you there tonight. Hebrews chapter
11. Now faith is the assurance of
things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by faith
the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand
that the universe was created by the word of God so that what
is seen was not made out of the things that are visible. By faith
Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain. through
which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting
his gifts. And through his faith, though
he died, he still speaks. By faith, Enoch was taken up
so that he should not see death, and he was not found because
God had taken him. Now before he was taken, he was
commended as having pleased God. And without faith, it is impossible
to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe
that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. By faith,
Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent
fear, constructed an ark for the saving of his household.
And by this, he condemned the world and became an heir of the
righteousness that comes by faith. By faith, Abraham obeyed when
he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an
inheritance. And when he went out, not knowing where he was
going, By faith, he went to live in the land of promise as in
a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with
him of the same promise, for he was looking forward to the
city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. By faith, Sarah herself received
power to conceive, even when she was past the age. since she
considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one
man and him as good as dead were born descendants as many as the
stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand
on the shore of the sea." Let's stop. We won't get that far.
One of the things that I said that I wanted to do when we got
into chapter 11 is not just rush, not that I've rushed, but not
go so quickly that we aren't really comprehending what Paul
is trying to say in regard to the examples that he gives. There's one thing that helps
us in life when we're looking to do something, looking to accomplish
something, looking to figure out a new way of painting the
walls or laying down the carpet or maybe it's just we want to
change the oil in our car. We can go find someone who's
doing it and we can watch them and they can teach us and we
can glean from them. Maybe it's something that we've
always done and then someone who has done it longer comes
along and says, why don't you try adding this to the process?
And it can sometimes become extremely helpful. Another thing, we can
even watch others in the faith. I could say that throughout my
entire tenure in the ministry that there have been many times
where I've seen people in certain groups that they begin to talk
alike. They begin to have the same mannerisms in their teaching.
They begin to, you know, answer each other's questions by finishing
their sentences. And one thing leads to another
and we just learn, we glean these things. I have an empathetic
ear. I can pick up dialect. I can
pick up tones. I can pick up timbre. And it's
interesting, if I don't make a conscious effort to not mimic
it, people think I'm mocking them. I can even do that also with
body language. You stand in a room in a nursing home and you begin
to stoop. I mean, does anybody else do
that? And you walk to the water fountain like this. What am I
doing? And we do that. Well, in life,
sometimes we need that. Sometimes we need the examples
to look at. Sometimes we're looking and we're
hoping that someone else can understand what we're going through,
what we're trying to accomplish, and if we could just find the
gal who could take us there because they've done it. We see it all
the time in sales pitches. We see it all the time in politics.
We see it all the time in network marketing companies. They put
all these people with all their nice watches on the stage and
they drive them in on nice cars. You want to make a 10-figure
check next week? Then do what we did. So you go out and buy
the nice car and the nice watch and the check doesn't come. So
sometimes just mimicking something doesn't give the same product,
does it? But when it comes to faith, I
would say that in all of my life of ministry, In all of my life
in ministry, I have had people say, well, what am I supposed
to do? What is it supposed to look like? How am I supposed
to live by faith? What in the world am I doing wrong? And then they want you to sit
down and they want you to give you a list. So if we were to take out our notebooks
tonight and a pen or pencil, and I were to give you 11 things
chapter 11, of how you can grow your faith and live by faith,
it would be an exciting night for a lot of us. Eleven things,
wow, that's great. And it might even be so well
presented that it would be worthy of publishing. Then we can come
up with a really creative cover, a really awesome name, get a
couple of folks who don't even know me that well to put their
signatories on the back with a nice, I read this book but
I didn't, but it's great, you should read it. And then we endorse
it and we put it out on Marketplace and there is a book for sale
and people go nuts over it. My faith has never been stronger.
I have learned to live by faith. 11 ways to live by faith, the
11 steps to faithfulness. I'm mocking too many people right
now. Sorry. But it's because I used to have
that idea, you know? I'm mocking myself. I know what will help
people grow in the faith, write a book about it! And so even sometimes in that
sense, some people say, well, you know what? Let's look at
the Bible. Let's look at the characters
of scripture. And then let's, from that, we will glean what
it means to live a faithful life. So I want to be Paul, you know? And you've heard Trey talk about
this in the last few months. I want to be Peter. I want to be David. I want to be whoever. And the
ladies are like, well, I want to be like Mary. I want to be
pregnant at 13. against my will. I mean, you
know, that's not what we're thinking. I want to be Paul. Oh, really?
