Hebrews 11 (Part 4) v20-40 • The Other Side of Faith

here on sunday morning we're making our way through the uh the book of hebrews well we're making our way through the new testament on sunday morning we just happen to be in the book of hebrews on wednesday night we are going through the old testament and we are in the book of jeremiah let's pray jesus as we get into your word today we pray that the ministry of your grace would really just touch hearts we pray that you would speak loudly clearly our hearts long to hear from you lord to be instructed to be taught because lord you are the teacher as your students we hearken to your voice we pray lord god that you would give us spiritual understanding we ask it in jesus precious name amen amen amen i have a question for you that i'll put up on the screen in the form of kind of an image and it's very simply are you living by faith are you living by faith and i i hope that doesn't that question doesn't make you uncomfortable because i have to tell you something when sue and i got serious about walking with the lord we were living in montana at the time i was a rock and roll disc jockey and she was working in banking and and we weren't living for the lord at all but god got a hold of our hearts in a very very strong and dynamic sort of a way and we started attending church and the church we attended was kind of moving and shaking from a kind of a pentecostal charismatic perspective you might think wow that's pretty weird for you pastor paul but and it kind of was frankly it was uh and there was an element there in that church that i kind of recognized even as a new believer and it was an element that really took hold of that faith that idea of faith and i felt like at times they kind of took it to unbiblical lengths you know because it was it was what we kind of later on came to know as like hyper faith or ultra faith where it kind of they focus on faith to the point where it gets a little elastic and and and needs to find some balance well anyway my response to that was to kind of go the other direction and i don't know if you've ever done that before but because i saw some abuses in the area of understanding what faith really is i kind of snapped over to the other side and that was an error on my part and i went for years kind of de-emphasizing faith just because i had seen it abused you know and this is a fairly common response frankly by christians when we see something in the body of christ that we feels like is out of whack we tend to kind of pop over to the other side and we we lose the same element of balance that we see in other people or in other expressions of the body of christ we've seen it in the area of like spiritual gifts you know the bible it says a lot of great things about spiritual gifts but there are churches that have abused spiritual gifts to the point where they've gotten weird let's just face it they've just gotten weird and and there are those who have gone into those settings and watched the expression of spiritual gifts and they've said they've come away going okay that's weird that's craziness right so they snap over to the other side and they start believing things like well you know spiritual gifts are not for today they're they're no longer functional in in the body of christ well that's just as imbalanced as the people who are whacked out on spiritual gifts because there's nothing in the word that says that they've passed away they will one day but that's when we're with jesus so you know it's it's it's it's a balance that we try to maintain so now let's come back to faith faith is what this chapter is all about we're going to do our best to finish this chapter today but the longer i walk with the lord and the more i study through the scriptures the more i see and understand the importance of living by faith and you know i mean you know we're saved by grace through faith and we're to live each day in faith you know we're to we're to live our lives every day believing and trusting and having confidence in god and whenever anything creeps into our lives that begins to displace faith we begin to or we ought to recognize it as a as a as a problem you know i get i get emails pretty regularly from people who are struggling with faith and some of them struggle in faith relation in relationship to their salvation and we talk about salvation we talk about what it is to be saved and we reiterate we're saved by grace through faith and this not of yourselves and do you know that that really messes with some people's minds because there are people in the world who are very well they're just not disposed to thinking that way they're very kind of do-it-yourself kind of people maybe you can relate and there are people who are like i gotta do something tell me what i need to do to be saved well it's not what you do it's what jesus did and you just receive what jesus did and see that that messes with some people there are then there are others who are like i'm good i'm good you know but some people really struggle and they are susceptible to teachings that say you have to do x to be saved and these are the people who get into churches where you've got to be baptized to be saved you have to speak in tongues to be saved you have to to be saved or whatever the case might be and there's a there's a gravitational pull in some people to to do something of their own you see and so they struggle with faith just just flat out just trusting god what's interesting is that there are other people who don't struggle in the area of their salvation but they struggle with their day-to-day issues they have no problem believing that they're born again jesus died on the cross for me i'm going to heaven thank you jesus washed in the blood i'm a saint i'm a child of god but i don't know where my next job is coming from you know it's kind of crazy they can believe god for eternity but they cannot believe god for a new job they struggle with their faith they struggle we