We're gonna be in Hebrews 11
again, if you would like to turn back there. These who are mentioned in this
hall of faith, as they call it, this chapter of faith, matriarchs
and patriarchs that the Lord gave faith to, and they believed
God. They're often spoken of in false religion wrongfully.
I recall a specific time in my life when men would say, you
need to have more faith like Abraham. Well, if you have faith,
if you have faith that came from the Lord, it's not going to fail.
It's not going to fail. What they meant was is you need
to do more to try to get more faith to believe more. So you
need to study the Bible more. You need to listen to messages
more. You need to go to church more. You need to do this and
this and this to get more faith. Faith is the gift of God. We
can't constrain or restrain him to give us anything. Faith is
a gift of God. So these are spoken of. We don't
focus on the person, Abraham. We focus on the substance of
his faith, the substance of his faith. So we look at Abraham,
we see, yes, he had faith, but it came from God. And we look
at the substance of that faith. What is the substance? It's the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's who we look to. That's
who we rejoice in. When we see that he was faithful,
we say, Lord, make me faithful. Make me faithful unto you, because
if you don't make me faithful, I won't be faithful. And the
answer to that cry or that plea would be, I've given you faith
to believe, and you're going to believe. That's the hope,
isn't it, that the Lord does that? The focus should be the
substance of faith. If faith is spoken of as a work,
then by definition, the one speaking is gravely mistaken about what
faith is. Faith is not a work. Faith is
not a work. You can't exercise your faith.
There's no such thing. It's not possible. It's not possible. We heard the first hour what
faith does. It rests on God's Sabbath, doesn't it? The Lord
Jesus Christ. It believes God is faithful, that promised. We no longer fear the wrath of
God. We're trusting in his power and
salvation. We love him because he first loved us. This is what
all faith does. And we have a sound mind now.
That's what we heard the first hour. This is what faith does
for the Lord's people. We believe Him over self, over
circumstances, over all things. Do you believe God over all things?
If you do, it's because He's given you faith to believe Him
over all things. We live in a world where, in our nature, is to see
things. I want to see, you know, physically
see something as evidences or I want to physically see something
that I can, that's tangible, I can lay hold on, I can touch,
I can feel. That was Thomas's problem, wasn't
it? He said, I'm not going to believe
that Christ resurrected until I thrust my hand into his side
and I've touched the scars in his hands. And the Lord appeared
unto Thomas and he said, send forth, put forth your hand. and
to my side, Phil. And he felt the sight of the
Lord, and he saw the hands, and Thomas said, my Lord and my God.
And he said, blessed are they which have not seen and yet believe. And that's what faith is, not
seeing but yet believing. Faith is a sight that the Lord
gives to see him, spiritually speaking. Without that faith,
we can't see. It's our eyes to see him. Faith believes in all
things, that no man alive has ever seen, that no man alive
is ever going to see until we see him face to face. So we're
believing in things that we don't understand and nobody's ever
seen it before that's alive today. Well, how do you know it's real?
Well, the Lord said it for one and he gave faith to believe
it for two. That's why we believe it's real. That's why we believe
it's real. If I indeed have this saving
faith given to the Lord's people at the appointed time, then I
will die with this saving faith. I will die in faith, believing
God. I'll die in faith. He will see
to it that I die in faith if he's given it to me, because
he will not lose one sheep. That's what he said, wasn't it?
He will not lose one sheep. I've titled this message Dying in
Faith. dying in faith. Let's read our text, Hebrews
chapter 11, look at verse 13 through 16. These all died in
faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them
afar off. And we're persuaded of them and
embrace them and confess that they were strangers and pilgrims
on the earth. For they that say such things
declare plainly that they seek a country, And truly, if they
had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they
might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire
a better country that is unheavenly. Wherefore, God is not ashamed
to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city."