You want to just about die all the time and be destroyed in
your body and be crippled and half blind? Lose your freedom,
lose your money, lose your family, lose everything, be hated by
your own, you know, had to spend your entire life getting that
PhD and it's absolutely worthless. Is that what you want? You want
to suffer? You want to be Peter? You want to be John? You want
to be these characters? I want to be Joshua. Give me
a sword, tell me to cut, tell me to wear, and then I'll do
it. How wide? There you go, Jesus. And we want to have this faithfulness
in the context of our Christian experience, but we do it because
we think that the more faithful we are, the better God will love
us. Or the more faithful that we are, the greater our reward
will be. Now there's nothing wrong with
desiring to be faithful to the Lord. There's nothing wrong with
wanting to know what it means to have saving faith and how
to grow in that faith and how to live that faith out. There's
nothing wrong with that desire, but there's something greatly
wrong with it when we tie that desire and its outcomes in the
context of their successes with our eternal life. And that's
what Paul's been writing about for this entire letter thus far
in 10 chapters. That our success in eternity
is everything to do with what Christ has done. The faithfulness
of what he has accomplished. His faith. His faithfulness.
His work. His sufficiency. His power. His purposes. This is what we've
learned. But yet the question is still
there. We, by faith, do not shrink back. We do not destroy our souls.
We are believing in the one who is faithful, and that's what
saving faith is all about. We've gone through that over
the last few weeks. Faith is to have assurance of what we
hope for, and what we hope for, though it is not yet visible,
it is not naive. Because the example and the promises
of God have never failed. We always talk about the test
of prophecy in the Bible. The test of prophecy was, you
take a man at his word. Thus saith the Lord, in three
days this shall take place. And in three days, everybody's
standing there with a rock, and the sundial moves, and the sun
goes down, and that didn't take place, they stole that fool.
Next, anybody else got a word from the Lord? Hey Bob, go ahead
and tell him what you told me yesterday. Now that's all right.
You know, we're not gonna let, you know, Bob's changed his mind
now. That which was from the Lord
was that bread that his mama made. It wasn't the Spirit at
all. And so there is a way to test
that which is in the Word of God because we have the narrative
of Scripture, we have the historical record, we have 500 witnesses
of the ascension of Jesus Christ, we have 1,500 years of writing, by 50 different authors over
several different continents and we now have the Word of God
that has been tested time and time again that is not contradictory
and it is not false. teaching some second graders
this week about the validity of scripture without even ever
using that term and the sufficiency and the authority of scripture.
Have you ever heard a story? Yes. What's your favorite story?
Little Red Riding Hood. I mean, you know, stuff like that. Great.
Is Little Red Riding Hood true? It could be. Okay. The wolf's
talking, you know. But I guess wolves do talk every
Sunday. Sometimes every Wednesday. So
maybe it's a euphemism for something else. Not necessarily a wolf
that has eaten the grandmother, but maybe it's the lies. Maybe
it is. I don't know. Well, we teach
them that they can trust the stories of the Bible not to be
fiction because The Bible attests to itself as not being fiction.
And then we always take that can all the way back. Well, I
wasn't there when it was written. How can I be sure? And let me
tell you something, beloved, no matter how much evidence we
give other people in order for them to be secure in their faith,
according to the word of God, the evidence in and of itself
will never cause them to believe it. In my early apologetic days,
I loved college campuses. There's just, everybody there
is smarter than everybody else in the world. They know everything,
that's why they're going to school. Because they already know everything.
I always found that really odd. I'm so smart, I know it all,
so I'm gonna come to school, learn more. But they always have
this non-critical, illogical way of expressing themselves
on a college campus. And it was always the same thing.
Well, you've got to prove to me the Bible. If you could prove
to me the Bible is true, I'll believe in your God. And I'd
always say, no you won't, and I can't. See, he said he couldn't
prove the Bible's true. Because the Bible in itself testifies
that it is true. And the only way that you're
going to know that is if God the Spirit himself gives you the knowledge
to know that it is true. Faith. It is not the volition
of man that brings us to the place where our faith begins
to grow and to be comforting to us. It is the power of God
unto salvation. It is God the Spirit continually
teaching us through the Word of God. It is a simple and childlike
faith that brings us to the place of knowing that we know that
we know the One who is faithful in saving His people. And so if we were to look at
examples, you know, we could go through the narrative scripture.
