chapter 11 Hebrews chapter 11 and the title
of the message is when faith meets death when faith meets
death now from this portion of scripture from 17 through 19
we looked at last Thursday on substitution But I feel like
there's two messages here, including Jacob, Isaac, Joseph, and it has to do with them coming
down to the last hour of their life
and how they meet it, how they meet it. We have Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, and Joseph. All four dealing with death. I gave you my introduction in
the bulletin. Some of you may have it by now,
but all four of these are dealing with death and in the face of
death, they speak and they act and they are examples for us.
They speak and act in faith and not fear. We don't even have
the smell of fear in their conversation, not even the smell of it. They look beyond death to things
unseen and things yet to come. They live believing God and they
died believing God. Well, now there's a legacy you
want to leave. That's a legacy you wanna leave. Somebody asked
me one time, what kind of legacy do you wanna leave? Of course
I said to him, really? But I can tell you now, I wanna
live and die in faith. I want that to be said of me,
that he lived and died believing God. Believing God, that's what
faith is. and they looked beyond death
to things unseen and things yet to come. They lived believing
God, they died believing God, and their hope was in the promises
of God who cannot lie. We can take God at His Word just
as they did. It is impossible for God to lie,
impossible. Their hope was in God's promises
Not in what they saw, but now listen, this is important, not
in what they saw, but what God said. God said it. God said it. Therefore it's so. No one knows how to handle death
apart from faith. No one knows really how to handle
it. I said to someone once, I said, as we live, So shall we die. And what I meant by that was
this, if we have lived by faith, we shall die by faith. If the
just live by faith, the just will die by faith. If they live
believing God, they'll die believing God all the way to the end. And I have no doubt one of the
greatest trials of faith, and there's many trials of faith
that comes upon the child of God. many appointed trials that
God has for every individual in this room you have your appointed
trials but we all have the same appointed trial in the end it's
death when we come to face our own mortality I watched it in
my parents And it probably made me think more upon my own mortality
than any other funeral that I have done. I've done a lot of funerals,
but watching them. made me think more upon myself
and my own end. And if I don't die in an accident
or just die of a heart attack, my sons and grandchildren will
watch me die. And I want to die in faith. I
want to die. I pray this. I've prayed this
more than once. Lord, let me give a good witness
when it comes time to die. Let me give a good witness to
your grace. when it come time to let go of
this world and say farewell to all that's in this world, even
the relationships. Now death, here's what the first
thought of my message is this, verse 17 through 19. We looked
at it as substitution last week, but I want to look at it as the
death of a loved one. BY FAITH, ABRAHAM, WHEN HE WAS
TRIED, OFFERED UP ISAAC, AND HE THAT HAD RECEIVED THE PROMISES
OFFERED UP HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON. You know, we went back over
to Genesis 22 and God said, The Son whom you love, that One whom
you love, the Son of Promise, that Miracle Son, I want you
to offer him up. I want you to kill him. I want
you to kill him. Jane said to me when she was
leaving Sunday, I thought about it after I went home. She said
to me last Sunday that she thought that the trial of Abraham was
harder than the trial of Job. And I think you're right in this
sense. Job had nothing to do with the death of his ten children.
it just happened and he bowed to God and he said the Lord giveth
and the Lord taketh away blessed be the name of the Lord but Abraham Abraham's going to be the instrument
of Isaac's death. He's going to be the instrument
of his beloved son's death. He's going to bind him to that
altar and he's going to cut his throat and offer him up as a
burnt offering. He's going to be the instrument
of his death. And even though he had received
in like figure his resurrection that he was coming back off that
mountain, he still was going to have to kill his son. That's
a trial. Yeah, that's a tough one. You
know, when the trial just falls on you like rain, you just bow
down. But boy, when God tells you to
do something, then it's a difficult thing to do. That's a real trial. The death
of a loved one is painful. It's painful. Don't think that
Abraham wasn't feeling this one. He was feeling it. I promise
you, he was feeling it. And I know the death of a loved
one is painful. However, by faith, we know that
loved ones, and I'm talking about loved ones who believe God. I'm
not talking about loved ones who believe the gospel, who believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. We know they're with the Lord,
don't we? To be absent from the body is
to be present with the Lord. They're with the Lord. And He's
gonna bring them with Him when He comes. But oh, what a place
they are in. What did our Lord say to that
thief on the cross? Today, today, shalt thou be with
me in paradise. Would you bring any of your loved
ones back from paradise to this mess? No, no. I know we miss them, but I wouldn't
bring them back to this. I wouldn't at all. Yes, we have
sorrow, but our sorrow is not as others who have no hope. That's
what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians. He wrote that in 1 Thessalonians
chapter 4. We sorrow not as those who have
no hope. Our sorrow is sorrow, but it's
not excessive sorrow. Pain, but it's not excessive
pain. is tempered with grace. God gives us grace to bear it
is tempered with knowledge we know could they be in better
company could they be in better company could they be in a better place
away from all this crime ridden evil this ungodly world yeah we sorrow but not as those
who have no hope and Abraham's faith HERE IS THE FOUNDATIONAL
FAITH THAT HIS CHILDREN HAVE. Now let me read some scriptures
to you so you'll understand who the children of Abraham are.