Dying faith. These all died in faith. Did
you know dying in faith is not a one-time thing? We die the
day that the Lord births us into his family. We die to self. We
die to self, looking unto Christ. We die to self. We say, truth,
Lord, your way is right. We die to self. And then, in
life, we die to the world. Paul said, the world's crucified
to me, not to the world. We die to the world. You know it's true
that the twinkle The sparkle of the world loses its luster
the closer we get to glory. The more we see of him, we see
through the time that we're so constrained by, we can see through
it. When the Lord brought us out
of darkness into light, when he chose by his power to
birth us in his family, we died in faith. In faith, we die to
self. We come now saying in my hand
no price I bring, not nothing good of my own can I do, no works
can I do that's good that would merit anything. We died to the
notions that we used to have, the thoughts that we used to
have of who God is. That man don't exist anymore, he's dead.
No, I believe the Lord over self. We die to self. And we die to
the world, don't we? And then one day, we'll draw
our last breath, and will die physically in faith. Will die
physically in faith. And for the believer, that's
the most glorious day because you will awake in his likeness
and you'll see him face to face and you'll be made just like
him. You'll have a glorified body, a perfect body. No sorrow,
no pain. You'll think on the Lord all
the time. You'll never think of anything
else. You'll think of his grace and his mercy. You'll praise
him throughout these ceaseless, endless ages. That's what we're
looking for when we die in faith. Galatians 2.20 says, I am crucified
with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth
in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by
the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for
me. We live by his faith. When we are born again, we die
to self notions. We see that we're living by his
faith now. We died to the self ability to
please God. We died to self righteousness.
Died in faith. This is the same for all of these
that we read about here. Abraham, we've heard of, we've heard of Abel, we've heard
of Enoch, we've heard of Abraham, we've heard of Sarah, all of
them have the same thing in common. They died to self-righteousness. They didn't have righteousness
anymore outside of Christ. Christ was all their righteousness.
They didn't have any wisdom anymore outside of Christ. Christ was
all their wisdom. That's what it is to die in faith. We believe
God over self. Notice it says that these matriarchs
and patriarchs died in faith. This language goes to the definition
of verse one. Faith is a substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. They died believing
in the substance. What's the substance of your
faith? Is the substance something you can see or is it evidence
of things not seen? Because if it's something you
can see, it's not faith. It's not faith. But if you're
looking unto the Lord Jesus Christ, if you're looking unto Him, He's
the substance. He's the substance unto eternal
life. They did not physically or visibly receive these promises. They didn't come to fruition.
They had to be received by faith. They were substantially processed
by faith. They believed it was gonna come
to pass, but they never saw it come to fruition. They never
saw it come to pass. They just believed. How glorious is it
to know that we get to look back and actually see all the promises
fulfilled, everything that God said he did. We can see that.
It's written right here. We can see that His name was
called Jesus and He saved His people from their sins. We can
see that He pleased the Father and He redeemed His people back
to Him. We can see He became a man. We know His name. We know
His disciples. We know all about the miracles
that He worked and what He did to please the Father on our behalf.
We know all of that. And yet, the only way we can
still believe all of that is by faith. By faith, the Lord's
faith. These in this chapter never received
the promises, but possessed the promises by faith, by faith. This is what God requires. The
covenant of grace can only be received by faith. Without faith,
it's impossible to please God. This is his faith we're talking
about. It's the faith that he gives to his people to believe.
That's what faith does, it just believes. These in this chapter were saved. Well, first of all, they were
saved because God saved them. It's just period. I mean, that's exactly
how it worked. He saved them. But they were
enabled. Because they were saved, they
were enabled to believe God. He enlightened them in time. They were saved looking. forward
to the cross. The cross had not yet happened.
Isn't it amazing, all the priests and all the sacrifices that took
place and everybody that day after day after day, it never
ended. Excuse me. It never ended. Sacrifice after
sacrifice, day after day, they kept going and doing, never putting
away one sin. And you think about all that
would come to that place to make sacrifice. Some were genuinely
wanting to worship God. We know that that's true. But
some were just going through the motions. And some, it didn't
mean anything to them. It didn't mean anything to them.
We see that in even the priests, Hophni and Phinehas, what they
were doing. It didn't mean anything to them. They made it meaningless.
We see that in Aaron's sons as well. We see it in Eli's sons
as well. It was meaningless to them. So
they missed the point that the lamb that they were slaying was
a type and a picture of the Savior to come. The blood sacrifice
that was gonna be required that God would be satisfied with.