I mean, who wants to be Adam? Who wants to be Eve? Who wants
to be Noah? What a wasted life! Hey, Noah, yeah, I want you to
build a boat that's bigger than the city. Okay, sounds good. God, that's gonna take a long
time. That's all right, I'm gonna let you live a long time, so
you'll have plenty. For 100 years, he builds the boat, and for 100
years, people laugh at him and mock at him, and he's constantly
being asked this, where's your proof? You say God's gonna bring
a flood, where is it? We ain't seen rain ever. What
is rain anyway? What are you talking about old
man? Hey daddy, who's the old man in the boat? Don't worry
about Noah, he's the weirdo. He's the guy sitting on the bench
talking to Ronald McDonald. The metal Ronald McDonald that
sits there having a conversation all day long. This is Noah, nobody
wants to be Noah. And Noah yet is listed here.
Nobody wants to be Abel with their blood spilling out on the
ground, yet Abel is listed here. Nobody wants to be Enoch who
had a pretty good life and then disappeared. Missing persons,
you know? Although I'd like to be Enoch.
Poof, where'd you go? Don't worry about me. Don't look
for me, I'm not with the cat that we're missing, I promise
you. All right, so and then who else? Abraham. And so we see
now these examples of faithful people, but I wanna argue tonight
that these are not faithful people. And I'm not arguing so that we
can all be faithless. That's not our calling. Oh, I
didn't care. God doesn't care how we live
or what we do or how we serve. No, we have those instructions.
We have the instructional manual of Christian living. We have
it. It's called the New Testament and we're reading some of it
right now. And we're going to get over into some instruction as
we move into what? Chapter 13. Brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality
to strangers. And remember those who are in
prison, let marriage be held in high honor. It's just this
parting shot list that Paul wants to give these Christians. There's
some things you need to deal with, guys, and I want to just
give it to you. It's like when you go to leave and you're 47
and your mom says, now, wear your seatbelt and don't drive
too fast and turn your blinkers on before you move in the other
lane. Wear a t-shirt, it's cold. I can still hear my grandmother.
telling us all to put our T-shirts on in the middle of September.
You're going to catch death. I don't know what that is. I
guess she saw the future of COVID. I don't know. It was always a
T-shirt, though. And what did we do as young people?
Yes, ma'am. That's it. We didn't talk back.
We just said, yes, ma'am. We went and put a T-shirt on.
It was 175 degrees outside. And we buckled our seatbelts,
even if we were on our bicycle. And we did what we were supposed
to do, because we were scared of them. That's the bottom line.
We were scared of them. We have people always telling
us what to do. It's good for us to learn some
things to do. But this is not faith. This is not something
you can be told to do. Be faithful. Well, how does that work? That's
like John saying, obey the Lord. In what? Everything. In everything. In everything
we're supposed to obey the Lord. Okay, everything what? We're
going to obey the Lord like the Pharisees obeyed? We're going
to be that pure? Have the Word of God forever
in front of you and near your heart. So they printed it out,
put it in packages and wore it on their heart and wore it in
front of their face. And they looked around at everybody else
and said, aren't y'all as holy as we are? They did these sacrifices,
they did these prayers, they did these things. They laid burdens
on top of people so heavily that they couldn't lift them, not
to count the fact that Jesus says they didn't want to. And that has become what faithfulness
means in the American economy of evangelicalism. That if you
just keep doing all this good stuff, and then how does that
parallel to the Church of America? And when I say the Church of
America, that's not a term of endearment. The Church of America is the
apostate, non-gospel social clubs that use Bibles and sing and
everybody gets excited and gets to feel Jesus for a little while
and then goes outside and has no idea who he is. That's just
not what we're up against. How does it parallel? What is
the nature of all of these obedient things that we're supposed to
understand to be faithful? What is faithfulness in the life
of the Christian? Well, some people say, well,
it's just being in church. Well, we've already seen that being
in church is the means of God's grace to maturity, the means
of God's grace to intimacy. But being in a service has nothing
to do with being in the body. But you can watch a service 50,000
miles away, which you might already be back here. I don't know how
big the earth is anymore. Last time I measured it, my tape
ran out. So God has determined some things that are good for
us, that we should listen to, we should do. But it still doesn't
give us the answer. What is faithful obedience? What
is faithfulness? Well, faithfulness and faith
are not the same thing. That's first. There's one of 11. Faithfulness
and faith are not the same thing. Faith is to believe in the faithfulness
of the promise. Faith is to believe in the faithfulness
of the one who is faithful. Faith is to believe in the faithfulness
of the God who is eternal life. Faith is to believe in the finished
work that all of the laws point to in Jesus Christ. That's what faith is. Faith is
to have assurance and confident hope in the finished work of
Jesus Christ alone. And that faith is contrary to
everything that our natural religious mindset ever will hold to. Everything
that we can consider in our minds as to how to be faithful to the
Lord. If we're not careful, and if we're not for the mercy of
Christ, and if we're not for the power of God the Holy Spirit,
and if we're not for the intimacy of the saints around the word,
all of us would come up with our own list of what is required
in order to be a faithful Christian. And by mercy, by grace, Not only
have we been saved, but we've been granted the gift of faith.