It's not just his fleshly descendants. You know, the Pharisees said,
We are Abraham's seed. They called him Father Abraham.
Christ said, You're of your father, the devil. That's who you are.
That's who you are. In Galatians 3 verse 7 and verse
9, Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, that's not
just any faith, that's the faith of God's elect, that's the faith
that God had given to Abraham. Know ye therefore that they which
are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. You who
believe the gospel, we who believe the gospel, we are truly THE
CHILDREN OF ABRAHAM! WE ARE! WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF
ABRAHAM! THEY THOUGHT BECAUSE THEY WERE
FLESHLY DESCENDANTS THAT THEY WERE THE ONES! THEY WERE THE
CHILDREN! THEY HAD IT MADE! THEY ARE AUTOMATICALLY IN THE
COVENANT! NO YOU ARE NOT! AND NO THEY ARE NOT! THOSE WHO ARE OF FAITH! NOT THOSE WHO DESPISE JESUS CHRIST! Not at all, this is a spiritual
seed spoken of here, and that's the only seed that's going to
last. All this flesh stuff is going to be buried. Verse 9,
So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. And you can go over Romans 4.12
and 4.16 and read more about that. And then secondly here we have
Isaac. you know not much is written
about Isaac he's of the four men here he's written about the
least but what he has to say is and what's said about him
here is powerful you see the faith of Isaac here is forward-looking
It's looking to things unseen. That's what faith does. Abraham
is looking for a city whose builder and maker is God. Well, that
city is not on this earth. It's in heaven. That new Jerusalem
is in heaven. He's looking for things yet to
come, things spiritual. You see, faith looks beyond this
life. Faith looks BEYOND death. It sees BEYOND death And by faith
it sees, now I know through a glass darkly we see, but we see into
that world that's to come. And we see into that world to
come through the Word of God. We're not trying to imagine these
things, we have God's Word on it. You go over in Revelation
21 and 22 and read. And read where God wipes away
all tears, no sorrow, no pain, that's what's coming. That's
what's coming. It says, By faith Isaac blessed
Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. Each act of faith was
rooted in the covenant promise given to Abraham concerning his
seed. And that seed is Christ. That
covenant has to do with Christ. Isaac is at the end of his life
on this earth. He's coming up to die. But before
he dies, he, by faith, blesses his two sons, Jacob and Esau. But now here we see two things. If you go back and read the story,
the story is very familiar to you. But we see two things, we
see God's sovereignty, the blessing going to Jacob. You know, before
Jacob was born, God made it known to Rebecca that the elder shall
serve the younger, that the purpose of God, according to election,
might stand. It's of grace and not of works. It's not by inheritance. God
made that very clear. The birthright is not by inheritance,
it's by grace. It's by grace. So Isaac at the end of life,
he blesses his son, but God's sovereignty is demonstrated here
in blessing Jacob over Esau. I want you to listen to Genesis
25, 28, and Isaac loved Esau. He loved that boy as a young
man then. He loved him. He ate of his venison. He was a man's man. He was a
hunter. And it says, because he did eat of
his venison, but Rebecca loved Jacob. But Isaac. He is full, he was,
and I think, you know, I don't know by reading here, but I have
to believe that Rebecca told him about what she was told,
what the angel of the Lord told her about the elder shall serve
the younger. I don't know, but I have to think
that surely she did. But anyway, you know the story
how they connived and did what they did. But Isaac, he wanted
Esau to have that blessing. He loved that boy, but God hated
that boy. Jacob have I loved, Esau have
I hated. I'm not going to make any apologies
for that. I'm not going to try to sweep
it under a rug or take the edge off from it. I mean, that's hard.
