Hebrews chapter 11. I want to speak on an important
subject. Of course, every time I speak
I expect it to be an important subject, but one that I think
is sometimes neglected among sovereign grace people. We're so afraid that if we mention
anything we do in the process of salvation that we are making
salvation to be by works. But the fact of the matter is,
he that believes, and the Lord Jesus himself said it, and he
said it just this way, he that believes shall be saved, he that
believes not shall be damned. That's pretty clear. And believing
is something we do. In other words, this business
of believing God, this business of being saved by grace, is not
exactly like a stick floating down a river. God does works
for us, completely outside of us, not involving us at all,
and then he works in us to will and to do of his good pleasure,
and one of the things that he works in us to do is to believe
the gospel. Now, if he does that work, we
will believe, and we will be saved. But the fact that it is
Him that works in us to do it doesn't mean that we didn't do
it. It is still us believing. And so we don't want to shrink
back from talking about faith and the power of faith. The true power of faith is not
in faith itself, it's in the God in whom we believe. But nonetheless,
faith or through faith, great things are accomplished. And
that's what Hebrews chapter 11 is all about. It's about faith
and how faith expresses itself and what wondrous things are
accomplished through this thing called faith. Now my purpose
in this message is twofold. First of all to establish that
faith As the Bible refers to it, as the Bible talks about
it, faith involves things which cannot be seen. You don't believe what you see,
you believe things you cannot see. Faith is involved with things
for which there is no natural evidence whatsoever. The things that believers believe
cannot be proven. There is a branch of religious
studies called apologetics in which they try to come up with
proofs or evidences of the truth of the scriptures by natural
means. Now, I don't think that there's
anything in what the Bible says or anything in what the gospel
teaches that's unreasonable or that's contrary to what can be
seen or sensed. But there is nothing out there
that's going to prove what you and I believe. And do you know
what the proof of it is? The proof of that point is our
Lord Jesus Christ came into this world. He worked miracles. that nobody else ever did, both
in the magnitude of the miracles and in the number of them. And for all that, almost no one really believed. They got excited. They got stirred
up. They got so stirred up, when
He came into Jerusalem one day on a donkey, they got palm branches
and they threw their coats on the palm branches down in the
road ahead of Him, welcoming Him like a coming King. And the
children, you know, they got caught up in it and they were
singing, Hosanna! You know, blessed is He that
comes in the name of the Lord. And it was a wonderful religious
experience. And a week later, or a few days
later, they crucified him. I don't think that was faith
on that day, was it? No, all those evidences that
our Lord gave, all those fulfillments of scriptures right before their
eyes did not convince anyone. Faith is something that must
be given by the Spirit of God. And once it's given, all these
things become evident. And that's what our text is saying
here in verse 1. Now, faith is being sure of what we hope for
and certain of what we do not see. To be honest, I don't like
the way our translation handles that, because it sounds like
it's talking about an emotional sense of certainty and assurance. And that's not what he's talking
about, really. It's actually, it's kind of hard to put this
into English. But the best I could come up
with in trying to describe this thing called faith is that faith
is the support of what we hope for. And it is the proof of those
things or the proving of those things which cannot be sensed
in any way. In fact, there where it says
faith is being sure, the word there is to stand under, to support. There are things that you and
I hope for, but you don't hope for something that you already
have, do you? You hope for that which you do
not possess. And so faith is that which undergirds our hope
And faith is our proof of the things that are not seen. Faith
is the eye of the Spirit that sees things that others cannot
see. That's often why we, you know,
you'll hear us use the phrase, maybe, well, you know, may we
see the Lord Jesus Christ. We're not asking God for a vision
of Christ. We're not asking that God would
actually cause the Lord Jesus Christ to appear among us. What
are we talking about? We're talking about spiritual
sight. We're talking about that faith which enables us to see
the invisible. Now, faith involves those things
and is always involved with things that cannot be seen, cannot be
proven by any natural means. And that because this is the
