Episode Transcript
[00:00:16] Speaker A: I want to start with a. I want to start with a provocative question.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: So I've asked this question before. Not at Redemption Hill, in.
I'm not going to pull that up. Prior churches that. That I've had the opportunity to teach at, and I actually got a little bit of pushback from this question. Okay. So I anticipate. I don't think that's going to happen here, but maybe. But I'm going to ask it anyways. Here's a provocative question. Okay.
Do you want Christianity to be true?
Do you really, really, like deep down in your heart, want what's written in this book to be more to you than just something that you intellectually agree with most of?
Do you really want the promises in this book, the exhortations in this book, the worldview and the reality that this book lays out?
Like, do you really, really, really deep down in your heart want this to be true?
C.S. lewis says, I'm not sure after all, whether one of the causes of our weak faith is not a secret wish that our faith should not be very strong.
Is there some reservation in our minds, some fear of what it might be like if our religion became quite real?
I hope not. God help us all and forgive us. I think the truth is, if I may, all of us in some way don't really want it all to be true.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: I've shared my testimony, and I'm not going to go into it this morning, but just a small little part of it.
Before I became a Christian, I was introduced into church and I was actually baptized. I was baptized twice. Once as a sophomore in college, once as a senior in college, and as a sophomore in college. There were lots of things about the Bible that I generally agreed with.
Okay, like, whatever. There were all sorts of things. I loved the idea of heaven. I loved the idea that heaven was waiting for me after I died, if I would embrace Jesus as my Savior and Lord, really as my Savior, not so much as my Lord, which is kind of what we're getting to.
I really loved that idea.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Didn't so much like hell, didn't so much like the sexual ethic that the Bible laid out. Like, there were all sorts of things that I was like, I could probably do, like, away with that, but I would embrace these things. And it wasn't until my senior year of college that through the power of the Holy Spirit and the discipleship of a man in my life at that time, that it was like, you can't really do that with the Bible. Like, you can't Pick and choose the things about Christianity that you like and disregard the things that kind of rub up against your idols, like the things that you don't really want to embrace. So this is the question, as we think About Hebrews chapter 11, we always talk about Romans chapter 8. If you've been around the church, in the church for any amount of time, like Romans Chapter eight is one of those chapters that kind of sticks out as almost like a Mount Everest in the Bible. There's just so many amazing promises and things that are in Romans chapter 8. Hebrews 11 is kind of the same thing. Okay, so we're going to treat this almost like a miniseries within the series still in the Book of Hebrews, but we're just going to take our time walking through Hebrews chapter 11. Listen to what it says at the end of the chapter. You don't have to flip there. I'm just going to read it over you. As we think about this question is, friends, do you really want this to be true?
[00:04:11] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: At the end of Romans chapter 11, he says, what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah. We're going to talk about all these people of David and Samuel and the prophets who through 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. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, 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 dens and caves of the earth. And so here's the prevailing question is why, like, what would lead people to do that, to embrace that kind of reality for life? Like, we're given very little time on this side of heaven. Even if the people in this room and I pray we do, by God's grace, live to be in our 90s.
Okay, it's a short time that we're given on this side of heaven.
So what would lead a person or persons to embrace that kind of life?
Well, if Christianity is all true, like, if it's as true and real as we don't really see the sun today, but as the sun is on the day that we See it. If it's that real, then I venture to say it is worth embracing this because the end result is going to be better.
So that's what Hebrews 11 is about. We get to spend our time just slowly, methodically walking through each of these individuals In Hebrews chapter 11, looking at their life and saying, what did faith look like in the lives of these people? We're not called to imitate the life of these individuals as much as we're called to imitate their faith. You see the distinction between the two. Every one of these people in Hebrews 11 is desperately broken. And so we can praise God for that. We can relate to these people, but it's their faith that we're called to emulate. Jesus is the one we're called to imitate in all of life. It's the faith of these individuals in Hebrews 11 that we're called by the power of the Holy Spirit to imitate, because that is the life that pleases God.
It's the church that pleases God.
Will we, as Redemption Hill? And I believe that we are, and we will, by the grace of God alone, be a church that pleases God.
That has a lot less to do with how spectacular we think we are and a lot more to do with our faith.