They missed the temple, having the place of worship that now
we can enter into because of all the promises being fulfilled.
They missed all of that. And unless God gives us faith
to see, we'll miss Christ right now. We'll miss Him. Just the
same, even though all that's came to pass, we'll miss Him.
He's got to cause me, make me, enable me, To see him alone is
all my righteousness. It's all my righteousness. We are saved by God and therefore
enabled to look back to the cross. But God's chosen people have
full assurance. Full assurance because we have
indeed received the promises already and they've been fulfilled. The Lord said it is finished.
That means there's nothing left to do in salvation. It is finished. We believe that, don't we? We
believe that it is finished, that there's not one more thing
that you and I need to do. He did it all. We're not waiting
as these were waiting on something else to happen. We are waiting
on the Lord. We're looking for his return. Don't don't misunderstand
what I'm saying there, but we're not waiting on the Lord to do
something else. to satisfy His justice and satisfy His judgment,
satisfy His wrath, fulfill the law, all of that's already been
accomplished. Everything required for our salvation, for the salvation
of the Lord's people is done. It is done. You know what that
means? You hear me say this a lot, but that means you can't mess
it up. I love that about our God. If
I could mess it up, I know I would. I know I would. But God's the
one that satisfied justice for His people by sacrifice of Christ
on Calvary's cross, Bearing our sin in his own body upon the
tree, the Lord poured out his wrath upon his darling son, satisfying
justice, satisfying judgment. He took all of the wrath, he
drank all the bitter dregs of the cup, and the father poured
his wrath out upon his son and put away our sin, put away the
sin of his people by the sacrifice of himself. Now we look at the
same thing God looks at. We look at the Lord Jesus Christ
by faith. We see what God sees. We are pleased with what God
is pleased with. We glory in what the Father gloried
in. He glorified the Son. Not unto
us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thee be all glory and honor
and praise. That's what faith does. We look
to the eternal now. We look to things that are not
seen. We don't value what is seen.
And this is gonna sound backwards, but it's true. We see that the
things in this world really have no substance to them, even though
we can touch them. We see that the things that really
have substance by faith is the Lord Jesus Christ. We see that
the things of substance that really matter in the eternal
is the eternal is the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
what we cling to. So we feel, and I wrote this
down to try to say this right. you understand what I'm saying.
One day, very soon, we're going to awaken his likeness, and we're
not going to remember this place. It was necessary for it to happen.
This is how the Lord chose to redeem his people. But we're
never going to remember the sin. If we could remember that, it
wouldn't be heaven, would it? We're never going to remember all the
trials and troubles and afflictions we had. So it's almost like we're
going through this, and it's just a figment of our imagination.
Our real is in eternity, our real is in His presence. Our
real is the Savior, that's our substance. There's nothing substantial
in this world, nothing that we can grab ahold of and have comfort
at night whenever you see your sin before you. There's nothing
you can grab ahold of in the world that's gonna take away
that conviction. But oh, to hear the Savior say,
fear not, I have put away your sin. You shall not die. Oh, there's rest. There's hope
in that. That's the substance we need,
isn't it? His promise, his word. That's the only substance that
matters. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word, my word
shall not pass away. My word shall not pass away.
Things seen by our eyes now have no substance. It's Kind of strange
to think, but this won't even be a memory. And boy, we get
so worked up over this place, don't we? We're carrying this
old corpse on our back. And you know what I'm talking
about. You have a new nature. There's a warfare that takes
place. Scripture talks about it very clearly. The elder shall
serve the younger. And it's almost like sometimes
you just unzip and step out and get rid of this guy. And that's
what's gonna happen whenever we close our eyes in death. We'll
stand before him and the glory that he's put in his people will
be revealed. And it's him, it's his glory. But we always talk
about dead men walking and that's what everyone is. Really the
Lord's people are the only ones alive. The only ones alive because
they've been made alive under his truth. They've been given
faith to believe him. And this is why dying is not, to talk about because we get
to say with Paul, O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where
is thy victory? We see the deaths of these brethren that we, how
the Lord was gracious to the very end in keeping them, looking
to Christ. And that's what he's promised
to do for us. That's the hope that we have is he'll never leave
us. He'll never forsake us. He's going to keep us all the
way, even to the end. He's not going to lose us. Not
going to lose one sheep. By faith, faith is a substance
of things hoped for. We have substance in Christ,
and this is the faith that we're gonna die with, dying faith. We have hope that, yea, though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I'll fear
no evil. Why? Because I've been doing good works, right? No.