nature of saving faith, we should fully expect fleshly doubt to
exist right along with it. Now when I speak of the flesh
here, and I believe this is how the Bible uses the word flesh,
I am just talking about our natural selves, whatever we were when
we were born, that's flesh. And the flesh operates according
to certain principles, and one of the principles of the flesh
is this, when I see it, I'll believe it. And you know that
works fine for the flesh. Somebody shows you some brand
new invention. And it says it'll do such and
such. You say, well, I'll believe that when I see it. You want
a demonstration. And that's the way the world,
excuse me, that's the way the flesh operates. It's the way
it has to operate. Seeing, hearing, touching, smelling,
tasting. That's the only way the flesh
can get information upon which to make judgments about whether
something is true or not. You know, there's nothing wrong
with that when it comes to fleshly things. Why do I believe that the sun
comes up in the east? Because for about the about 20,000
days that I've lived, that's exactly what's happened. My flesh
has seen. I'm not saying I saw sunrise,
but I did. I've usually been up early enough
to realize it came up in the east and went over towards the
west. That's how the flesh operates. But there's nothing, and let
me repeat that again, there is nothing about the gospel which
these eyes can see. There's nothing, and when I say
these ears can hear, we can hear the testimony of the gospel,
but we can't hear it happening. I can't touch gospel things. I can't smell them. I can't taste
them. Now interestingly enough, the
scriptures use all those words to illustrate experience with
the gospel, taste and see that the Lord is good. In 2 Corinthians
chapter 2, Paul says we are a sweet smelling savor of Christ unto
God. We talk about seeing Christ with
the eyes of faith. If any man hear his voice, says
the scriptures, But these are all illustrations, metaphors
for what's really going on, and that is, what they mean is, does
any man experience these things on the spiritual level? For this is where, or it's on
the level of the Spirit that all of these things happen. Faith is the eyes of the Spirit
We could say it's also the nose, the ears, the hands, the tongue,
whatever. Whatever the flesh uses in order
to gather information, faith is that to the spirit. Now in verse two, we read this
about faith. Verse two, this is what the ancients were commended
for. Our Lord Jesus Christ said, that
which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination to God. Now, we could include among those
some rather base things, because, you know, wealth is highly esteemed
among men. It means nothing to God at all. I like the way the Lord put it
to the Israelites. He said, I own the cattle on
a thousand hills. the wealth in every mind. If
I was hungry, would I ask you? Forbes never gives out a
list of the 400 people right in the middle of the economic
strata. It's always the several hundred
richest people in the world. Why? We're enamored of riches.
And we're enamored of people who have the ability to gather
them. And we have this tendency. Most of us do anyway, if not
all of us. But most of us have this tendency not only to want
riches for whatever kind of comfort we may gather from them, but
also for whatever kind of esteem we can gain for having it. You
can say, oh, I have no regard for riches or for the rich man.
Well, I hope that would be true of you, but you know something? If we're walking down the street
and we run into somebody we know who's got lots of money, we are
likely to treat them with more respect than if we came across
the path of a homeless person. We pass up the homeless person
with nary a thought. If he was sitting there on the
street and we stumbled over his feet, we'd say, oh, sorry, and
just move on. Boy, if we bumped into a rich man, oh man, so-and-so,
I am sorry. Whoa, I didn't see you coming
there. Our apologies would be much more profuse to the wealthy
man. You know what God thinks? He
can't tell the difference between, if you understand how I'm putting
this, He can't tell the difference between a Bill Gates and a homeless
man. It just doesn't make any difference
to Him. We like men of power, men and women that wield power.
And that's the one biographies are written about. I'm pretty
sure nobody will ever write a biography of me. Why? Nobody cares. So
far as the world's judgment of things, I don't really amount
to anything. And that's all right. I'm not saying that to complain.
I'm just saying that's the way it is. That's the way it is with nearly
everybody. They write biographies about George Washington and Roosevelt
and other people like that, shakers and movers. And we're not shakers
and movers. Do you know something? God isn't
impressed with shakers and movers because He's the one that put
them in that place and He's the one shaking them and moving them.