Okay, so let's look at Hebrews 11. We're going to start in verse one, look at verses two and three. We're going to jump to verse six, and then next week we'll go back to verse four. Okay.
All right, so Hebrews chapter 11, starting in verse one, he says, by faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. Okay, so what is true faith? Before we get into the people that Hebrews 11 talks about, the men and women who illustrate faith, we have to understand what faith is. And that's what verses 1 and 2 and 3 and verse 6 help us understand is, what does this word faith mean? Okay, so I want to give you three things that I think this text does that will define for us what biblical faith really is. So the first is that true faith, the first two, true faith consists in understanding and accepting what is most true about reality.
Okay, so true biblical faith begins with understanding and accepting what is most true about reality. He says we understand that the universe did not come into being by nothing.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:08:38] Speaker A: That we understand essentially what he's saying, that the universe is not random.
We understand that the universe, despite all popular belief, is not ultimately chaos, that there's order in the universe, there's beauty in the universe, there's love in the universe. And it's not because all of those things came out of nothing. It's because there's a creator behind him who is the epitome of all of those things.
Beauty, order, love, reason, logic, knowledge, all of these things are found in, in the triune God, created by the triune God. And the author saying, we understand this.
We understand that the universe was created, the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. One of my favorite authors, a guy named Francis Schaeffer, if you've never read Francis Schaeffer, you should read him, okay? He's amazing. He's gone to be with Jesus, but he was amazing, amazing author, amazing apologist. Started a ministry in the Swiss Alps. I don't really know how you get to a point in life where you start that ministry, but started a ministry in the Swiss Alps where they would just take in like, he would call them spiritual refugees. So just mostly 18 to 25 year olds who were really, really burnt out from religion and from legalistic homes would come seeking shelter in this place and they would asked these really profoundly difficult spiritual questions. And his kind of rule of thumb was he was like, if I have an hour with somebody, I'm gonna listen for 55 minutes and I'm gonna give him five minutes of thought. I'm like, that's a really good counseling technique. Listen for most of the time, ask a lot of questions, give a little bit of thought at the end. And so that was kind of his philosophy of doing things. But he wrote this really helpful book, short book called he is There and he is not silent. He is there and he is not silent. And in this book he talks about the existence of God. That God in the Bible is both transcendent, meaning that he's creator, he's powerful, he's strong, he's in control, and he's intimate.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:10:50] Speaker A: He's transcendent and he's intimate. And he gives kind of three indicators that God is real, that there really is a creator behind the universe that I think are helpful for us. They've been helpful for me to think about. And one is the reality of being. This. This just means that everything you and I see could not have come from nothing.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Basic logic says something cannot come from nothing. That does not happen in life.
Something has to come from something else. It cannot just derive from nothing. So the fact that you and I are sitting here today that you can feel your arms and your face and you hear my voice. All of these things are the reality that our existence says something about the nature of the existence of God.
It's the reality of being. He says this. He says, I get tired of being asked why I don't just preach the simple gospel. Which he does preach the gospel, by the way, but people would accuse him of this. He says, you have to preach the simple gospel so that it is simple to the person to whom you are talking, or it is no longer simple.
The dilemma of modern man is simple.
He does not know why man has any meaning. This is true, by the way, for those of us who have folks in our life that we love dearly who are not yet Christians. This is one of the prevailing questions of their life. What's the meaning of life?
Why am I here? It's really important for us as followers of Jesus to try to understand where our non Christian friends are coming from. What are they asking? Don't assume that they're asking the kinds of questions that you think they're asking because you've been involved in church for a while. You understand what I'm saying.
He says the dilemma of modern man is simple. He does not know why man has any meaning. He is lost. Man remains a zero in his mind. This is the damnation of our generation, the heart of modern man's problem. But if we begin with a personal beginning and this is the origin of all else, then the personal does have meaning. And man and his aspirations are not meaningless. Man's aspirations are not meaningless.
Man's aspirations of the reality of personality are in line with what was originally there and what has always intrinsically been. So, friends, the reason that you desire meaning in life, whether you're a Christian or not, the reason you desire meaning in life, the reason you desire purpose and greatness in life is not because you came from nothing. It's because you were created by a creator who intrinsically gave you those things.
You desire beauty in life because God is beautiful and he created you to desire that you desire to love and be loved because God is love.