Thou art with me. Thou art with me. If the Lord
said I'm with you, Whenever we were moving up here, I was torn,
as you all. I've talked to you some about
this. It was a big move. I was sinking in the Lord's face
desperately. And I opened up. It was very, as in a lot of prayer,
Bobby and I both were in a lot of prayer. We're trying to do
the right thing. We didn't want to do it. If the Lord wasn't in
it, I didn't want to be here. And if the Lord wasn't in it, you
don't want me here. That's the whole point. I'm praying and I'm asking the
Lord, you got to give me peace. I have no peace on this right
now. I feel like there's such a, it's a burden. I can't, I
can't, I can't see your face in this. If you're not in this,
I don't want to go. If you're not in this, I don't want to
go. And you remember what he told Moses? He told Moses, fear not, for
I will be with you, Moses. I'll be with you when you stand
before Pharaoh. I'll be with you whenever all the signs and
wonders are worked in my name by my power. I'll be with you,
Moses. And was he with him? Yes, he was. Brought him all
the way. He got all the way to the promised
land and couldn't go in. But he got to see it. Got to see
the hinder parts of God by hiding in the cleft of the rock. He
was with him all the way, even to the end. I was trying to figure
out if coming up here was of the Lord, if it was purpose.
And I was begging and praying and pleading. And I wasn't in
rebellion. I was genuinely just seeking
the answers of whatever it was he was laying upon my heart. I'd love you to fall in love
with everybody here already. That was a no-brainer, but I
opened up a scripture where it says, it's Isaiah chapter 43. It says, when you walk through
the fire, you won't be burned. When you walk through the waters,
they shall not destroy you. You know why? Because I'll be
with you. I'll be with you. They can't
touch you. They can't touch you. This is what faith believes,
not in what is seen, But what is unseen? The substance of the
promises of God. They have substance to it. They
have depth to it. This is why we die with this
faith all the way to the end. We believe this until the last
breath. If he keeps us, if he keeps us, we don't get any glory
in it. We're not gonna stand before him and say, see, I did a good
job. I believed you all the way to the end. No, you believe God all
the way to the end. It's because he kept you and
he kept me. That's what he's promised to
do. That's what he's promised to do. True believers are dead to the
world. The world are dead to them. That's the second way we
die in faith. It said, but God forbid that
I should glory save the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom
the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. We've been made alive in Christ
and therefore dead unto the things of the world. We no longer seek.
And what is the things of the world? They want to be their
own God. That's the things of the world. They believe the lie.
They're left to themselves. And so we're dead to that now.