They don't mean anything to Him. But when the Lord Jesus Christ
said that the things which are highly esteemed among men are
an abomination to God, I don't think that's the sort of thing
He was really talking about. You know what I think He was
talking about? Religious righteousness. Religious righteousness. Those
things, because the Lord was almost always rebuking the religious
people of His day. But those fellas, and we've mentioned
this before, but they dressed themselves so that you knew who
they were. I don't think that preachers
ought to put on one way or the other. But I'll tell you this,
I'm always a little bit suspicious of anybody whose manner of dress
stands out so much that you can tell they're religious. The more that a person has on
the outside with regard to his religion, this is a general principle,
the more you can detect his religiosity from the outside, the less likely
there is anything real on the inside. Do you not consider it
kind of strange that when they wanted to arrest the Lord Jesus
Christ, they had to hire Judas to point him out? This is God
in human flesh, and He didn't look different than anybody else. He didn't have on those things,
those kind of clothes that were highly esteemed among men. He
was dressed in the same things His disciples were. He didn't
stand head and shoulders above them. Still taking back something
I read about a year ago, I think it was, that it was saying, what
did Jesus look like, you know, and what they had done is that,
you know, they have unearthed skeletons in Palestine, that
area from back then, and they say, the average height of a
man in first century Palestine was 5 foot 1 inches tall. Now what would you think of a
Savior 5 foot 1? I mean I'm 5 foot 9 and I'm kind
of short around here for the most part. Most of the Dutch
people way up here compared to me. What would you think of a
Savior 7 or 8 inches or maybe a foot shorter than you? Things that are highly esteemed
among men, that impress us, mean nothing at all to God. In fact,
they were an abomination to Him as they sashayed around in their
clothes and their hats and their phylacteries and things like
that, as they droned on in that religious tone of voice which
made them stand out. as they made a public spectacle
out of their gifts. Yes, they were maybe giving more
than other people, but they did so with a trumpet going before
them and with people saying, Oh, here comes so-and-so and
look at that. Why, he just put in a golden
goblet worth X dollars in there. Somebody write that down. That poor widow came up there
with her two little mites and said it was all she had to
live on. A couple little copper coins. And she put them in and
there was only one person that noticed it. The Lord Jesus. Nobody blew a trumpet. Nobody
said somebody get out the treasurer's report there and make sure and
write this down so we get it included. I tell you this, probably
any human being that noticed that other than the Lord Jesus
Christ The best they would have thought, well, bless her heart,
you know, that kind of thing. And our Lord said, she's given
more than them all. Those golden goblets going in
there were highly esteemed among men. They were an abomination
to God. And one of the things that's
very lowly esteemed among men but precious in the sight of
the Lord is faith, simply believing God. You know, that's why even those
who by the world's standards, and our brother read that for
us this morning, what a good scripture to read in conjunction
with this. He says, you see, you're called election brethren.
Just look what you all are. You are not the people. that
the world is impressed with. There's not many of you got degrees,
he said, not wise by human standards, not many of you occupy places
of influence, and not much of that goes on.
Not among the people of God, but there is something among
the people of God which God himself highly prizes, and that is faith. In the church where Nathan attends,
there used to be a couple. Actually, this guy's name was
John. He was the first person from
that church I ever met. So I went down there to preach
in 1999, and Drew Dietz wasn't feeling so well, so he had this
guy come pick me up. And he obviously was not a scholar. But this fellow believed God
as much as anybody I've ever met in my life. He believed Him
with simplicity, and he believed Him with his whole heart. It
kind of tickled me. The last thing you'd want to
do is deny Christ to his face. He'd be all over you. He believed
God. And while the world may not have
had much respect for this individual, just like the ancients, God commended
this man for his faith. And at the present time, this
man is in the presence of God, holy, blameless, and full of
joy. He and his wife both. Why? They
believe God. Believe God. He commends people,
and this is one of the principles of grace. God commended these
people for being believers, and yet it was He that made them
believers in the first place. Now think of that. God did not
sit back and say, alright, I'm going to see who believes, and
then whoever believes, I'll commend them for believing. He came and
He worked faith in these people. Faith is the gift of God. For
by grace are you saved through faith, and that's not of yourselves,
it's the gift of God. And so God gives this gift of
faith, and a man believes, and then God turns around and commends
him for faith, as though it was of his own power and will that
he had believed in the first place. But brethren, no matter what
the source of faith, and we know the source of faith is God Himself,