Brother Billy and I were talking about this earlier this afternoon,
is that faith and repentance, we know what repentance means.
Repentance is a change of disposition to believe that which God has
proclaimed. It has nothing to do with stopping sin, or looking
away from sin, or turning away from sin, unless that sin is
self-sufficiency and righteousness, to believe in the finished work
of Jesus Christ. Repentance is a change of mind. So when we
see it in the New Testament, we see it used almost all the
time about changing a disposition. So change the way you think about
what you know about righteousness, and obey by faith the thing that
I'm commanding you to understand by righteousness. And people
don't like those words, but these are the words that the scripture
uses intermingled. Believe, and both of those things are a gift
of God. So that God this morning, when I got up, and I was tired,
and I didn't know what day it was, and I was wondering, am
I on schedule, or am I a day behind, or am I about to go start
something that's tomorrow? I'm not kidding, didn't get much
sleep last night, so I'm going, what day is it? It took me a
few minutes, couple cups of coffee, hot shower, and then I'm like,
okay, it's Wednesday, it's the 14th, I'm still on planet Earth,
blah, blah, blah, pinch, I'm here. All right, so we're walking
through all of these things in life, and then I begin to wonder, What is it that my day, my faithfulness,
what's required of me today? Friends, to the point. Sometimes
I don't even know what I'm doing today, much less what God wants
me to do. You ever think like that? So in the faithfulness
of my life, I need some examples. Let me just get to the point,
because I'll talk all night in my introduction. You get the gist.
I need some examples. The examples rest in their salvation
in Christ, who is faithful. That's number two. And now we
have some examples. We saw last week Abel. Well,
first we saw what? We saw that the creation of the
universe was created by the word of God. Now I want you to hear
that for a second. I skipped over that by accident, just because
I got ahead of myself. The very nature of the matter
of the world The very idea that the world exists and the cosmos
exists is because God spoke it into being. Now we in our ability to measure
that which God has given us the ability to measure which is infinite,
which I don't know how you measure that which is immeasurable and
with no end. It's unbelievably pompous to
think that we can, but we're trying and we will get there
one day and we'll measure it. And then we won't know what we've
measured. But we look at the creation,
the Bible attests to the existence of all things in this one way.
God declared it and it became. In the beginning, God. In the beginning, God. Who was
there when the beginning began? God. Who created God? No one.
Because if something created or someone created God, he or
she or it would be God. The very purpose, the very term
of God means the highest of all things. So if there's something
that's higher than the highest, then it's the highest. So God
is eternal. He does not begin, he does not
end. There is no time in which God has ever existed. Because
there is no time in which he does exist because he created
it himself. So then in our infinite way,
or our finite way of thinking about it then, God has always
existed in time. Before time so in the beginning
God God is the actor. He is the one that's doing it
We know God in three persons distinctly the Father the Son
and the Holy Spirit three distinct persons operating and existing
with volition and action and power as God but there is only
one God that's all I'll say about that tonight, but God created
the heavens and the earth and And he said, let there be light,
and there was light. And God saw that the light was
good. But on the fourth day, God created the stars and the
celestial beings. So what is the light of the initial
let there be light? Well, there's a lot there. We
can go to John 1, and we can see that he, John, the evangelist,
begins to express in the same way in the beginning was the
word. In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was God. The Word was with God. He was
with God in the beginning. All things were created by Him.