That's tough because you know Isaac prayed for that boy. Is this getting a little too
hard? This is the truth. He prayed for that boy. I know
he did. Just like he prayed for both those boys. But he loved
Esau. And he wanted to give him the
birthright. He wanted to give him a double portion. But God
said no. God said no. Now here's faith. Here's faith. Isaac was deceived
and he knows he was deceived. And as soon as Jacob went out,
Esau came in and Isaac was just like in fear. He said, I just
gave all this to your brother. Isaac did not change the blessing
because he was deceived. He saw God's hand in it. And it may be that he did remember
what Rebekah said to him. The elder shall serve the younger.
BUT WHATEVER, I DO KNOW THIS, BY FAITH HE SUBMITS TO THE WILL
OF GOD IN THIS MATTER. HE SUBMITS TO GOD AND HE LEAVES
THE BLESSING WITH JACOB, JUST AS GOD WOULD HAVE IT TO BE. HE SUBMITS TO GOD'S WILL AND
THAT'S WHAT WE DO. THAT'S JUST WHAT WE DO, WE SUBMIT
TO GOD'S WILL. Now we'll see here that the faith
of all four looked to the future. They were not looking to the
past, they were looking to the future. You see, faith looks
to covenant blessings, covenant promises, and not to present
circumstances. I thought of this, it's a song, it's not in our
book, our red book, but William, I call him Calper, some call
him Cooper, but it depends on if you're from England or from
America. Judge not the Lord by feeble
sense, but trust Him for His grace. Behind the frowning providence
He hides a smiling face. I copied, I went and found the
song and I copied it and put it in my Bible and I've got the
whole song to it. Faith looks at the covenant blessings
that we have in Jesus Christ It looks to the promises of God
in Christ and it doesn't look at circumstance. It doesn't look
like, well, how can it be? Abraham, he knows that the promise
of the seed has to come through Isaac, but it doesn't hesitate
to go ahead and put him to death because he knows God has to raise
from the dead. That's faith. Faith walks You
know, faith is not blind. Faith is not blind. Faith walks
believing God, taking Him at His Word. That's not blind faith. That's being taught of God. That's being taught of God. And now we come to Jacob. Here
we have blessing and worship by faith at the end of life. Well, I hope I can do this. I
hope if God lets me live as old as He let my dad live, and my
dad got feeble, I'm hoping that I can get up on the edge of the
bed, and the last thing I do is worship God. Worship God. By faith, Jacob, when he was
dying, all these men are dying except for Abraham, but his son,
he's going to put his son to death, Jacob, Isaac and Jacob
and Joseph, they're dying. He says, He blessed both the
sons of Joseph, that's Ephraim and Manasseh, and worshipped,
leaning upon the top of his staff, showing how feeble and old he
was. You know, Jacob had an interesting
life, didn't he? He had an interesting life. He
deceived his father. He was a deceiver. He wrestled
with God, the Lord Jesus Christ. He struggled with his father-in-law.
He had to work 14 years for his wife, Rachel, after being deceived
by his father-in-law, who gave him Leah instead. Then after he worked seven years
and he's supposed to have Rachel, then his father-in-law just,
he pulled one on him, just like he did his dad, just like Jacob
did his daddy. He pulled one on him. You know
what that old saying, what goes around comes around. Well, he
got deceived. Then he worked 14 years to have
Rachel, but it says that it just seemed like a few days to him. But anyway, he was deceived by
his father-in-law and his life was one of trouble. It was trouble,
trouble, trouble. He said to Pharaoh, the days
of the years of my pilgrimage are 130 years. Few in evil have
the days of the years of my life been. You know, I have noticed
over the years that some of God's children seem to have one trouble
after another. Some seem to not have too many
troubles. They seem to go through life and things are good, and
they never have financial troubles, never have real health troubles.