but let us lay hold of this, that simple thing of faith, And
when I say simple, I don't mean easy. Simple and easy, they have
two different meanings. Easy means it's not difficult
to do. Simple means it's of one thing. And faith is of one thing. Faith is a confidence in God
through Christ Jesus. That is faith. And this one simple
thing is highly honored in the sight of God. It's honored because
it honors Him. Faith honors God. If you don't
believe someone, what are you saying about them? You're saying
they're a liar. And that's why John said, in
1 John, he said that those that do not believe the record that
God has given concerning His Son have made God out to be a
liar. When I first was made aware of
one of the religious principles that dominated the religion that
many of you were raised in, at least some of you, this religious
principle that you can know what the gospel is, and you can believe
that that's the way God saves sinners, but in the end you might
not be saved anyway, and that it was presumption to actually
claim that you believed, or to claim that you were saved. I
remember telling someone once, I said, it's not presumption
to believe God. It's just unbelief not to. No matter why you don't believe,
really listen to this carefully. No matter why you don't believe
the gospel, your unbelief is calling God a liar. Because He
has given this testimony concerning His Son. He that hath the Son
hath life. He that hath not the Son shall
not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. And the person
who does not believe that, and I don't care what reason it is
he's not believing it, even if he comes up with some kind of
religious reason that the world thinks makes him look humble,
he says, oh, I just don't know that I believe right and all
that. You don't believe? You've just said, you've just
confessed to calling God a liar. God has said, whosoever shall
call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Will you turn
around and say, then, well, a man could call on the name of the
Lord and be lost. In the end, you've called God a liar. Through
the Apostle Paul, the Lord said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved. Do you, in some kind of false
religious humility, say, well, you know, I believe the gospel,
but I'm not sure I'm saved? You've just called Paul and the
God who inspired him a liar. Because the Bible says, Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Faith honors
God, takes him at his word. Aren't you honored when somebody
takes you at your word? I'm not real big in doing that.
I probably ought to learn to do it more, but even experts
tell me something. I go, okay, I'll check that out,
you know. If you don't believe what somebody said, you are putting
a question mark on their integrity or their intelligence, one or
the other. Well, we dare not put a question
mark on God's integrity or wisdom. It honors God. Faith is commendable
because it honors God. Secondly, faith is commendable
because it honors God's son. Faith always looks to the Lord
Jesus Christ. And this is the will of him that
sent me, says the Lord Jesus Christ, that all that look to
the son, I would not lose any, but raise him up on the last
day. Faith looks to the Lord Jesus
Christ for all things. Now, I said this was about showing
that faith involves things which are not seen. Let's notice some
of these unseen things that faith sees and reacts to. And see, here's the proof of
faith. Faith sees the unseen. and takes action on it as though
it had been seen naturally. Let me show you that in verse
7. By faith Noah, when warned about
things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his
family. God came to Noah. Do you know
at this point it had never rained? As near as we can tell from the
scriptures, there had never been any rain. I don't mean there
had never been a flooding rain. There had never been any rain.
The world was different before the flood. And the ground was
watered by a mist of some sort, says the scriptures. So there
had never been any rain. And God said to Noah, in so many
years, 120 years I think it was, He said, I'm gonna bring, I'm
gonna open up the gates of heaven. Water's coming out of the sky. And I'm gonna flood the world.
Now, you build an ark this big, gave them the dimensions, said
now I'll bring animals to you, you put them on the ark, you
make sure you get food together for them, everything. Because
you're gonna be in there about a year. So get provisions for
a year and everything. Now, Noah believed a word of
judgment about things that he had never seen. When God said it was going to
rain, Noah may have said, what's rain? And once the Lord explained
what it was, Noah didn't say, oh come on, that can't happen.
That's not the way it works. He said, okay. And you know how
we know that Noah believed what God said? He built an ark. Now, Noah could have said, well
yeah, I believe what God said about judgment. He could have
gone around and preached God's judgment to everybody. He could
have become, as it were, a seminary professor on the coming judgment
of God. But none of that meant a thing.
Not one bit of that would have proved his faith. Here's what
proved that he believed. He built an ark. He was warned about something
he'd never seen, but he believed it anyway. And you know something,
brethren? You and I, if we believe, we've
believed a judgment that we have never seen. There's not anybody
alive today that has ever seen the judgment of God that awaits
the unbelieving. The only man outside of hell
who knows what the judgment of God is, is the man Christ Jesus.