No, I'm not going to go back to the law to try to establish
a righteousness. No, I'm dead to that now. I can't
do that. You'll never find a believer returning back to the law to
try to establish righteousness. If the Lord's give them faith,
they're gonna believe the Lord Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of
the law. He satisfied the law's demands. He's the end of the
law for righteousness. We live looking for things unseen. having no confidence in what
that witch has seen. You have confidence when you look in the
mirror. And I don't mean vainly, like I look good. I don't want
to talk about that. I mean, when you look in the mirror, you think,
yeah, I've got this. I've got everything all figured
out. Nobody thinks that. That's a believer. I'm sure there's
somebody out there that thinks that way. But the truth of the
matter is, is when you look in the mirror, you're looking at
your worst enemy. Is that not true? Is that not true? I'm my own
worst enemy. The thing which I would do, I
do not, but that which I would not do, that's exactly what I find
myself doing over and over and over. I throw up my hands and
say, Lord, you have to save me again. I'm on my face again. I think you can, Lord lets us
take the training wheels off of our bikes sometimes and we
fall flat on our face. You know, it's metaphorically,
you understand what I'm saying? We gotta be picked up and dusted
off and cleaned up. That's what he does. We believe
in his substance, his promises. He's not going to leave us to
ourself. Yeah, I guess we'll get some bumps and bruises along
the way. But he's going to keep us looking to him. He grows sweeter
every day. We grow sweeter. He grows sweeter
to us every day. I don't know if you say we fall
more and more in love with him. I think that's a, he just shows
us more of his graciousness. And you just love him all the
more when he shows you that. If he shows you the real sinner
that you are, Oh, you just love him for his salvation, being
so free, even though it cost him. It's freely bestowed by
grace to his people. That's why we have no confidence
in what we see, because what we see is going to pass away. Now, you can call that living
a strange way if you want to. I mean, that's weird to the world,
isn't it? You're saying you have no confidence in nothing you
can see. What about the stock market? Nope, my confidence is not in
the stock market. My confidence is not in politics. My confidence
is not in man. No, my confidence is in
him. My confidence is in him. Those who live this strange way,
they are just declaring They are just declaring that they
are not looking to that which is seen. They just believe the
Lord Jesus Christ. They live by faith. What does
the scripture say? The just shall live by faith. The just shall live by faith.
Their life is a declaration of that truth. Somebody said, why
do you go to church all the time? I was like, I have to. He said,
what do you mean you have to? Well, it's a privilege. I get
to, but I have to. I have to hear about him. I have
to see his face. I got to hear about the finished
work again. I want to worship him. I desire that. They say, well, we're going to
do this and this instead on Sunday. I said, well, that's your priority. I mean, you can do what you want
to do. But I got to have him. I got to hear the old story one
more time. I gotta hear about his finished work. I gotta hear
about the blood atonement. I gotta hear about how he satisfied
the father's demands and how he saved his people from their
sins. Our life is a declaration of
this truth, that we have been given faith. It's proof that
we believe. Proof that we believe is that God's elect embrace and
are persuaded of things we can't see or understand. We can't prove
anything that we believe. Somebody said, well prove that
God made the world. First of all, I don't have to do that.
Faith just believes he did that. If somebody wants you to prove
something, don't even worry about trying. They're not gonna believe
even if you did, could prove it. But if they wanted to say
prove this or prove that, that's not what faith does, is it? Faith
looks to Christ and just believes. Just believes. We embrace that
which cannot be proven. We embrace it, we hope for that
which is unseen, we look, we long for that which others call
foolishness. Other people say, you guys are
crazy. Churches all over the place,
why'd you drive so far? Or this or that, they think you're crazy.
And it's, oh, you don't understand. I am my beloved's and he is mine. There's none like my beloved.
There's none like my beloved. He's fairer than 10,000 to my
soul. What makes him so special that
he saved his people from their sin, that he saved a wretched,
vile, dead dog sinner, deserving of hell. And he gave me everything. He gave me grace upon grace and
mercy upon mercy. He gave me a place with him in
glory forever. He took my sin and gave me his
righteousness. He took my shame and my guilt
and gave me his justification. He took my ugly and gave me his
beauty. turned us into glorious creatures
of his glory, for his grace, the purpose of his love and his
grace. That's why we look for a city
whose builder and maker is God, where he reigns supreme over
all, and in his right hand is our substitute surety, the Lord
Jesus Christ, just simply seated, interceding for his people. He's
seated. He's seated. He's the captain of our salvation.
This is who we look to. This is who we long to see. It's
who we long to see. Now the believers mentioned here
show the same pattern as believers today. We don't desire, none
of these desired to turn back to where they came from. Abraham
was told, get thee up out of this country. I'm gonna show
you, I'll take you to a place you know not. I'm gonna show
you a place you know not. And he became a pilgrim and a
stranger looking, searching for that place. You see the children
of Israel, when they come out, now there was some that murmured
and they said, we had it better off in Egypt. Would you just
let us back in Egypt? Some of them did that, the non-believers
did. But the believing ones, the ones that were saved, they
didn't want to go back to Egypt. Even though some of them said,
we loathe this light bread, there were some that truly believed God.
Joshua was one of them, and some others, you know what I'm saying.
