesn’t come in this life, because God is leading His people toward a better resurrection and a better promise than present relief.
Hebrews 11 is famous for stories of victory, kingdoms conquered, lions’ mouths shut, impossible odds overcome. But the Spirit ends the chapter with something we don’t expect: suffering saints who were commended for their faith and yet “did not receive what was promised” (Heb. 11:39). That ending forces a discipleship question on us: What will we do with God when faithfulness hurts?
Faith Includes Unfinished Stories
Hebrews 11 builds momentum with triumphs, so we naturally expect the chapter to crescendo into more visible victories. Instead, the final section turns toward pain: “mocking and flogging… chains and imprisonment… stoned… sawn in two… killed with the sword… destitute, afflicted, mistreated” (Heb. 11:36–37).
I want you to feel the weight of this: the Bible is not embarrassed to show that some of God’s most faithful servants suffered deeply and did not get the earthly outcome we would write for them. This is not a failure of faith; it is often the proving ground of faith. If you have ever whispered, “But why, God?” or “This isn’t fair,” you’re not strange, you’re encountering the exact tension this passage brings to the surface.
And if you haven’t faced that kind of tension yet, don’t assume it will never come. Part of growing as a disciple is preparing now for the day when obedience costs you more than you expected.
God Sometimes Gives Miraculous Deliverance
The passage begins with hope: “Women received back their dead by resurrection” (Heb. 11:35). That line recalls stories like Elijah raising the widow’s son (1 Kings 17) and Elisha raising the Shunammite’s son (2 Kings 4). These are real people, real grief, real loss, and real divine intervention.
So I’m not asking you to lower your expectations of God or to stop praying for healing, provision, reconciliation, or rescue. God truly does deliver. Sometimes He answers in the most visible, immediate way. It is right to ask. It is right to hope.
But Hebrews refuses to let us build our faith on only one category of outcome.
Faith Also Chooses God Without Release
Hebrews continues: “Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life” (Heb. 11:35). In other words, there were saints who could have taken an “out,” but they held fast because they believed in a resurrection better than temporary escape.
This is the moment where discipleship gets very real. There is a kind of faith that trusts God for deliverance, and there is a deeper kind of faith that trusts God without it. These saints weren’t chasing pain. They were treasuring something beyond it, “a better life,” a better resurrection, a better reward than mere survival.
That is not natural courage; it is resurrection-shaped hope.
Suffering Isn’t Ancient, It’s Personal
It’s easy to read “flogging” and “chains” and feel disconnected. But the same dynamics show up in our lives in modern forms.
- Remember when you kept your faith quiet because you didn’t want to be labeled or mocked?
- Remember losing friends, or feeling family distance, because you follow Jesus?
- Remember being treated as strange, backward, or offensive simply because you belong to Christ?
That is part of what Hebrews is naming: the social cost of faithfulness. And for many believers, it becomes more than social. Some in this passage were imprisoned like Jeremiah, thrown into a cistern (cf. Jer. 38). Others were mocked like the prophets. The point isn’t to compare pain; it’s to recognize that faithfulness has always carried a price tag in a world that resists God.
So if obedience has wounded you, you are not alone, and you are not forgotten.
Faith Stays When Life Still Breaks
Hebrews’ suffering list includes brutal physical affliction, and it reminds me that faith does not function like a shield that blocks every tragedy.
Do you remember what it’s like to have faith and still get the cancer diagnosis?
Do you remember praying and believing, and the person you loved still died?
Do you remember having faith and still getting injured, losing the scholarship, missing the opportunity, or watching a door close that you begged God to keep open?
The text names death (“killed with the sword”), injustice (“mistreated”), and poverty (“destitute”) (Heb. 11:37). Sometimes discipleship includes seasons where you do the right thing and still experience heartbreak. And that’s exactly where the soul starts prosecuting God: “I’ve been faithful, why is this happening to me?”
Hebrews doesn’t deny that question. It answers by lifting your eyes to a horizon bigger than this moment.
God’s Better Promise Is Still Coming
Here is the most shocking line: “All these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised” (Heb. 11:39). They were approved by God, and yet they did not get the fulfillment they longed for in their lifetime.
Why? “Since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect” (Heb. 11:40). God is not merely managing individual stories; He is completing one united redemption story in Christ. The promises culminate in Jesus and in the final resurrection of God’s people together.
So when your life feels like an unfinished paragraph, when the healing didn’t come, the relationship didn’t mend, the burden didn’t lift, your faith is not wasted. God is not late. He is not careless. He is carrying you toward a “better” fulfillment than what you can see right now.
This is where Hebrews also warns us what not to do. Earlier it says, “My righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him” (Heb. 10:38). In pain, the temptation is to shrink back, to retreat from obedience, to numb out, to quit prayer, to stop gathering, to stop trusting. But disciples of Jesus learn to keep walking by faith, not by immediate outcomes.
Conclusion
Hebrews 11 ends with suffering on purpose. God is training us to become the kind of disciples who can say, “Even if I don’t receive the outcome I want right now, I will not let go of Christ.” Some received miraculous deliverance. Others endured to death. All were “commended through their faith” (Heb. 11:39).
So I want to press this gently into your life: don’t measure God’s goodness by the comfort of your circumstances. Measure it by the faithfulness of His promises and by the resurrection of Jesus, because that is the guarantee that “something better” is coming.
When it hurts so bad, faith doesn’t pretend. Faith clings. Faith keeps praying. Faith keeps obeying. Faith keeps looking for the city “whose designer and builder is God” (cf. Heb. 11:10). This world is not your home, and your pain will not have the last word.
Father, open our ears and hearts to Your Word. Strengthen our faith where we are weak, and meet us in the places where it hurts so badly that we feel tempted to shrink back. Teach us to live by faith, to endure with hope, and to set our eyes on the better resurrection You have promised in Christ. For those who are suffering, physically, emotionally, relationally, or financially, give comfort, wisdom, and sustaining grace. Make us steadfast disciples who trust You not only for deliverance, but also when deliverance feels delayed. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Conclusion
Hebrews 11 ends with suffering on purpose. God is training us to become the kind of disciples who can say, “Even if I don’t receive the outcome I want right now, I will not let go of Christ.” Some received miraculous deliverance. Others endured to death. All were “commended through their faith” (Heb. 11:39).
So I want to press this gently into your life: don’t measure God’s goodness by the comfort of your circumstances. Measure it by the faithfulness of His promises and by the resurrection of Jesus, because that is the guarantee that “something better” is coming.
When it hurts so bad, faith doesn’t pretend. Faith clings. Faith keeps praying. Faith keeps obeying. Faith keeps looking for the city “whose designer and builder is God” (cf. Heb. 11:10). This world is not your home, and your pain will not have the last word.
Closing Prayer
Father, open our ears and hearts to Your Word. Strengthen our faith where we are weak, and meet us in the places where it hurts so badly that we feel tempted to shrink back. Teach us to live by faith, to endure with hope, and to set our eyes on the better resurrection You have promised in Christ. For those who are suffering, physically, emotionally, relationally, or financially, give comfort, wisdom, and sustaining grace. Make us steadfast disciples who trust You not only for deliverance, but also when deliverance feels delayed. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.