Adam never found that lasting city in this world, and neither did Enoch or Noah. This brings us to Abraham, the first person to whom God makes a promise of not only a people but also a place. The language of Hebrews 11:13–16 suggests that the patriarchs, even though they had genuine faith in the promises of God, did not receive the things that God had promised them. They lived and died in a state of forward-looking expectation. Even more, we are told that the patriarchs in some sense both saw and greeted the promises from afar (v. 13).

Christians are a pilgrim people, never fully at home in this world. As John Bunyan so ably illustrated in The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christians are those who have been brought out of the City of Destruction, but only through many trials and grace-born faith do we enter into the Celestial City of God. It should come as no surprise that during the time in which many Puritans were coming across the sea to settle the new world, The Pilgrim’s Progress was the second most read book in print—second only to the Bible. The pilgrim metaphor is one of the most pervasively used metaphors in the Bible. Ever since Adam was expelled from the garden of Eden, man has been a wanderer, seeking a lasting place of rest, worship, and peace. Adam never found that lasting city in this world, and neither did Enoch or Noah. This brings us to Abraham, the first person to whom God makes a promise of not only a people but also a place.

The language of Hebrews 11:13–16 suggests that the patriarchs, even though they had genuine faith in the promises of God, did not receive the things that God had promised them. They lived and died in a state of forward-looking expectation. Even more, we are told that the patriarchs in some sense both saw and greeted the promises from afar (v. 13). This language is intriguing, as it seems to nearly contradict the previous statement. If the patriarchs did not receive the promises, how did they “see” and “greet” them from afar? The answer is found in two ideas. First, through the word of promise that God gave to them, they were able to see with the eyes of faith what God was going to do for them in the future. Faith looks beyond the visible things of this life to the things that are yet to come in this life or in the life of heaven. Faith lays hold of unseen things. Second, in an even greater sense, the people of God also saw and greeted the fulfillment of the promises through foretastes God gave them.

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