Seeking once again the Lord's
help, I'd like us to turn in the book of Hebrews to chapter
11, and the text you'll find in verse six. But without faith it is impossible
to please him, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is,
and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. I'm sure we all know this chapter. It's a very well-known chapter
of those whom God has presented to us as faithful. Although we look at their lives,
many of them, we see that they were just normal people. men
and women who were called by God to follow. They were given faith to believe
and trust in the word of God and to walk out the will of God
in their lives and we see that they did many great things for
God. God gave them faith to enable
them to do the things that he would have them to do And yet
even in their great lives, the many great things that they did,
we see that they were just weak men and women. And so the faith
that they were given to fulfil the tasks that God wanted them
to do was not constant. There was that great initial
faith to believe and trust in the word of the Lord and then
that greater measure of faith we could say to do the tasks
that God gave them to do but then at times their faith dwindled
and became small. We think of even Abraham who
is presented to us as offering up his son Isaac. There were
times when he was afraid when he was in Egypt and he lied about
his wife. Think of Noah. Noah was given
that faith to build the ark for the saving of his house. And
then after that great faith he was drunk and others also. And so these people in this chapter
are not perfect people. They're not people who had a
massive greater measure of faith, but they were given faith to
believe and trust in the word of God and given that specific
faith to enable them to do the great task that God gave them
to do. And so those who are in Christ
those who have been given faith to trust in Christ they are given
that almost a baseline faith to trust and lay hold of Christ
and then as they walk out the will of God in their lives God
grants them greater measures of faith to do the tasks that
he wants them to do and without faith it is impossible to please
God and so there is then there is the opposite to that, that
having no faith it means that it is impossible for somebody
to please God. So outside of Christ it can never
be said that anybody, any person can ever please God at any time
but true saving faith brings someone into a relationship with
God which in itself pleases God Then as they walk out that following
Christ, as they by faith walk out that Christian pathway in
their lives, they please God by being obedient to how God
wants them to walk. And so it is presented to us
throughout the scriptures that there are those who are in Christ
They have been given faith to see themselves as their need
of a saviour. They've been given faith to lay
hold of the Lord Jesus Christ and they are enabled themselves
to please God. And those outside of Christ are
unable to please God. No good work no act of thinking
that they have faith in trying to please God would ever please
God outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. So without faith it is
impossible to please God. And so these people who have
been presented to us in this chapter 11 their acts of obedience
pleased God. and they were done in faith. God spoke, they obeyed, they
trusted in what God had said and they altered the course of
their lives to walk in obedience to God and that is faith. It is laying hold of the word
of God and acting upon it and in doing so they pleased God. And so these acts that they did
Noah building the ark, Abraham offering his son were fruits
of the original faith that they had. Their lives by their acts
of faith proved that they believed and trusted in God. It was the
external evidence of God at work in their lives that it was a
witness the way that they lived, by the
things that they did, they were believers in God. In verse 5
it tells us about Enoch. In fact verses 5 and 6 are linked
together. It says, by faith Enoch was translated
or lifted up that he should not see death and was not found because
God had translated him before his translation he had this testimony
that he pleased God but without faith it is impossible to please
him and so Enoch's life, Enoch pleased God and so that shows
us then that Enoch had faith if it's impossible for without
faith it's not possible to please God that shows us that Enoch
was a man of faith and his life was pleasing to God. We turn to the chapter in Genesis
in chapter 4 and verse 26 we read of Seth. Seth we know was
born to Adam and Eve after the death of Abel and it is from his line that
we see that Enoch came. If you read verse 26, and to
Seth and to him also there was born a son and he called his
name Enos. Then began men to call upon the
name of the Lord. And so from Cain, Cain we know
drifted off into the world and he began to build cities and
to make a name for himself. But the line of Seth, his line,
his generation began to call upon the name of the Lord. We
read in our text that he that comes to God must believe that
he is and that is calling upon the name of the Lord. You can't
call on somebody who you do not believe in, you do not call upon