all struggle i suppose in some other way but i've learned something that's very kind of consistent every time i see people struggling with faith it always seems to come down to one issue and that is self gets in the way somehow some way self me gets in the way of just trusting the lord and and because i'm fixated on self i am then blinded from seeing god and all that he can do and stuff gets in the way in so many ways like you know for some people it's self-righteousness i i feel like there's something i have to do i have to be good enough you know or whatever it can be so many other things the reason that the apostle paul you'll remember wrote his letter to the churches in galatia i know that's not the one we're studying today but the reason paul wrote that letter was because something was getting in the way of faith now in that particular situation you guys remember our study in galatians the issue was the legalists who were making their way into the churches of galatia and they were telling the people you have to be circumcised and that is the way jesus and all this other stuff that's okay too but you've got to be circumcised and they they created a pretty convincing argument for how you had to do this in order to be saved and so you know paul wrote to them and kind of exposed in the course of that entire letter that what they were being taught by these legalists was really just another clever ploy by the enemy to somehow get their eyes off jesus and onto self it's what i've got to do you know so paul wrote to the galatians and he made a particular statement in that book which i feel is really the crux of the whole book in fact it's one of those statements that paul makes that sums up the entire book of galatians and i want to put it on the screen for you it's from galatians 5 verse 6 it says in christ jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything but only faith that's the only thing that really counts or that matters in the end it's just faith he says circumcision doesn't or are uncircumcision but now remember something the reason paul wrote about circumcision is because that's the particular flavor of self they were being tempted to follow after but you know you could really put anything in those two spots you could take circumcision out in fact let's do it let's put blank spaces where circumcision and uncircumcision are can we go there there it is in christ jesus neither blank nor blank counts for anything but only see you can you can put the statement is true regardless anything that has to do with self-effort anything that has to do with you something you've got to do put those in the blanks and you know what it still counts for nothing and the only thing that remains that matters is faith so you see that's one of those interesting statements that you know is is important for us to kind of see and the reason i remind you of what paul said in galatians is because what the writer of hebrews is going to say here as he concludes this chapter chapter 11 which of course is all about faith is that focusing on faith is the only thing that matters living your life by faith trusting in god putting your hope in him you know how we can tell when we've gotten our hope in other things we get the shakes when life happens and life happens all the time happens to me happens to you and when we get our focus on those things in life and they start to fall apart all around us which they're inevitably going to do because this world is falling apart we start to get the shakes and the lord gently reminds us at those times i never told you to put your focus on that because that's going away that's passing away i told you to put your to fix your eyes on me but you see that takes faith i have to trust right even when everything around me seems to be kind of going down so look at what he says here beginning at verse 20 that's where we're picking up through the end of the chapter i want you to notice how many times these verses begin with the words by faith verse 20 by faith isaac invoked future blessings on jacob and esau by faith jacob when dying blessed each of his sons of each of the sons of joseph bowing in worship over the head of his staff by faith joseph at the end of his life made mention of the exodus of the israelites and gave directions concerning his bones by faith moses when he was born was hidden for three months by his parents because they saw that the child was beautiful and they were not afraid of the king's edict by faith moses when he was grown up refused to be called the son of pharaoh's daughter choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of god than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin he considered the reproach of christ greater wealth than the treasures of egypt for he was looking to the reward by faith he left egypt not being afraid of the anger of the king for he endured as seeing him who is invisible by faith he kept the passover and sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them by faith the people crossed the red sea as on dry land but the egyptians when they attempted to do the same were drowned by faith the walls of jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days by faith rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies he goes on to say and what more should i say for time would fail me to tell of gideon barack sampson jephthah of david and samuel and the prophets who threw faith conquered kingdoms enforced justice obtained promises stopped the mouths of lions quenched the power of fire escaped the edge of the sword were made strong out of weakness became mighty in war put foreign armies to flight women received back their dead by resurrection can you stop there for just a moment i promise we'll finish out the rest of the chapter but what i want to do is i want to i want to focus here a little bit on this wow section that we just read these all these things he he's going through these verses and he's giving us biblical character