There was not anything that was created that He did not create.
In Him was the life of the light of men. And then the word became flesh
and dwelt among us, and we have seen the fullness of all that
God is, glory, in the face of Christ. No one has ever seen
God, it says in verse 18 of John 1. But the one and only God sits
at God's right hand and makes him known. All right. Faith looks
at that which is unseen. Faith looks at that which is
unmeasurable. Faith looks at that which is
not Natural. Because it looks at the one who
is supernatural. Faith looks at the finished work
of Jesus Christ. Abel, by faith, died. Abel, by faith, gave an offering. Cain, by flesh, lived. And Cain, by flesh, gave an offering.
And Cain's offering was not acceptable because God did not accept Cain.
God knew Abel in eternity. God loved Abel in eternity. God did not love Cain ever. This is what the gospel is all
about. This is what election reveals. This is what makes it good news.
You believe because God has known you. I've heard many times, many
times about how people say that they have had a terrible life
and then they came to find the Lord and they did something with
that discovery and now their life is awesome. And I don't
know what Lord they found, but it ain't the God of the Bible.
Because it's usually the other way around. Our life is awesome.
We're self-sufficient. We're on top of the mountain.
Oh my goodness, God snatched me off the mountain and put me
in his kingdom. Now my life is a wreck. But I have a life that lasts
forever. You see, there's a difference.
Let me tell you something, beloved. It's a lie. And why do I bring
that up? Because a lot of people will
argue with you in this community, and probably the communities
that most of you live in, people will argue with you that the
reason your life is upside down is because you don't have enough
what? Faith. So now everything's on you. My
dog died, you didn't have enough faith. Got gray hair, didn't
have enough faith. Stubbed a toe, didn't have enough
faith. Windshield gets busted. Maybe brother was praying for
that. So one man's broke windshield is another man's blessing. I
mean, you know, what in the world have we come to to look at the
place where we begin to tell people that they're on the hook
for the sovereignty of God? And if we're doing that on small
things like occasions and money and all this other stuff, then
we have a big problem. If we can't be faithful enough
to get the temporal blessings of the world, how are we ever
going to be faithful enough to have the hope of eternal life?
We can't. We can't. That's why we trust
in the one who's faithful. the one who finished the work,
the one who has opened up the heavens, the one who has gone
before us, the one who has died in our place, the one whose blood
satisfies the wrath of God, the one who is the righteousness
of God and then takes all of his righteousness and gives it
to us, like this, in your account, imputation. It is all for you.
My righteousness, Jesus says, it's all in your account, all
of it. So when we stand before the Father, we don't run away
in fear, we don't hide, we don't worry, are we good enough? We're
not. But Christ is good enough and all His goodness is in us. That's it. So, now we have some
other examples. We have Enoch. And we don't know
a lot about Enoch. We don't know much at all about
Enoch except that he stood for truth and that God called him
righteous. It says that he was committed
as having pleased God. Why was Enoch pleasing to God? Because Enoch believed him. Abel believed God. Abel knew
that the sacrifice of his harvest was an offering, not a bribe. See, good works unto righteousness
are bribes, and God doesn't need it. The bribe of the devil to
the Son of God was, if you bow down to me on this mountain,
nobody's looking, it's just me and you, man. I'll give you the
world. And Jesus, if I were him, I'd
have stood up and said, what world are you talking about?
Willis, not me. What are you talking about? What
are you talking, you talking about the world I said let there
be and it was. You gonna give me what's mine? You know, I said,
let there be an Eubuchain. I mean, I'd have put him in his
place right then. But that was the point. Christ and his humanity. He was tempted as all of us have
been, but he did not sin. And none of us have ever been
tempted to the point of shedding our blood. But Christ shed his
blood. He never, ever was not the righteousness
of God. He was faithful in all things
over the house of God. These are just reviews of what
we've learned already in the last 14, 15 weeks or 26 weeks. of this teaching. So we have
these examples. Enoch was loved by God. He was faithful because God loved him. But he
wasn't really faithful. The phoenix was supposed to be
a great preacher, and then God snatched him out. Shouldn't the
phoenix argue, no, no, no, no, no, wait, I'm not done yet. I'm
not finished. Now's not the time for me to
be gone from the earth. I mean, I got a lot more to do
for you. And God's like, you know, I've been looking at that.