someone who you do not believe exists and so the very fact that
the line of Seth called upon the name of the Lord shows us
that they were a faithful line, that they had faith in God. In chapter 5 verse 21 we read
about Enoch and Enoch lived 60 and five years and begat Methuselah
and Enoch walked with God and he begat Methuselah three hundred
years and begat sons and daughters and all the days of Enoch were
three hundred and sixty and five years and Enoch walked with God
and he was not for God took him. And so he's from the line of
Seth when people called upon the name of the Lord separating
themselves from that worldly mindset of Cain and they began
to walk in obedience to God and he walked with God. Remember in the New Testament
we read of those who are called to walk in the spirit to walk
in step with the Spirit, to walk in obedience to the Spirit. And so Enoch was a man who walked
in the Spirit. He walked with God. He was obedient
to God. He obeyed the commands of God. And he was seen as faithful. And God took him because his
life pleased God. He had that testimony that he
pleased God. What a privileged position it
is to be in, to have a life that is pleasing to God. A man or
a woman born again of the Spirit, walking with the Lord, walking
in obedience to the commands of God, seeking not to be conformed
to the image of this world. Enoch separated himself from
Cain and his worldliness and began to follow and walk in obedience
to God. If you do go through that line
of Seth and compare it to the line of Cain, you will see that
the line of Cain was worldly minded, naming cities and building
cities. But the line of Seth, you don't
read of anything that they possessed. We just read that one was born,
another one died, they're born. We don't read about their material
possessions. The Bible doesn't present that
as being important, but it shows us the difference. That Cain's
line, the worldly line, focused on those things and the line
of Seth. They were those who called upon
the name of the Lord. And Enoch walked with God. He walked in step with God. He
was obedient to God. He obeyed God's commands and
he wanted to follow God. But we read also in Jude that
Enoch was a preacher. Jude 14. It says in Enoch also,
the seventh from Adam prophesied of these things saying, prophesying
about the false prophets and false preachers and such and
things like that, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands
of his saints to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all
that are ungodly among them of their ungodly deeds which they
have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which
ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are murmurous complainers
walking after their own lusts, and their mouths speak with great
swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because
of advantage. And so he tells us there, Jude
tells us that Enoch was a preacher. as Noah was a preacher of righteousness
in his day so Jude was also a preacher and he was proclaiming a judgment
upon those who rejected God. He was exposing their ungodly
deeds which they had committed and that they were sinners and
he was warning them that God was going to come with ten thousands
of his saints to execute a judgment. So not only did he walk with
God, not only did he call upon the name of the Lord, but he
also warned people of their ungodly lifestyles. that God was going
to come and bring judgment upon them. And we know that that judgment
came at the first judgment with the flood when God flooded the
whole world and saved Noah and his family. But Enoch walked
with God and he pleased God. He pleased God. Because he had faith. Without faith, it is impossible
to please him. We saw this morning in the Bible
study, Adam and Eve were created to be able to have communion
with God. They were able to talk with God
and to view God in their sinless condition. And so they had no
need of faith because they could see him. because they sinned,
they disobeyed God, they fell from that privileged condition
and God distanced himself from mankind and there was a barrier
put between us and God which is sin And we know that sin can
never enter into the presence of God. And so we are left in
this dead spiritual condition, unable to see God, unable to
believe in God, unable to trust in God. And we are, as it were,
blind to spiritual things. And so spiritual faith is not
a natural thing to have. Enoch didn't have it by his birth
although men began to call upon the name of the Lord yet others
did not call upon the name of the Lord and so it's something
that had been given to him this spiritual faith to be able to
see the invisible God and to believe in the invisible God. We have a natural faith we have
that as we grow up we are enabled to reason things out in our minds
by the things that we see. And we can make judgments as
to whether we can trust things or not trust things. We can have
faith in a driver. We can not have faith in a driver. We can assess the situation. We can see the person behind
the wheel. We can see if they're competent or not. And we can
decide. Are we going to trust them or
are we not going to trust them? And so we have a natural faith
to be able to work things out in our mind by what we can see.