after biblical story and he's highlighting the importance of faith and how they walked in faith to do these incredible things now i want to remind you of a point we brought up last week we've read through these books of the old testament we've studied through them and we've read about all these characters that he's talking about all these prophets and all these various characters that are mentioned here by name and we know that some of them struggled in the area of faith we know that i mean he brings up samson sampson the guy was a carnal flesh pot i mean he he was he was he was a rebellious disobedient carnal man here's and you know he brought up some others jefftha don't ever name your kid jefftha the guy he was an interesting sort of a rough guy but he made a stupid vow to the lord i mean just dumb you know i look at some of these other people you know barack he wouldn't go to war without taking deborah with him and gideon gideon he was he was scared out of his mind because of the midianite army and so when it came time to thresh the wheat instead of going up on a hill which is how they would thresh wheat in those days because the wind would carry the chaff away while they were threshing he was doing it down in a in an area that was a wine press just because he was so afraid remember how the lord appeared to to get in hail mighty warrior and jeff is like what but there was faith there was faith here's what's interesting about this and we talked about this last week when god looks back on your life he doesn't see all the things that you and i see which are the failures because we've all failed miserably sometimes in our faith i could fill an entire message just telling you the testimony of my failures failures of faith but while i could sit and i could relate those to you and and i don't know it might encourage some of you i'm not really sure how the lord doesn't remember them he's chosen not to remember here's why they're under the blood of the lamb our failures are under the blood of jesus christ and what does he see in your life now faith your faith now in some people it might be small it might be well you had faith for x i don't know it was this little thing over here but you had faith well done you know for some of you he's going to look at your faith and he's going to say whoa you had faith to move mountains well done but that's all you're going to look at he's like look at the faith all the other things are under the blood they've been dealt with at the cross and that's why as we read through these characters who we know from the bible studies we've done in the old testament we know they weren't perfect people we know they failed miserably from time to time we see faith after faith after faith after faith they had faith and that's what god sees and and we boy we read through this list and we're like this is thrilling all the things they did through faith it's thrilling i made a bullet list out of it because it was so thrilling here let me put it on the screen for you look what they did they conquered kingdoms through faith we think of people like david joshua some of the kings they enforce justice again some of the kings some of the great prophets they obtained promises probably the first thing we think of is abraham and sarah it says they stopped the mouths of lions got a character in the bible in mind how about daniel yeah sure quenched the power of fire shadrach meshach and abednego right escape the edge of the sword david did and or spear and jeremiah jeremiah escaped the edge of the sword we've been talking about that on wednesday night we're made strong out of weakness now we come back to gideon the weak man who was threshing wheat in a wine press was made strong to conquer the midianite horde with just 300 men you know it was through faith became mighty in war put foreign armies to flight received back their dead you know you look at this list and you think yes yes that's faith where do i sign up to do those things i'd like to do those things thank you very much those are fun i mean it has victory written all over it conquering we like to be victorious we like to conquer victory conquering i like conquering conquering is good sign me up for conquering god i'll do that yeah yeah it's the faith we want to have who wouldn't want to have it here's the here's the point the author of hebrews is going to go on in the remainder of this chapter and he's going to introduce us to the flip side of this coin that we call faith and he's going to begin to give us a description of faith that i got to be honest with you is not going to naturally resonate with your hearts in terms of what faith is or what faith produces and yet he proclaims and will proclaim it as faith nonetheless so we're in the middle of verse 35 i stopped there on purpose let's begin reading there again middle of verse 35. look what he says some were tortured refusing to accept or lease so that they might rise again to a better life or if you will have a better resurrection verse 36 others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment they were stoned they were sawn in two by the way we believed that that traditionally it is believed that isaiah was act was killed that way the prophet isaiah it's not given to us in the word but they were killed with the sword they went about in skins of sheep and goats destitute afflicted mistreated of whom the world was not worthy wandering about in deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth i by the way i didn't bother to make a bullet list out of this group because i really didn't want to think much about it honestly because i thought i don't really want to sign up for any of these but you know what this is the part of the letter that really should have been most encouraging to the recipients that this author was writing to because you see they were going through really hard times i mean they were suffering for their faith and what he is talking to them about in these latter