You desire greatness because God is great.
Like all of these desires are apologetics of sorts for you to be reminded that there really is a God, that this is not wishful thinking.
So the reality of being, he gives two more the reality of morals.
The fact that you are, as he says, and I are both noble and cruel says something of the existence of God.
The nobility that you and I have intrinsically as Made in the image of God is because we're made in the image of God. The cruelty that you and I exhibit because of our sinful hearts is because of us, not because of God.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: But.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: That inner sense of morality that there is a right, there is a wrong, there is a good, there is a bad. This is known throughout cultures and it has been so for all time, no matter what people say. Like, yeah, well, all cultures don't have this. Yes, they do to some extent.
There's variety in that. And yes, there's the existence of sociopaths and psychopaths and all of those things. But that's an outlier.
That's not a generality that says anything regarding reality. Cultures throughout time, from the beginning of time, have had this embedded sense of morality. And that's because we're created in the image of a moral God.
And then the last thing is the reality of knowledge. How do we know? How do we know what we know?
Okay, how do we. How do we know this God? So, in part, the Bible says we can look up at all. We can look around at all of these things. We can look at the universe, we can look at creation, we can we notice the conscience that all of us carry that discerns the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, and all of that. And we can testify with David from Psalm 19 that the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. So we can know something about God through these common grace means.
But for faith to be true biblical faith, there needs to be more than just understanding and accepting.
Okay, so true biblical faith starts with understanding.
It moves into accepting that I accept the reality that there is a God who created the universe. But it has to go beyond this.
True faith must draw near to the object of its affection.
True faith must draw near to the object of its affection. The author says, now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen for by it. The people of old received their commendation. And then in verse six, without faith, it is impossible to please God.
For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. So biblical faith, friends, is deeper than mere understanding or even acceptance of a truth.
Brandon Manning would say this in his books, and I've always been convicted by it. He would say that his spiritual advisor of sorts, his pastor, would tell him, brandon, you don't need to necessarily learn more things. You need to learn to trust the things that you already know.
I think this is true. For most of us, we always need to be learning theology. Always. That should never stop.
But many of us know a whole lot of theology and trust very little of it.
I mean, to the point where it actually affects our life, where, like the fruit of the Spirit becomes the felt experience of our life throughout our day.
We're actually able to love, we're able to experience joy, we're able to experience peace amidst chaos when everybody else in the world is freaking out, out over things because we're learning to trust the things that God, that we already know.
Spurgeon says faith is the foot of the soul by which it can march along the road of the commandments.
In other words, Spurgeon saying, faith is what fuels our obedience to the commandments of God. Christians.
And he says faith is reason at rest in God.
Is reason at rest in God. That's what faith is.
Can you rest?
Like, do you experience soul rest throughout the day in those small little pockets when we do by God's grace? That's faith.
So, friends, has your growing knowledge of God actually resulted in you learning to trust him as your father?
If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, a few more things.
So if true faith is. If true faith draws us near to the object of our affection is what this text is saying. Just notice the words used by the author.
Assurance, conviction, draw near, seek.
All of these words imply that biblical faith understands what's true about reality, accepts what's true about reality, and then it's action oriented. Actually, like, draw. It leads us to draw near to God as a person.
Okay, so a better word for faith in the Bible is trust.
Like, that's. That's what faith is in the Bible.
It's a real trust. Anybody want to take a crack? We're just going to open this up to the floor. Anybody want to take a. Like, why does Jesus. Why does Jesus say you have to become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven?
Say it again, Margaret.
They trust you. Yeah, I don't think we do this once a week, but on occasion we'll serve pancakes to the kids in the morning on like a weekend, just a slow morning. Sydney will make pancakes. And it's amazing. You know what the kids never do?
The kids never take their pancakes.
The two that they get served at the beginning, they never take their pancakes and hide them under the table, like, just in case, right? They're like, I don't know that mom and dad have more pancakes. I'm gonna hide these under the table. I'm gonna eat a little bit Here. And then I'm gonna save some because I don't know that I'm gonna get any more after this. You know why they assume that there's a surplus.
They don't have to be taught that they don't have to be coerced into that.