Nobody else has ever experienced it. Oh, we've experienced some
of the temporal judgments of God, as they call it. I think
back there, was it 2004 there, towards the end of the year,
that tsunami went through over there in Indonesia or something
like that. And that is something to think of. In just a few minutes,
a quarter million people dead. Brethren, that's nothing. Really. When it comes to judgment, that's
nothing. Remember, at one time the Lord brought a flood that
destroyed everybody in the world, but eight people. But even that's
nothing compared to the judgment of God for sin. In fact, this
judgment is so horrific, I can't even tell you what it is. The
Bible doesn't tell us what it is. It gives us illustrations
of it. But we cannot see or understand
or comprehend the nature of heaven or the nature of hell. These
are beyond the capacities of the flesh to get a grasp on. And so the Bible describes these
things according to what we can understand, but even as it does
it, we're remembering these are only Illustrations, they don't
really capture the whole. And you know how the Bible describes
the judgment of God? It calls it outer darkness. I don't know about you, but the
concept of what you might call outer darkness, that terrifies
me. And I don't mean just being outside
in the dark. I can go outside at night time,
that doesn't bother me. We're talking about darkness like when you
get way out, way back in a cave. Have you ever been back in a
cave? Been on one of those cave tours, I know they're in Carter
Cave State Park in Kentucky. I was there a few times and they'll
take you back in one of those caves and invariably they'll
say, okay, everybody gather around. All right, everybody turn your
flashlight off. Boy, you turn the flashlight
off back in that cave. It's dark like you've never experienced
before. I mean, you can do this, you
can't see your hand. It's just not gonna, there's
no light. Imagine being in such a situation as that. Cut off from sensory experience,
outer darkness. Well, God's judgment is something
like that. And then it talks about, it's like a garbage dump. In one place, the place of eternal
punishment is called Gehenna, and Gehenna was actually just
a valley outside of Jerusalem where they dumped all their garbage. They'd slaughter an animal, and
all the parts of the animal they weren't going to eat, that got
thrown out there. Any refuse got thrown out there, and it
burned. It just burned all the time.
And what part of it wasn't burning? It was just crawling with worms
as decaying matter will. Well, imagine that, to have a
conscience constantly being gnawed at with guilt, like it says,
the fire is not quenched and the worm dieth not. Forever to
be in a state of feeling to the depths of your being your own
wickedness and filth. Every once in a while I'm brought
up short just about how sinful I am, and I guarantee you I haven't
even got a glimpse of what I really look like in the eyes of God.
It's unbearable for me to think about just what I can detect
among sin. Imagine being in a situation
where you know your utter depravity fully, and you hate and loathe yourself. Any of you that are familiar
with Tolkien's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, know that character,
Gollum. That's what I'm talking about. A little shriveled up person, full of self-hatred, and there's
nothing he can do to change what he is. The fire does not quench. In
another place, the Bible refers to God's wrath as the lake of
fire. All of us, I'm sure, have experienced
being burned to some degree. Burning is just about as horrible
a pain as there is. Someone that's been burned over
a good deal of their body, It's almost impossible for them just
to survive the pain. It's good they've got pain-killing
drugs now that can get them through it. But some of them, even after
they've healed up, there's a lot of pain because the nerves have
been so damaged by the burning. Imagine being on fire forever.
And I'm not saying that's exactly what hell is. I'm just saying
imagine that. Well, hell is something like
that. To be under the wrath of God is as agonizing and horrible
as being on fire forever. Now brethren, I've never seen
that. I've never experienced anything like that. I've never
seen hell. I've never seen nor heard from
anybody who's been there. But I believe it exists. And
I believe it enough to run to Jesus Christ, the ark. that saves us from God's wrath. Believe in things I've never
seen. Faith sees the blessings. Let's
get back here to Hebrews chapter 11, verse 8. By faith Abraham,
when called to go to a place he would later receive as his
inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where
he was going. So Abraham lived in Ur of the Chaldees, a place where they worshipped false
gods. And when he was 75 years old,
already an established man, 75 years old, God said, Abraham,
you get out of your father's country, out of his household,
you go to a place that I'll show you. Where is it? He said, you
just start going, I'll get you there. Well, what's it like? Never mind, just go. Abraham left, not knowing where
he was going. And once he even found out where
he was going, he didn't know what it was like. But this he
did know, God had told him to go there. And God said it would
be a blessing for him, and he believed God on that account. And so he obeyed and he went. But there's something else we
know about Abraham and his faith. Even though the immediate promise
of God was about some land over there in Palestine, even Abraham
understood that there was something more to this promise than a patch
of ground. Let's go on reading here in verse
9. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger
in a foreign country. He lived in tents as did Isaac
and Jacob. who were heirs with him of the
same promise, for he was looking forward to the city with foundations,
whose architect and builder is God." By faith, Abraham even
saw beyond the promise of Palestine. He saw beyond the promise of
a strip of land there on the east coast of the Mediterranean
Sea. He realized this thing God was promising him was an eternal
thing. He was talking about a city on
foundations. You know, he lived in tents now.