verses is the fact that in the midst of those great difficulties and those horrendous persecutions they hung on to faith they laid hold of faith and they refused to let go and he's highlighting the fact of that tenacity of faith that says i don't care what's happening on the outside maybe i'm not dealing with any of those things that we would call victorious christian living but i'm going to have faith in god anyway i am going to trust in the lord anyway i'm going to continue to cling to him and and to underscore just how significant this is and what a big deal it was look with me at verse 39 this kind of ups the ante a little bit and all these these people he's talking about though commended through their faith so they were commended for having faith did not receive what was promised well there's the last bullet point that i don't want to think about the fact that they endured with faith and still didn't receive what they were expecting but he's telling us here that these people died with their faith intact they died with their faith intact even though they never saw the completion of that faith and so what we see here is this introduction that the author is giving to you and me about this definition of faith or if you will what it is to have victory in faith a victory that doesn't come naturally this new definition seems to contain nothing of those earlier bullet points that we put up on the screen there's nothing there you don't see any of that kind of victory in these people and yet he says they were victorious and they had faith and it's a definition that there's i'll be honest with you a lot of christians just don't even recognize we have adopted how do i put this we have adopted a definition of faith that is more what i call triumphalism and what that means is faith faith always has to triumph in the particular definition or or vein of what i think conquering ought to look like and if it doesn't look like what i think it ought to look like then it isn't conquering it isn't victory right you see what i'm saying we do that we do that as christians and we have this fairly narrow definition of what faith ought to produce in our lives moving mountains great miracles and all these other things that kind of go along with it and what we end up doing is we end up missing sometimes what real faith is because even though it's right in front of our eyes we miss it because we have a we have a definition that is too narrow and that's what the writer of hebrews is doing for you and me in this passage he's enlarging our definition our understanding of what faith is and he's saying you know what when people hang on to faith even when it looks like they've had disaster but when they hang on to their faith in god that's still a victory even when they pray and they don't get what they prayed for but they hang on to faith anyway that's a victory that is a conquering of unbelief you know there's a couple of passages that always come to mind when i think about things not being what they appear you know the apostle paul was an interesting man who spent probably the majority of his time as an apostle behind bars he was either in some kind of a lock up or in house under house arrest or or something i mean the guy got in trouble all the time and that looks very much like a defeat for a man who is called to go out share the gospel and start churches and it's pretty tough to do that when you're behind bars you know when he came to the area of philippi he began to kind of share the gospel with some people it says they went down to the water's edge and they started sharing the gospel with some women who were there and there was a particular woman who came to faith in christ and she was a woman of some means and they began to to to meet with her and others and and people were starting to get saved and it was pretty cool but there was a problem in philippi there was this little girl who kept following paul and his people around and she would shout she would shout wherever paul went she'd follow him and she would shout and she would say these men are servants of the most high god and they're showing you the way to be saved and fundamentally that wasn't wrong but the problem is she was doing it through the power of a demonic spirit that had invested in her and god doesn't need satan to promote his ministry and so you know paul just kind of put up with this it says for days days finally he had had enough and the book of acts tells us that he turned and looked straight at the little girl but threw the little girl right to the demon and he said in the name of jesus come out of her and of course the demon did the only problem is you see this little girl was a slave and she actually made a pretty fair amount of money for her owners by telling fortunes through this demonic spirit well suddenly they realized their ability to make money through this poor little girl was gone and so they started to make all kinds of accusations against paul and silas and the people that were with him and the people of the town got all upset and lathered up and they hauled them before the the the authorities and made again more accusations and they ended up throwing them into jail beat them senseless threw them into the middle and you guys know the story is is it it's a cool story how god eventually brought him out but you know that looks pretty bad you know when somebody comes to your town and starts talking to you about jesus and then you find out oh by the way he's in jail it kind of looks like really he's in jail what exact what happened well there was a misunderstanding the guy's in jail doesn't look too good and it kind of looks like a defeat well anyway paul eventually gets free he goes out continues on his ministry then he decides i need to write a letter to these people in philippi guess where he is when he's writing his letter to the philippians yep he's back in jail and again that doesn't look all that great i got a letter from from paul oh yeah how's he