That's probably a pretty good idea. Let me stick you back down there.
Never happened. And it's never gonna happen. God's never gonna
be looking at us and think, you know, I called that guy home
too early. Let me send him back. He doesn't
need us. He will use us all for His good,
for our good, for His glory, for His namesake, for our joy,
and we will be incredibly joyful for it. Ain't it? Without faith, it is impossible
to please God. Without faith, it is impossible
to please Him. In other words, if you don't
believe in His promises, by His power, for His purposes, He's
not happy with you. And now we can even take it back,
because wait a minute, now it's on me again. I have to have faithful
faith. Faithful faith is a gift of God. But faithful faith is often not
faithful. Let's look at some other examples. Noah. Noah. Now let's take Noah as
God's Word illustrates him, as God's Word narrates him. Noah
comes on the scene as a preacher of what? Righteousness. That's
what the Bible calls him, a preacher of righteousness. Noah was called
by God to build this ark to save, and I'm going to say this for
emphasis, to save the world. You're going to save the world,
Noah. You're going to build an ark.
And some people are going to get on it. So you need to preach
to these people, everybody you see, you need to preach to them
the righteousness, my righteousness. And how did Noah preach the righteousness
of God? He preached God's judgment against
sin. And he preached God's mercy on
sinners. And so the ark is a type of Jesus. And the only people that got
on it are the eight that God elected before the foundation
of the world to get on it. That's it. And so through those
eight, God saved the world. Because here we are, right? Thank God it wasn't a band of
brothers. We'd have been done. He saved the world. But Noah was not as faithful
of a man as he should have been. Now it doesn't tell us this,
but I know carpenters. I grew up in carpentry homes. I know what big construction
looks like. I know what little construction looks like. I know what remodeling
looks like. And I'm telling you, there are
times, we got a guest. There are times when, what? There are times when we just
don't want to work. There are times when we just,
and maybe Noah didn't take 100 years to build the ark because
that's how large it was. Maybe he was just lazy. Maybe he's thinking, I'm tired
of being picked on. I'm just being funny. But for
whatever reason, there's nothing in the Bible that teaches that
Noah's obedience earned him a rightful favor with God. What it says
is that by faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events
as yet unseen, in reverent fear, what did he do? In reverent fear,
by faith, constructed an ark for the saving of his household.
By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness
that comes by faith. Now we can sit there and we can parse that
out and we can play with words and we can contradict everything
we've heard thus far. And the story of Noah for the
Hebrew people is very clearly a heroic story. Noah is a patriarch
of antiquity. He is a man who should be modeled. Really? What else do we know about Noah?
What is the story that out of all the stories, of all the afternoons,
of all the days, of all the evenings, of all the weekend binges, what
is the one story that we have about Noah? He got drunk, right? And his sons, one of them mocked
him. Does that sound like a, I mean,
what would happen if you heard that on Facebook tomorrow? Well,
Pastor Tippins and his drunken stupor stepped naked out his
back door. His children posted it on Instagram.
That's what happened. Ham posted it on Instagram. Look
at my daddy's butt. I mean, you know, for the kids
that are listening. I mean, is this the kind of guy
you want to be the preacher of righteousness for you? Absolutely
not. Noah. What's the point here? Noah had
no idea what a flood was going to look like. See, the emphasis
is Noah, by faith, being warned of God concerning events, and
here is the centerpiece of this, as an example, as yet unseen. That's the topic that Paul's
talking about, yet unseen. By faith, we know that he created
the world so that what is seen was not made out of things that
are visible. By faith, Abel offered to God
a more acceptable sacrifice, through which he was commended
as righteous. And though through his faith,
though he died, he still speaks. Enoch could not see death, yet
he was taken up as if he had died. And now we have Noah who
believed God about things that he could not fathom. So these men believed what they
could not see. Because God promised them what? He promised them and they believed
Him. Why did they believe Him? How
does Abraham and Noah, how do these people believe these things?