But then some of them, boy, I tell you, some of them have troubles. Trouble, trouble, trouble. Jacob's
one of them. Jacob had trouble, trouble, trouble.
But you know what he did? He kept believing God. He never
quit believing God. Never quit believing God. All
the way to his old age, he still believed God. And it's interesting
if you read the story how Jacob did on purpose what Isaac did
unknowingly. He purposely switched hands.
Here's another act of God's sovereignty. Here's an act of sovereignty.
God had Jacob to bless Ephraim over Manasseh. Joseph tried to
take his hand and said, hold on, don't do that. It upset Joseph,
it says that he got upset, he got mad. Don't do that! Because
Jacob was blind, he was about blind like Isaac was. Neither
one of them could see it when it was really over. And he told
him, Jacob's like, get your hands off me. I know what I'm doing.
I'm paraphrasing. But he wouldn't do it. He knew
what he was doing. Here again, God demonstrates.
Here's what God demonstrates. Here's what we see. Listen here.
Spiritual blessings are not by seniority. They're not by seniority. They're by grace. They're by grace. And then we see something else
here. We see faith at its strongest when the flesh is at its weakest. He believed God. He believed
the promises. He believed the covenant. He
believed God concerning Christ. And when it came time for the
blessing, God, listen, God guided this lineage all the way. I mean, they went into Babylon
and I mean, But God guided this lineage all through there, all
the way to Christ, all the way to Christ. I went over in Matthew
last night and read the genealogy of our Lord, even as they went
to Babylon. Our God's amazing, isn't he?
He's amazing. No, no, no. This is not left
up to the flesh. This is left up to God. His Son
is going to come through this one seed, this one line, and
He directs it all those years. But we see here at the end of
His life that He's feeble, He's blind, but His faith is not blind. His faith is not blind. If I live to be a hundred, I've
got to get above your old age. If I live to be a hundred and
I lose my sight, I want to be my eyesight and not faith sight. I'd rather go blind and not see
the light of day than not see Christ who is light, who is my
light. And then we see WORSHIP is the
fitting companion of FAITH. Where there is TRUE FAITH, I
promise you, there will be TRUE WORSHIP. Where there is TRUE
FAITH. And then SPIRITUAL INSIGHT increases
with SPIRITUAL MATURITY. Even in physical decline, when
we start to go down, FAITH goes up. It goes up. Even when the
body is dying, the SPIRIT is LIVING. This is what got me to,
Vicki said, you wrote an awful lot about death in the bulletin.
Well, when I got to reading this, I said, well, it's not morbid
to those who believe. You know, speaking of death is
not morbid to us. Now it might be to some, but
not to believers. But anyway, when the body's dying, the spirit is living. The outward man, as Paul says,
I'm trying to think of a scripture as I'm standing here. Paul says,
As the outward man perishes, the inward man is renewed day
by day. And now we come to Joseph. Joseph believed the promise of
the future deliverance of Israel. and he looked beyond just the
physical Israel, God's Israel, God's true Israel, the spiritual
Israel of God. These men believed on the Lord
Jesus Christ, they believed there'd be a resurrection, they believed
that. Job, I know my Redeemer liveth and I'll see Him even
though these Skin worms. That song, that rhyme hit me
today. I asked Vickie, I said, you think
I should have put that in a bulletin or not? But that rhyme hit me
today. And I thought, yeah, the worms
will have their day, but I'll have mine. I'll have my day,
above all of them. But listen here, by faith, Joseph,
when he died, made mention of the departing of the children
of Israel and gave commandment concerning his bones. Don't you
leave me here in Egypt. Joseph, you know, this prophecy
of Israel going into bondage was given to Abraham. It was
given to Abraham. no doubt you know abraham talked
to joseph and joseph believed that prophecy he believed that
they were going to go into bondage for 400 years but they're coming
out of it god said so god said so and though listen here here's
some things i want to make an observation of concerning joseph
first of all his position in egypt how he handled that. He was second. Now listen, think
of the power of this man. He's second to Pharaoh, second
to Pharaoh, nobody else compared to Joseph and yet Joseph's heart
remained with God's covenant people. It remained with God's