and we can trust or we can not trust and we get onto an aeroplane
we have to have a measure of faith in that the thing is not
going to fall apart but if you looked at it and you saw that
there were some holes and some sellotape on it you would immediately
be filled with doubt and your faith would be shattered but
only because of the things that you can see If those problems
are hidden away it would not affect your faith in that thing. And so day by day we do exercise
a natural faith in things that we see. We make judgments within
our minds whether to trust them or not to trust them. and even
there are other religions and things that people have and they
look at that religion and they work it out in their minds and
they reason it over and no doubt they then decide well I'm going
to be this or I'm not going to be that I'm going to be an atheist
or I'm going to be someone who can't decide or I'm going to
be a Muslim or a Hindu or something like that and they make those
decisions based on what they see and what they've researched
But true faith, true faith is a spiritual working within the
heart done by God. By our nature we don't have it,
we are blind, spiritually blind and Jesus Jesus speaks to a blind man in
the Gospel of Mark, Barnabas. And in this man, Barnabas, we
can... Not Barnabas. Bartimaeus, we
can see something of what takes place in saving faith. So by
our nature we have a physical ability to choose and to determine,
but saving faith must come from within, a transformation of our
hearts in Mark 10. from verse 46, and they came
to Jericho and as he went out of Jericho and his disciples
and a great number of people blinded Bartimaeus, the son of
Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging. And when he heard that
Jesus of Nazareth had begun, he began to cry out saying, Jesus,
our son of David, have mercy on me. And he charged him that
he should hold his peace. But he cried the more greatly,
Thou son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood still
and commanded him to be called. And they called the blind man,
saying unto him, Be of good comfort, arise, he calleth thee. And he
cast away his garments and rose and came to Jesus. And Jesus
answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto
thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive
my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy
way. Thy faith has made thee whole. And immediately he received
his sight and followed Jesus in the way. And so there we see
about a blind man, physically blind. But in what is taking
place with him, we can see something what takes place with the blindness
of our spiritual condition. Blind Bartimaeus was sitting
by the wayside and he was begging. And he heard that Jesus passed
by. He heard the noise and he asked
what was going on. And so though he can't see, yet
he is able to hear what is going on. And he cries out, Jesus,
our son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stops and speaks to
him. And then he's asked a question,
what do you want me to do? And he says, Lord, that I might
receive my sight. Jesus says, go thy way, thy faith
that has made thee whole. And so what we see is that Bartimaeus
heard the commotion and he cries out to the Lord Jesus Christ. And in crying out, he is exercising
an act of faith that Jesus is going to hear him. And as Jesus
hears him, he's expecting a response and he asks, what shall I do
unto thee? And so his need causes him to
cry out to the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus says, that is an act
of faith. Your need drove you to me and
you wanted to be made able to see and your faith has made you
whole and immediately he went out and the scripture tells us
that faith as it's unnatural is then a gift. It is a gift
given to us by God. Enoch did not possess it by birth.
It was given to him by God and enabled him to call upon the
name of the Lord. It enabled him to walk with the
Lord. It enabled him to preach the
word of God, to see the coming judgments and to proclaim those
judgments to the people. And in doing so, God took him. Bartimaeus heard of the Lord
Jesus Christ and he exercised faith in crying out to him, asking
for Christ to heal him of his blindness. And so faith, the
scripture tells us in Hebrews, faith comes by hearing and hearing
by the word of God. as the Word of God is preached,
as the Lord Jesus Christ passed by Bartimaeus, he heard and he
had heard things about the Lord Jesus Christ and he knew that
Christ had the ability to heal him and so he exercised what
he heard and in doing so he is exercising faith, he's stepping
out as it were in response to what he heard about the Lord
Jesus Christ and he is trusting the Lord Jesus Christ. He's heard
on. The Lord Jesus Christ has been
healing people. I'm a man in need of healing.