He's looking forward to something permanent, something eternal.
You know, it's remarkable how much faith these men had with
so little information. So little to go on. God told Abraham to go to a land
that he would show him. And out of that, just from that,
Abraham sought for a city with foundations whose builder and
maker is God. And here, you and I, we got the
whole story. We got it from beginning to end. And most of the time,
we don't operate like we have the faith even of Abraham, do
we? We don't believe God with the level of simplicity and fullness
that Abraham did. Faith prefers That which is unseen
in favor of what is seen. Beginning here, verse 13. All these people were still living
by faith when they died. They did not receive the things
promised. They only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were
aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show
that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been
thinking of the country they had left, they would have had
opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for
a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed
to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. Now, these people, all of them,
But particularly the patriarchs here mentioned Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob. God took them to that land and there it was. And he
said, I'm going to give this to you and to your seed. It's going
to be yours. And it was a good land. Good
land. But they lived even there in
tents. And they didn't drive their stakes
too deep because they were nomadic. They moved around. And in their
willingness to move around, what were they saying? They were saying,
we're really not a people of this world. They were looking for something
better, something that couldn't be seen. One of the religious writers of the past
century said this. I'm trying, I can't quote it
perfectly, but it was this effect. What conclusion can I come to
about the fact that I can find no satisfaction in this world
other than this, that I was made for a different world? And that's
true, brethren. Now, there's some things in this
world I enjoy, things in this world I'm glad
I have, but there's nothing in this world that satisfies me,
no matter how much I get of it, It's not enough. What was it,
Henry Ford? They said, how much is enough?
He said, just a little more. Just a little more. It was either Ford or Rockefeller,
same kind of fella. More, more, more. That's all
that the possessions of this world can work in you is a desire
for more of them. If you are a believer in the
Lord Jesus Christ, even if the whole world were given to you,
you would not be satisfied. Why? Because you weren't made
for this world. Your life, your blessedness comes
from somewhere else. Faith sees the invisible God,
verse 24. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be
known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose to be mistreated
along with the people of God, rather than enjoy the pleasures
of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the
sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt,
because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith, he left
Egypt, not fearing the king's anger. He persevered because
he saw him who is invisible. How do you see something invisible?
How do you see someone that's invisible? You got to have a
different set of eyes than these to do that. By faith, Moses was
able spiritually to see him who cannot be seen naturally. Several times I've heard people
say things like, you know, well, I think God's like such and such.
Well, I'm not surprised you think He's like that because you can't
see Him. And so you've got to make one up. Brethren, God is not like we
think He is. God is like He is. And He who
is given faith has been given the faith to see Him as He is. Now I thank God for this, because
only God can make me feel this way about it. The way I see Him,
I like Him that way. I don't want Him to be different
than He is revealed in this scripture. You say, I wish He wasn't so
full of wrath. I don't want anything to do with
an unjust God. Now you think about it. If He wasn't a God
of wrath today, who's to say He wouldn't become one later? I want a God. I want a God that
deals with sin as sin ought to be dealt with. And then I want
a God who provides a way of salvation that deals with sin as it should
be dealt with. And that's exactly the God you
find in Scripture. I want a God who's in control.