Because they were given faith. Powerful faith over and over
again. How many times do you think Noah probably thought about
giving up and God just reassured him and gave him faith to hold
fast to the promise. Noah, I promise you I'm going
to kill everybody but your family. You know, it's been 68 years,
God. I think maybe, did you kill another planet? And you just
got me on the wrong one, this boat's for somebody else. What's
going on here? I don't know, maybe the boat
was finished for 100 years. Think about that. It's done,
now what? It's an ark in Kentucky. We'll
charge admission. Shame on me. Now let's look at
the last example here tonight by faith. Abraham obeyed when
he was called to go out to a place. To a place. To a place that he
was going to receive as an inheritance and he went out. What does it
say there? Let me see what it doesn't say.
And he went out with a very careful map to the place that God exactly
called him to in knowing full well the cost and the journey.
No, it said, and he went out not knowing where he was going.
He couldn't see it. He couldn't see it. He couldn't see it. So, faith
is all about believing that which you can't see because God has
promised it. God has promised eternal life.
Now, here's another problem when it comes to this chapter. A lot
of people say, well, see, Abraham obeyed, Abel obeyed, Enoch obeyed,
Noah obeyed, and this is the point. This is not the point.
The point is they believed what they could not see. because God
had promised it. The salvation of Noah and his
family has nothing to do with eternal life. It's a picture
of it. The faithfulness of the sacrifice of Abel doing the services
of God as an act of love and worship to God because God first
loved him and he knew Abel before the foundation of the world is
an example of worship. It's not about eternal life.
And the reason God killed Abel in his providence or decreed
that Abel would die is so that his blood would be a type of
Christ. And the same thing with Noah.
Same thing with Abraham. Abraham went to a place he had
no idea where he was going. He just went. By faith he went
to live in the land of promise as a foreigner. It wasn't even
his place. He was not received. He didn't
go and live in the mansion. He lived in tents. He lived with Isaac. He lived
with Jacob. Heirs with him of the same promise. Now you've forgotten to see that
chapter 10 verse 36 says, For you have need of endurance, so
that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what
is promised. How do we receive what is promised? We do the will
of God. And these examples here are showing
these men doing the will of God, and because they did the will
of God, they got what was promised. Now some people are going, now
you're preaching right. And I'm about to tear that up. But doing the will of God is
not shrinking back and being destroyed, but to have faith
in the promises of God. That's what it means to be faithful,
is to believe in the faithful one. And it's not just these
men. Even when Abraham was given this
land and living in tents like a foreigner, he realized he was
looking to the city that has foundations, whose designer and
builder is God, not a city made with hands. By faith, Sarah herself
received power to conceive. So Sarah had to believe. so that
God could cause her to conceive? But what was Sarah's first response? What did she do? She busted out
laughing, so much so that they named the boy Laughter. That's what it means. That's
why he changed his name. I was laughing. Now my hips broke.
I mean, you know, that's what it's all about. Even when she was too old, how
since she considered him faithful who had promised." See, I don't
make this stuff up. It's just the context. We have
to read the context of Scripture. Therefore, from one man as good
as dead were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven
and many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. Look at verse 13, and I'm going
to quit. These all died in faith. I thought the promise was life.
Not this life that we can see, the one that we can't see. Not
this life that we can manipulate and challenge and schedule and
grow and touch. But it's the life that's not
here. All these died in faith, not having received the things
promised. Wait a minute. Did Noah not receive
salvation from the flood? Yeah, but that wasn't the promise.
It was a picture of the promise. Did Abraham not receive a bunch
of kids in a promised land? But yeah, but that wasn't the
promise. It was a picture of the promise. The promise of a new kingdom
that comes in Christ who is crowned on the throne of the kingdom
of heaven when he got on the cross with a crown on his head
and he bled and died. That was the inauguration of his, that
was his scepter. That is his rule. And so they greeted the promise
from afar. and having acknowledged that they were strangers and
exiles on earth. So think about it. Paul is just reiterating.
He's saying, you want some examples of faith? This is it. And what
do these men and women do? They believed, they trusted,
they rested, even when they had a job to do in the earth and
on the earth for the sake of the ministry of God. Well, there's
a big difference in Noah's Ark and Bible study on Sunday morning.
No, there's not. There's no difference at all.