doing well he's in jail again that doesn't look very good for paul or for the gospel in fact that kind of looks like a defeat so paul actually wanted to speak to that so he wrote to the church in philippi and he said guys i want you to know brothers that what has happened to me and he's talking about his incarceration has actually served to advance the gospel so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for christ and most of the brothers having become confident in the lord by my imprisonment are much more bold to speak the word without fear what is paul doing here in this passage he's enlightening them of the to the fact that even though this situation looks like a defeat actually god is bringing it into the place of a victory okay but it takes faith to see that it takes faith to see victory in what appears very much to be defeat you know when you talk to people who've gone through this last year well better than a year now and dealt with the whole global pandemic that we've all been forced into it's tough sometimes to hear people say anything terribly positive about the things that have happened because you know frankly some people have lost loved ones or friends and that's not fun at all and we've all had our freedoms curtailed we've had limitations and restrictions placed on us which we've not liked some people some of you maybe even are in businesses that have suffered greatly from an economic standpoint because of the pandemic some of you might have even lost your job had to go find work elsewhere it's just it's been a very upsetting deal that has gone on for for the last more than a year here's the interesting part people have gotten saved just because of the pandemic people have gotten back into reading their bible just because of the pandemic people have decided to get serious about god again just because of the pandemic some of you might be in church today just because of the pandemic so what's interesting about this is that this is that flip side of looking at something that looks very much like a big fat bummer and realizing that god has been working in the midst of it and that changes you see how we see faith how we recognize faith and our trust in god and it begins to help us to see that even though we're going through this rotten junk i have faith in god that he's doing good things that he actually has good things going on in the midst of it you see there's another passage that comes to mind and it's from paul's letter to timothy his his second letter this is a fascinating statement that he he makes several here in this passage in fact oh and let me just tell you again he's all he's back in jail he's not just back in jail he knows he's not going to get out this time he knows that he's going to die so that's what he's looking forward to now as a roman citizen they would give him what they considered to be a humane death they'd cut his head off if you're not a roman citizen you have to hang around on a cross for a few days and suffer the torment of that but still he's looking at death square in the face and he writes to timothy and here's what he says if i am already being poured out as a drink offering and the time of my departure has come i have fought the good fight i have finished the race i have kept the faith henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the lord the righteous judge will award to me on that day and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing this is so incredible people because yeah paul understands and he knows that this is going to end in his physical death he says the time for my departure has come but what is he focused on he says i've kept the faith now that looks like defeat when you get your head cut off you know when you get hauled out of jail and they go this is it for you pal and they take you out and do whatever they're going to do and they kill you that looks very much like a big fat problem and yet paul says i've kept the faith i kept the faith so the life of faith can appear very much at times like defeat very much i want you to read again what it says here in verse 39 would you look with me in your bible at verse 39 and all these things all these he's talking about these people who went through all these horrific things though commended through their faith did not receive what was promised they didn't they didn't get what was promised i get notes from people all the time who tell me that they've prayed and they've prayed and they've prayed and they didn't get what they were praying for and they write me and they say so pastor paul tell me what i need to do as if you know and i probably annoy them to no end when i respond by saying well you need to just have faith in god you need to put your faith in god and they're like pastor you don't seem to understand what i'm saying to you here i'm telling you that i've been praying and i didn't i didn't hear from god i didn't get what i prayed for so you see i failed in the area of faith and you're telling me to put my faith in god i'm telling you i failed and i think to myself really you see the failure was not the fact that you didn't get the answer of your specific prayer the failure is that you let go of your faith you decided if i don't get what i want then my faith is going to hit the road i'm going to kick it to the curb that's the failure you see if i don't get the object of my faith then where's my faith i'll tell you where it is it's in your refusal to let go regardless of what you get or don't get that is real faith and that's something that sometimes the people in the hyper faith movement don't even spend time acknowledging because they're all fixated on what you get the victory of faith and the victory of faith are those bullet points that we put up earlier but there is a victory that we don't really much like to think about but it is a victory nonetheless and it's a victory that many christians wouldn't recognize if it hit him in the head but it is victory because they kept