I don't want this God who wants to do me good, but has to wait
for me to let Him do it. Because I'll tell you, if you
can let God do something, that means you can stop Him from doing
it. And if you can stop Him from doing it, I guarantee you, you
will. You will. If you can keep God from saving
you, you will. If you can keep God from giving
you spiritual life, you will. If you can keep God from working
faith in you, you will. I say you, I don't want you all
to think I'm pointing to you. I know this because that's the
way I am. The only good that God has ever done for me is the
good He did to me without my permission. In fact, the good
that He did to me contrary to what I would have done or had
done. I love a definition of grace
I heard one time. The best definition of grace
is in spite of. In spite of. God never did anything
for me because I wanted it, because I permitted it, or because I
asked for it. Everything he's ever done for
me, he did for me entirely because he wanted it, and he called for
it. And it happened, and when he
did it, I said, thank you. Thank you. You've seen that picture,
and everybody thinks it's so wonderful. It's horrible. See
that picture of Jesus, you know, He's got His robe kind of pulled
up around Him and He comes up to the door of somebody's heart
and He's giving it this little one knuckle knock. And they tell you Jesus is trying
to get in your heart. That Jesus isn't ever getting
in anybody's heart. Because that door is locked and
the man inside is dead. He can't answer the door. Jesus
Christ comes to the door, if we're going to use that kind
of picture, Jesus Christ comes to the door of the hearts of
those who His Father has chosen Him, and with a hammer made out
of His cross, He beats on that door until it breaks down. And
the whole time He's doing it, we're inside going, stop, stop,
we're barring the door, we're throwing the couch in front of
it, we're doing everything we can to stop it. And then He breaks
in, and His glory fills the room. And we fall down on our knees
and say, thank you, Lord. Come on in. Come on in. Faith prefers the unseen rather
than the seen. Everything I see, brethren, is
a disappointment to me. And the older I get, the more
disappointed I am. Faith sees the invisible God.
Let's look over at 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 1. Verse 8, though you have not seen him, you love
him. And even though you do not see
him now, you believe him and are filled with an inexpressible
and glorious joy. For you are receiving the goal
of your faith, the salvation of your soul. Who have you ever
loved without first seeing them? Now, I love my wife, but I didn't
love her till I saw her. That's just the way things work,
isn't it? I love my children, but I didn't love them until
I saw them. I've never seen Christ, but I
love Him. I love Him. I've never seen Him,
but I believe Him. Maybe some of you have seen this
on Facebook. They show this picture of a bench. As I recall, it was
kind of on a high point overlooking the ocean. Beautiful, calming scene. I'd love to go sit there on that
bench by myself and just listen to the ocean for a little while
and relax. But then the question was, if
you could have anybody from the past sit with you for an hour
on this bench, and talk, who would it be, and what would you
ask? Well, I got to be honest, one
of the things comes to mind, I'd dearly love to sit for an
hour with my parents. I mean, you know, that's just
natural. I dearly love them, they're wonderful
people, and the longer they're gone, the more wonderful I realize
they were. And I'd sure Be honest with you,
there's things I'd apologize for if I had a chance to talk
to him again. But you know something? Would
it not be wonderful to sit for an hour with the Lord Jesus Christ?
And I know what my first question would be. I mean, there's no
question in my mind about what question that'd be. I'd sit down
and say, am I one of yours? Am I one of yours? Because to me, that's everything.
If I'm not one of his, nothing else matters. And if I'm one of his, nothing
else matters. Now you think about that. If
you're not one of his, nothing else matters. And if you are
one of his, nothing else matters. Well, I can't sit on a bench
and talk to him. I can't hug his neck. I can't face to face tell him
how much I love him for what he did. I can't see him, not with these
eyes. But when God is pleased to bless
the preaching of the gospel, I see him with the eyes of faith.
And I can say with the hymn writer, oh, how I love Jesus. Oh, how
I love Jesus. One more quick point, faith is
better than sight. I just said how wonderful it
would be to see him. Our Lord Jesus said, you have seen and
have believed. Blessed are they who have not
seen, yet believe. You've never seen him, but you
believe him. You are the most blessed person in all the world.
You have the special blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ upon
you. You say, but I'm so full of doubts. Of course. Because
faith involves things that your flesh simply cannot detect and
will not accept to be true. It's not going to do it. The
flesh has never seen hell, so it's never going to believe it.
The flesh has never seen heaven, so it's not going to believe
it. The flesh has never seen Christ, not going to believe
Him. Flesh didn't see the crucifixion, and even if it had, it wouldn't
have known what was going on. I never saw Christ being made
sin for me. I never saw my sins laid on Him. I never saw God pour out His
wrath on Him. I never saw Him, as the old confession
says, descends into hell. That is, He actually went into
the grave, He actually experienced the wrath of God for sin. I never
saw it, but I believe it. I believe it. And therein is
the salvation of my soul. Faith is that which stands under
what we hope for and what convinces us concerning things that we
cannot see. And from here until we see his
face, it's going to be faith. And that means it's going to
be struggle, but that's okay. Thank God for the struggle. Because
it means you're alive. Only the living struggle.