There's something instinctively trusting about a child with their parents. If they know their parents and they know that their parents love them and they know that they're for them, and they know that they want good for them. Like, there's something that just instinctively leads that child to just scarf down the pancakes and then ask for more.
I don't know that we live that way with our Father, that we believe that he has an infinite surplus.
And Jesus says for prayer, hey, if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your kids, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who. What? Who work for it. Who ask.
Just ask.
What an amazing promise. We're so afraid of the prosperity gospel, I think, that we don't ask.
You're probably not going to get a Lamborghini if you ask for one.
Like, okay, like it's said now. Okay, now you can, like, ask for things.
It's a good thing to learn to relate to God this way as your Father, because you're in Christ.
And if you're in Christ, the Father loves you as you are in his beloved Son.
You could not be more loved than you are in this moment, or more accepted than you are, or more delighted in. The Father has eternally delighted in Jesus. He could not love Jesus any more than he loves Jesus right now. And you're in Him, Trust Him.
That's what faith is.
It's not just about how much theology you know.
It's so much better than that. That's a start.
You must know theology. Don't hear me dog on theology. You must know it.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:23:15] Speaker A: But the theology is always intended to be a means to a greater end, not the end in and of itself to lead you to trust.
All right.
Drawing near. So true biblical faith draws near to the object of its affections.
I think drawing near has two components to it. Just as we close, okay, so one, to draw near to God means to receive Jesus as your Savior.
That's one way. That's one means of drawing near to God. To draw near to God means to receive Jesus as your Savior. These brothers and sisters in Hebrews 11, as we'll see in the coming weeks, had assurance and conviction that God would keep his future promises because of his past Faithfulness, that is. It was the gospel of Jesus Christ that fueled their trust in him to fulfill what he had promised in the future.
They looked back and they said, hey, he's fulfilled the greatest promise ever by sending Jesus for you.
Look at how faithful he is. Look at how loving he is. Who else would give up their own son for the sake of sinners? Only God would do that.
And so they look, and Hebrews does this. Hebrews 10:19, 22 says, Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence into the holy places, how? By the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh. And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near, okay? So the means by which they, and we who are Christians are to draw near to God is first recognizing that God has drawn near to us in the person of Jesus. We don't draw near to the Father on the basis of our own works. We draw near to God only through the blood of Jesus. So drawing near means receiving Jesus as your Savior, trusting Jesus as your Savior, that no matter how bad your sin is, and we have incredible sin in this room, all of us collectively, we are incredible sinners. We're really good at that, okay? But as good as we are at sinning, the blood of Jesus goes infinitely further.
Do you trust that? Do you trust him as your Savior? Are you still living as if your sin somehow has more potency than his cross?
We trust him as our Savior. The second thing that drawing near means, drawing near is to follow Jesus as Lord in all of life.
Okay? So trusting God, drawing near to God is not just about remembering and accepting and trusting in what Jesus has already done. It's learning to trust the Father in all of life, with all aspects of life.
I want to read one quote from John Patton, and then I want to lead us through just a short time of response. John Patton was a missionary to what is now Papua New Guinea. At the time when Patton went to this particular place, it was known as the New Hebrides Islands. And people in his denomination were like, you cannot go. And they had good reason for saying that. The missionaries who had gone before PATTON Were actually, 15 minutes after getting off the plane, were beaten over the head by clubs, killed, and then eaten. Okay? So these were like, legit cannibals, okay? And they were like, you can't go. They're cannibals. And Patton was like, famously said something along the lines of like, hey, whether I get eaten by cannibals, or by worms. After I die, it doesn't really matter. I'm going to be resurrected at the final day of Jesus return. It's all going to be good going. You're not going to stop me. It's awesome. Okay, so here's. Here's what Patton says while he's on the mission field. He writes these words, he says, and I think this is a good illustration of faith, of trusting Jesus in all of life as Lord. He says, my enemies seldom slacken their hateful designs against my life. However calmed or baffled for the moment, he says, a wild chief followed me around for four hours with his loaded musket.
And though often directed toward me, God restrained his hand.
I spoke kindly to him and attended to my work as if he had not been there, fully persuaded that my God had placed me there and would protect me till my allotted task was finished.
He says, looking up, looking up in unceasing prayer to our dear Lord. Gosh, sorry. To our dear Lord Jesus. I left all in his hands and felt immortal till my work was done.