And so I'm going to cry out to the Lord Jesus Christ, the son
of David, the Messiah. I'm going to cry out to him and
ask for healing. Little did he know of himself
that he had faith. Little did he know that he was
exercising faith. All he was doing was responding
to what he had heard. And in response, Jesus says,
your faith has made you whole. And we noticed in other parts
of the scripture that that's the same response Jesus says
often. Your faith has made you whole. Go in peace, he says. And so faith comes by hearing,
hearing by the word of God. And it is a gift of God. It is
not natural. to us. We do not possess it by
our birth and it is a gift given to us to enable us to believe
and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so faith enables a sinner
to step out from the darkness into the light. It enabled Barnabas
who was not able to see to step out and lay hold of the Lord
Jesus Christ asking for that that healing and so without faith
it is impossible to please God. John 6 tells us in verse 44, no man can come
to me except the Father which has sent me draw him and I will
raise him up at the last day. No man can come unto me except
the Father draw him. So in other words no man can
see anything in the Lord Jesus Christ except faith is given
and to draw them to the Lord Jesus. Barnabas there must have
been other blind people in Jerusalem at that time who never came to
the Lord Jesus Christ especially those who saw him as the son
of David. Barnabas heard of the Lord Jesus
Christ and unbeknown to him he is being drawn to the Lord Jesus
Christ not by the strength of himself but by the unseen hand
of God drawing him. So the scripture says no man
by their natural condition can come to the Father except the
Father draw them to himself. those who come then to him must
believe but without faith it is impossible to please him for
he that cometh to God must believe that he is. Barnabas, Bartimaeus
believed that Christ was able to heal him so he goes to him. Enoch believed God and he followed
the ways of God and he pleased God. And so faith enables us, like
Moses, to see the invisible God as a reality. enables us to take
the spiritual things of God and the commands of God and to lay
hold of them as the truths of the word of God and enables us
to act upon them and to believe in them as our eyes as it were are opened. If
by nature we are blind we are given then spiritual eyes to
enable us to lay hold of Christ as truth and to lay a hold of
his word as truth and it's that faith that pleases God because
it's his work in us. Remember the scripture tells
us that there is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner
that repents of their sin. And so faith is the gift of God
although it's unseen. It enables a person to believe
on Christ. They see their sin and they turn
away from their sin in repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that pleases God. It's his work being manifested
in the life of a sinner, bringing someone from darkness to life,
bringing someone who was dead in trespasses and sins into a
condition of sinlessness and righteousness in his sight. there is joy in the presence
of the angels when just one sinner comes to saving faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ. And ultimately what pleased God
was his son the Lord Jesus. So although Enoch pleased God
and although without faith it is impossible to please God,
The only way that someone is enabled to please God is to fall
under the umbrella of Christ. And it's only then when we are
in Christ that we can be enabled to please God. This is my beloved
Son in whom I am well pleased. And so it's faith in the Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ. that is pleasing to God. So it's Christ who pleased the Father. And as the gospel is preached,
as the word of God goes forth then faith comes from hearing
the word of God and responding to the word of God. And Enoch,
as he preached the word of God in the olden days, the same thing
was working in his day. We know that only a few were
saved. The way with Noah as he built
the ark and his family were saved there in the ark. but he pleased
God. He that comes to God must believe
that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek
him. Diligence is not a half-hearted
thing. In the references In the original
language of Greek this word diligence can be explained as those who
seek him out. It's not a half-hearted affair. Jesus tells the example, doesn't
he, of the lady who was searching for the coin and she searched
diligently for it until she found it. And there are many who claim
to be seekers of salvation but there is no diligence in that. It's a half-hearted effort. It is not something that consumes
them day and night but it's something that they might remember occasionally. Well then that is not diligently
seeking and you will not receive any reward for that half-hearted
seeking. If anyone has ever lost a child
the supermarket or in the Arndales or on the beach you'll know the
feeling that you have in your heart that nothing else matters
anymore. That child must be found and
you do not find comfort until that child is found. The relief
that is experienced when you find the child is the same relief
that you feel when you've had that reassurance that your sins
are forgiven. And so there is a diligent seeking
not a half-hearted seeking, he is a rewarder of those that diligently
seek him. And that is because once he has
instilled that faith within your heart you cannot but let go until
you are totally satisfied that you are found in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now faith, because it's an invisible
thing, is sometimes difficult to know whether you have it.