Because Noah built an ark for a hundred years and preached
the judgment and the mercy of God and not one person believed
him because God did not purpose to save but ate. And when we
preach the Bible study on a Sunday morning, or a Tuesday night,
or a Wednesday night, and we have five people there, and none
of them actually sort of see, or maybe they do, but maybe the
one that comes is the one that gets on the ark because God has
called them to see and believe, and maybe they grow in their
faith. Building the ark and teaching the scripture is all one and
the same in the fact that we are doing that which God has
called us to do. When we assemble together, it's just like Abraham
walking out of Ur and leaving the Chaldeans behind. Going to
nowhere that he had no idea where it was going to be. So yeah, we have some things
that we ought to be faithful in, but the most important thing
is that we believe in the faithful one. And that all these other
things will work themselves out in time. Each one of us uniquely
created by God, uniquely empowered by God, we all have individual
gifts. And trust me when I say this, you don't want my gifts.
And I don't want your gifts as my gifts. I want you to give
me your gifts and I will give you my gifts. I don't we don't
want to swap. See? Because we all have the same
gift. That's a very uncomfortable gift opening. Oh, we got the
same thing. Jinx. Especially if you got it from
somebody else, and then you re gifted it like this. Get the point. We are all important to the task
at hand because even the present day task has everything to do
with what we yet cannot see, eternal life, the promise of
the kingdom of heaven. And so our rehearsal time is
here. Our intimacy around that promise
is now. And it is the most vital thing that we can do as believers.
It's not even about evangelism, beloved. I'm gonna tell you,
y'all gonna hate me when y'all start talking about evangelism
in the next few months. Because evangelism is not to
scare or to coerce or to pressure. Evangelism is to just be faithful
to believe the promise of God that if we teach the Bible to
the sheep, the sheep will hear the voice. And the ones that
go, that's bad, they're not sheep, they're goats, let them go. Let
them go. That's tough for me. I want everybody
Always here. Always close. Always healthy. Always joyful. Always learning.
Always at peace. And my number one response emotionally
when these things aren't working out for people who I think are
God's children is anger. Did you know that? Number one
emotion. I get furious. When my children
were really little and they would get hurt, I was furious. Why
are you mad? I don't know. I just want to
kill something. Your child is hurt, I know it's breaking my
heart, but I want to kill something. They fall out of the chair, you break
the chair in half. You really don't, but you think you can.
And you realize that hurt. And what is that? That's sin,
that's fleshliness. And the reason that we get angry
sometimes as shepherds when things aren't going well with the joy
of the saints is because we, in some weird way, think that
we had something to do with it. Either in the positive or the
negative. And there is nothing whatsoever that God is doing
that I am responsible for. God will do that which He intends
to do. And beloved, His purpose for
us is to fight through the tough fight of faith while we rest
with boldness. And our joy comes not from the
absence of suffering. or for the simplicity of life
or for the fun of it. But our joy comes from the things
that we cannot see, which is an eternal life in heaven with
God because of Jesus Christ for his people. Let's pray. We thank you, Lord, that we are
desirous of a better land, a better country, a better opportunity.
Father, when we break into glory, I know there's not going to be
a lectern, a stage, a sermon. We're not going to have to study
Pars Greek. We're not going to have to debate
doctrine. We're not going to have to exercise
rebuke or discipline and encouragement or exhortation or admonishment.
Lord, we're just going to be absolutely in love with the fullness
of your son, Jesus Christ. And we together will look and
know and see him for who he is. And we shall be like him and
forever worship and learn at his feet. And whatever that looks
like, we want it. And we know that we can trust
in the promise of life because you have given us the faith to
believe in the promise of So there's no reason for us to try
to prove to someone else how good your promises are through
evidence or prove to you how good our faithfulness is through
actions. But Lord, let us encourage each
other to love and to good deeds. Let us not neglect to gather
together as some are in the habit of doing. But Lord, as long as
it is called the day, let us be together as often as we can
under the teaching of the word of God so that we may rest in
the sufficient promises that you have given us. Father, you've
called us together and you will not rescind that. You call your
people to be part of the body of Christ, the part of the fellowship,
the family of faith. So Lord, you do not change those
things. But Father, sometimes we do. So as we work through discerning,
knowing, understanding and gaining wisdom to know how we're going
to put our next foot forward. Father, let us look at Christ
who trusted in your promises and he never took a sidestep.
So help us not to take a sidestep either. And not to move forward
either until we see Christ move. For what it's worth, Lord, these
things are difficult for some. To even understand them, but
Lord, I do believe that you are teaching us this right now. Help
us to rest. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.