But what happened? Well, the Lord caused them to
be pilgrims and strangers as well through the desert for 40
years, but they still believe God and did not return back to
Egypt. So that's the pattern of the believer. We can't return
back to the law now to look for righteousness. We can't return
back to the works. There's no gospel in works. No,
we don't want to go back to doing. We see our savior is seated,
we're resting. And that's what these men and
women did. They saw Christ as the successful Redeemer, and
they were saved looking forward to Him. Only non-believers look for salvation
where it does not exist. You know that? Only non-believers
look for salvation where it doesn't exist. And most of the time,
that place is right here. They look at self. You can't
have salvation because of what you do. Our salvation is completely
dependent upon what the Lord did. And he was successful. He was successful. God's people
seek Christ by faith. Who is our salvation? There's
no salvation outside of the faith in his blood. There's no salvation
outside of what he accomplished. There's none. As we heard the first hour, we
can thank our Lord for this. Having faith in the Lord is the
result of him saving us. Not the cause, it's the result. We know that when he died, we
died. And in time, we died of self. In time, we died of the
world. And one of these days, we're
gonna die, a physical death, but we'll just fall asleep. That's what it talks about. In
Old Testament saints, they just fell asleep. Awaken his likeness. Now, the last thing I wanna mention
to us is our confession. We have two
ordinances that we observe here. We're given of our Lord, the
Lord's Supper, the wine and the bread, and what we're doing whenever
we take that is we are declaring that it's his blood alone, it's
his body alone that was broken, and that's why we take it. It's
a confession of Christ. Now the other one is baptism.
Baptism literally represents everything that I'm talking about,
dying in faith. Baptism literally represents
Your confession that you died, your hope and only hope is that
you died when Christ died. You were resurrected when Christ
was resurrected. That's why we do it. He said in Romans 6, 4,
therefore we are buried with him by baptism unto death, that
like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of
the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. Colossians 2 says, buried with
him in baptism, wherein also you are risen with him through
the faith of the operation of God who hath raised him from
the dead. Baptism symbolizes that we died to self. Baptism
symbolizes that we died to our self-righteousness. Baptism symbolizes
that we don't claim anything but the Lord Jesus Christ, his
death, his burial, his resurrection. That's what we're claiming. That's
what we're confessing when we are baptized. That's why every
believer desires to be baptized at some point or another. Believer's
gonna wanna be baptized. It's the confession that the
Lord's given us. I have died to myself. I am no longer my
own. I have been bought with a price.
I belong to the king now. I don't belong to myself. By faith, we have died to self,
buried with him in baptism, and raised again to walk newness
of life. It's in him that we live, we move, and we have our
being now. It's in him we live, we move,
and we have our being. This is the only confidence that we'll
have in death. It doesn't matter. When that
hour comes, that last minute comes, and you know that it's
time, there won't be anything you can cling to, nothing that
you have done that's gonna satisfy God. The only thing that please
God is if he's given you faith to believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. If he's done that, he's pleased with you, because you're
in Christ. You're in Christ. This is the only confidence we
can have in death. You know what Paul said, death is swallowed
up in victory. Because Christ got the victory,
death is swallowed up. There's no sting of death anymore
to the Lord's people. We're just gonna fall asleep.
Now there may be physical pain that we endure, but oh, it won't
be worthy to compare the glory that'll be revealed in us when
that happens. By faith bestowed, we believe
Christ accomplished everything he said he would. We live by
the faith of the son of God who loved us and gave himself for
us. This is how these died in faith, and this is how God's
people die in faith, looking unto Jesus. Somebody said, how
do you die in faith? You die in faith the same way
that you live in faith, looking to him. And if you're looking
to him, it's because he's made you. And if he's made you, he's
given you faith to believe that faith will never fail. So you're
always going to be looking for him. And one day when you die,
you'll still be pleading the blood. You'll still be pleading
that Christ is all because that's the confession he's put in your
heart. Let's pray. Father, we are thankful that
you accomplish salvation for your people. We are thankful,
Lord, that you have given us something where we do not have
to fear death because you died in our stead Thank you, bless
us to our understanding, for your glory in Christ's name,
amen.