If it was a ball or something you could put in your pocket,
it would be a bit easier for us to realise that we have faith. But faith is an invisible gift. It's the product of the Holy
Spirit working in the heart. And sometimes when we look at
ourselves, we just think, well, I've got no faith. My life is
such a miserable mess. I seem to fail at every single
thing that I do. And when you examine yourselves
in light of the scripture, you just think, well, I've got no
faith whatsoever. And sometimes we can be brought
down to that condition. We can be brought to sink almost
to the depths of despair, thinking that we have no faith. Jesus says if you have faith
as a grain of mustard seed, see a tiny little faith hanging on
to the greatness of God is enough because it's God's work that
is at work in us. And he is a rewarder of those
who diligently seek him. He that comes to God must believe
that he is. And those who even have that
faith as a grain of mustard seed will know that they can never
ever let go of Christ, will know that they can never let go of
God. And so that small grain of mustard seed brings them to
their knees. And they seek God. They seek for God's help. They
seek for an increase of their faith. Lord, increase my faith. Lord, I believe, but help my
unbelief. Often Jesus rebuked his disciples
for having little faith. He says, why don't you have any
faith? Or where is your faith? Are you
of little faith? And so there are times in our
lives when our faith dwindles away and we feel that it's non-existent
but we still exercise that faith when we come to God in prayer. We believe that he is. We believe
that he is able to help us. We believe that he is able to
lift us up out of the present condition or sustain us in that
condition. We believe that he is able to
give us a greater measure of faith and to lay hold of the
promises of the Word of God. And so true seeking is in itself
an act of faith because as you come you're seeking salvation
you're asking God for the forgiveness of your sins what is your view
what is your object what are you looking at you're not looking
at yourself you have seen in yourself in here dwells no good
thing you see of yourself you can't save yourself And so to
seek God is to acknowledge that I can't help myself and my object
is the Lord Jesus Christ. That is where I am aiming my
hope, that is where I'm trying to hook my anchor as it were
to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so you are seeking him, you
are trying to find him and he has promised that those who diligently
seek me Those who are diligently focused upon me as
their only hope I will reward you. What is the reward? Enoch had a very blessed reward
that he was taken from this world and he did not experience a death. There are only two people in
the Bible. One was Enoch and the other was
Elijah who was taken up into heaven by the chariot of fire. And so I don't think that you
and I can expect to please God to such an extent that we will
be lifted up unless the Lord Jesus Christ comes again while
we are alive. But the reward that we have is so valuable that it's more precious
than all that this world has to offer. The reward of those
who diligently seek God is eternal life. Jesus said, I have come
to give them life that they might have it more abundantly. eternal
life with God forever and ever. It is the joy of having your
sins forgiven and being washed away. As the Bible says, there
is that joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that
repents of their sin. And so there is joy in the heart
of the seeker when they experience that knowledge that their sins,
which are so many, are all forgiven. It's like that joy that is experienced
when you find that lost child or something similar to that.