people, not the Egyptians, with God's people. HE BELIEVED GOD'S
PROMISE TO ABRAHAM THAT ISRAEL WOULD BE DELIVERED, AND HE SAID,
DON'T YOU LEAVE ME HERE! DON'T YOU LEAVE ME HERE! YOU KNOW, HE SPEAKS PROPHETICALLY
IN GENESIS 50, HE SAID, GOD WILL SURELY VISIT YOU! HE'LL SURELY
VISIT YOU! AND WHEN I READ THAT THIS EVENING,
OR TODAY, I THOUGHT WE HAD THAT SAME PROMISE IN CHRIST SPIRITUALLY! Spiritually, the Lord will visit
you. I go and prepare a place for
you. If I prepare a place for you, I'll come again and receive
you to myself to where I am, there you may be also. And we
need to have this understanding when God takes a loved one, a
believer, when he takes a loved one from us, he's taking him
or her to that place he's prepared for them. He's taking them home. HE'S TAKEN THEIR HOME. And Joseph here, he gives command
regarding his bones. And he gives this command as
a public testimony of his faith and confidence in the promises
of God. This is a public testimony. You
all take my bones out of here with you. When you go, because
you're going. When you go. You see, Egypt was
not his home. Egypt's not his home. Now, I don't know when I'll die. I'm thinking I may die here and
I may be buried over here in the cemetery. I don't know. I
don't know what God has in store. I have no idea. If I did, that
wouldn't be faith, would it? It wouldn't be living by faith.
I don't know. But I know this, if I'm buried
over here or if I'm buried somewhere else, it's not home. It's not
home. The Lord's going to come and
get me. He's going to raise me from that grave and He's going
to take me to glory. He's going to take me to the
promised land, the true promised land. And you too, you who believe,
He's coming to get you. That's why Joseph said, Egypt's
not home, this world's not home, not even for this body. Now this body's going to go back
to the grave, it's going to go back to dust, but I'm going to have a
new body, a new body, and it's going to go back to glory. His hope lay in the covenant
promise of God, not just to Abraham, but to Christ, the seed of Abraham,
through whom all nations would be blessed. There's a lot to be said of these
men, but here in closing, Joseph's
faith, unlike Jacob and Isaac, who lived in tents and as pilgrims,
he lived in comfort. He lived in comfort. Some of
God's children live in more comfort than others. Some of God's children
have fat bank accounts. I know millionaires that believe
God, they're God's children and they've lived well. But here's a message to them,
here's a message to them, those who are like that. Joseph lived in comfort, he lived
in success, but he never became attached to those things. He
never became attached to them. He used them, but was not used
of them. We are to use these things, but
not abuse these things that God gives us. And we see here in
Joseph that faith transcends CIRCUMSTANCE, WHETHER RICH OR
POOR, FAITH BELIEVES GOD AND FOLLOWS AFTER HIM. AND FAITH
LOOKS BEYOND THE GRAVE, AND TRUE FAITH IDENTIFIES WITH GOD'S PEOPLE
AND PROMISES, NOT WORLDLY STATUS, NOT POWER, NOT RICHES, NO, THEY
IDENTIFY WITH GOD'S PEOPLE WHETHER THEY ARE RICH OR POOR. IT DOESN'T
MATTER. Because you know what? Some are
more wealthy in this congregation. Some are more wealthy than others.
But we are all equally wealthy in Christ. And not one penny
of that wealth that we have on this earth is going to go with
us. Not one. But we are equally wealthy in
Christ. Equally rich. And those are the
true riches. I'll be glad when the day comes
when all this status stuff and all these material things is
all gone. It's all gone. Boy, that's just
so real to me. It's coming. That's coming. It's
like you can see it coming down the road. It's coming. You know what? When we lived
on that farm growing up, Before they ever paved it, it was a
dirt road. And it was a dirt road for a pretty good while.
But we could see a car that was probably over a mile, because
it was in a curve that came around like this. And you could see,
this is how we knew somebody was coming. We could see the
dust. We could just see the dust rolling. And we knew somebody
was coming. Well, I'm not looking at dust,
but it's like I can see it coming. I can see it coming. More now
than ever. We see in all four characters
that God-given faith overcomes all trials, even that last trial
called death. It overcomes all. FAITH FOLLOWS
AFTER GOD AT ALL TIMES, IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. I enjoyed looking at this. I
enjoyed it. I hope you did. I hope you enjoyed
listening to it. All right.