the faith they kept the faith there is a passage in the book of revelation that speaks to this somewhat let me just set this up very quickly before we look at it and we're going to kind of close with this but in the book of revelation it talks about the fact that there will be believers on the earth during the great tribulation who will suffer greatly for their faith now any one of you who have been around calvary chapel very long you know that i don't believe that is the church i believe the church is taken before the time of the great tribulation some of you disagree with me that's fine we're not going to break fellowship over it but i don't believe i don't believe the church is going to go through the great tribulation but there will be believers people ask me sometimes pastor paul will people will there be believers on the earth during the great tribulation oh yes absolutely hey when the church leaves when the church is taken away they're going to be many many people who had been on the fence with the gospel maybe they'd heard the gospel they just decided to well i don't know i'll have to think about it well when the church is gone they're going to have plenty of time to think about it and they're going to think quickly and they're going to come to christ people are going to come to the christ by the hundreds and thousands maybe even more we call these people the tribulation saints and they will endure the great tribulation and they will be martyred for their faith it talks about it in revelation chapter 13 let me show it to you it says and the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words and it was allowed to exercise authority for 42 months also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to look at this guys conquer them if anyone is taken captive to captivity he goes if anyone is to be slain with the sword with the sword must he be slain but then look at this last sentence here's a call for the endurance and faith of the saints see that doesn't fit our typical picture of needing to have faith because we're already told that they're going to get conquered says right there says that that the enemy the antichrist is going to be given authority during the great tribulation to conquer the tribulation saints that looks very much like a defeat and yet he says it calls for faith and the kind of endurance that goes along with faith right and yet there are too many christians who who look at that kind of a scenario and they say well that's not faith at all that's failure and speaking of those very saints by the way we go on in uh passage in revelation 12 and it says this is this this is how what their faith did they have conquered him that refers to the enemy look at this by the blood of the lamb that is that people that's their faith in the finished work of jesus christ on the cross they conquered him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony and that is the faith and confidence in god's transformational power in their lives that's what produces the testimony of our lives and it says why they loved not their lives even unto death and yet they conquered they loved not their lives even unto death and yet they conquered they were victorious yes the tribulation saints are going to pay with their lives for coming to jesus christ but they will hang on to their faith and they will trust him to the very end and they will conquer him the enemy by the blood of the lamb and that's what we're being asked to see in these last verses of hebrews chapter 11 that there is another side to faith that looks very dark and dreary but if we have the eyes to see we can see that faith is there as well let me read the last two verses we'll read for 39 again because it goes with verse 40 and it simply says this and all these though commended through their faith did not receive what was promised since god had provided something better for us that's the new covenant that he's been writing about in this whole letter that apart from us they should not be made perfect in other words the old testament saints had to wait for the church to come in to the the interview so that god's plan uh to fulfill his promises to them would be done with us with the church so it's kind of an interesting way the old testament believers were made to wait for the greater revelation of the new testament and the church and the new covenant that is revealed through the church so anyway with that we close out hebrews chapter 11. let's stand together this is one of those important chapters you know in the bible to help us to widen our perspective as to what faith is so i come back to that original question we started off the service with how's your faith so don't don't think of your faith anymore as well i'm not getting what i want so apparently my faith isn't any good no no no no no i'm talking about are you hanging on to jesus regardless that's why that's my question are you hanging on to him is your confidence in him regardless of what's happening in the world regardless of what's happening regardless it's not dependent upon circumstances it's dependent on him his character his promises right we say lord i'm going to trust in you though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the sea i will trust in you and that's it father god pray for all of us to have our eyes opened further to know and understand the depth of real real faith faith to trust faith to hope confidence in you regardless of the circumstances touch our lives with real faith that tenacious holding on and refusal to let go lord i know you're good and i know that without faith it is impossible to please you so lord i just set aside all the failures in my life from the past and i choose to walk in faith to trust you no matter what to put my hope in you let it be so father let it fill our hearts for we pray it in the name of jesus christ and all god's people said amen god bless you

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Published: Sun Apr 18 2021