There is that pain, there is that anxiety, there is that determination
to find and that when you find there is that great joy. And
so the reward is found in the Lord Jesus Christ for those who
seek him. But that faith as we read through
chapter 11 must be tested and God puts his people through tests
of obedience to see how genuine their faith is. so the scripture
tells us the trial of your faith is much more precious than gold
and so the faith that we have although it's a gift from God
must also be tested by God to prove the reality of it and so
as we go through Hebrews 11 we see those who were tested by
God. Noah go and build an ark His
faith was tested. It never rained before. He'd
never seen a boat before. He'd probably never seen all
the animals that made their way to the ark. And so his faith
was tested for those hundred years when he was at work building
the ark. The trial of our faith is more
precious than gold and the testing of our faith and the walking
out of our faith in this life proves that we don't belong here. To the world we are weird. We
do not have the same objects as they do, objectives as they
do. We go through more difficult trials often than they do. Our lives are tried and tested. Our faith is tried and tested
but it has a purpose and that refining process to see the reality
of our faith in God and in the Lord Jesus Christ and our walking
out of our faith proves to those round about that we are strangers
and pilgrims on the earth. All these died in faith not having
received the promises but having seen them afar off and were persuaded
of them and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers
and pilgrims on the earth. for they that say such things
declare plainly that they seek a country and truly if they had
been mindful of that country from whence they came out they
might have had opportunity to return but now They desire a
better country, that is a heavenly, whereof God is not ashamed to
be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. And
so they lived looking beyond this world to another city, a
city that had a builder whose builder and maker was God. They
hadn't received that promise, but they believed it by faith
and looked beyond this world. Abraham lived in tents, and he
walked the promised land. He himself didn't receive it
but he believed that his children would. We walk this world and
we walk as strangers and pilgrims looking beyond to our eternal home and that
pleases God. We have laid hold of his word
by faith and we live in accordance to that faith. Our lives are
shaped by what we read in his word and we live looking unto
the Lord Jesus Christ, the author and the finisher of our faith. We look beyond this world, look
beyond this realm to the eternal realm where we will be forever
with the Lord, strangers and pilgrims on the earth seeking
a better country. And so while we are here Our
faith is tested and tried to the maximum. But then one day
that faith will be turned back into sight when we come face
to face with the Lord Jesus Christ. So there is a complete 360. Adam
and Eve had no need of faith because they could see God. They
sinned, plunged the world into darkness. through the Lord Jesus
Christ we are granted faith to believe the promises of this
book and then beyond death or when Christ comes then we will
have no need of faith and we will see him as he is face to
face. But without faith it is impossible
to please him he that comes to God must believe that he is and
he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Well maybe
we be granted that true diligence to seek him out and to not give
him any rest until we find him and then once we have found him
may we be enabled to follow him and to walk closely with him
and looking up to him where we will ever be with him one day. May the Lord add his blessing.
Amen. Our closing hymn for this morning's
service is hymn number 64 from Gadsby's. Sovereign ruler of
the skies, ever gracious, ever wise. All my times are in thy
hand, all events at thy command. Hymn number 64 to the tune of
517. All my times are in thy hand,
I live and set thy command. Lifting me in from the earth,
it shines as though ? Grace and time all appointed
were by him ? ? He hath formed me in the womb ? ? He shall guide
me to the tomb ? ? All my time shall ebb and flow ? ? Is rising green ? ? Times of
sickness ? ? Times of health ? ? Times of plenary and wealth
? ? Times of triumph and of grief ? ? Times of triumph and grief
? Time to take the Savior's love. All must come, and I'll stand
there, and shall meet my heavenly friend. Till he bends I cannot die, Not
a single shout can lift, Till the Lord of God sees. Almighty God, we thank thee for
thy word and we pray that we may be granted a greater measure
of faith to lay hold of the promises of thy holy word to enable us
to walk this narrow way that leads to life. We pray for those
who are seeking salvation. We pray, Lord, that they may
be granted a true diligence to lay hold of thee at the throne
of grace and we would ask that that they may see that that act
of faith and Lord that they may receive being able to receive
the joy of having their sins which are so many forgiven. to be with us now we pray as
we depart from each other to return us here according to thy
will this evening and do draw near to us then we pray forgive
us then lord of our many sins and now may the grace of the
lord jesus christ and the love of god the father and the fellowship
and the communion of the holy spirit do rest and abide with
us now and forevermore amen