Trials and hairbreadth escapes, escapes strengthened my faith and seemed only to nerve me for more to follow.
And they did treat and they did tread swiftly upon each other's heels.
Fully persuaded I left all in Jesus hands like that's what faith. That's faith.
That's what it means to really trust God in all of life.
And here's the thing that I just want to. I keep telling us I'm going to be done. True faith is not isolated. I want to encourage you with this. True faith is not isolated to extraordinary stories found in missionary biographies.
[00:29:11] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:29:12] Speaker A: I want you to notice the principles that are communicated through this brother, because it applies to you and I today, it applies to us tomorrow as we do our dishes and we do our work and we tend to our kids and we go to community group and we love each other and we share with our neighbors and we do all these normal things that we're few. If any of us are going to go do what John Patton did, okay?
But true faith is not isolated to that. It's being fully persuaded that you're loved and accepted by the Father and Jesus.
It's learning by the power of the spirit to leave all that you can't control in life into the hands of Jesus.
It's a posture of heart. It is the posture of heart that pleases God.
I think many of us still believe that what pleases God the most?
Right? Living.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: Morality is important. Holiness is important. Those are undeniable things. But Holiness is an outcome of faith.
To trust Jesus with the outcome of life.
What was Patton's response to the guy following him around with a stinking gun? Kindness.
So holy living is the outcome of faith, and faith is a gift. It all goes back to the grace of God.
You sit and believe what you believe today only because of the grace of God, only because the Spirit has lifted the veil off your eyes to see the truth of Jesus. That's why you're here. You didn't do anything to deserve that, to earn. That wasn't because the family you were born into. It's because of God's grace.
And so allow the recognition of God's grace in giving you faith to lead you to more faith that we might live lives that please God, to the glory of God.
Do you want Christianity to be true?
Do you want the God? Do you want Jesus to really be alive today?
I think you do.
And so we're going to pray. I want to lead you through a couple of prayers to just kind of get your minds working a little bit. Get our minds working on a specific area or areas of life that you are struggling to leave in the hands of Jesus.
What are those areas? And let's spend the three minutes that we spend in response praying, praying. If you want to pray for yourself, if you want to get on your knees, if you want to come to the altar, there's nothing shameful about this. As Pastor Matt has been saying over Lent, bodily posture is really important.
It's super important. You're not going to look weird, you're not going to be looked down upon. Like, don't worry about that stuff.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:32:07] Speaker A: So let's posture our bodies as we think about these things. Let's lift our hands, let's get on our knees, let's gather around one another for just a few minutes, and let's spend some time praying. We want to be a church that pleases God, and so we need faith.
So where do you need to trust? What do you need to entrust to Jesus today?
Some of you maybe are not yet Christians.
And you need to entrust your life and your soul to Jesus for the first time.
You need to recognize by the grace of God that God is good, that you are a sinner, that you cannot save yourself, that God in kindness and in love has sent his Son to live a perfect life and die on the cross and rise from the grave and ascend back to the right hand of the Father so that sinners and sufferers might be brought back to God and forgiven of Their sins. You've never had your sins forgiven. You've never trusted in Jesus as your Savior. And I, I want you to do it today.
So there's nothing, there's nothing mystical or special about a specific kind of prayer. But the Bible says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
And so some of you need to entrust your eternity to God through repentance of sin and faith in Jesus for the first time. And if you do it, please come tell us so that we can celebrate with you and take communion with you.
Some of you who are Christians need to entrust your children to Jesus.
Maybe it's one specific child.
I encourage you to be very specific.
God knows anyways, it's only going to help you to be more specific with him.
Father, I give blank over to you. Jesus, help me entrust this child to you.
Some of you need to entrust your husband or wife to Jesus.
The way that you do marriage and man guilty. The way that you do marriage is like the whole purpose of your wife's existence or your husband's existence is to serve you.
And your job essentially is to be the functional Holy Spirit in their life.
Or maybe you're believing the lie that is from the pit of hell, by the way, that this is not the right person for you.
And you need to entrust your spouse to Jesus.
Some of you need to entrust world events to Jesus.
You're just kind of infatuated with the news. And there's, hey, every day something new every day. Who knows what the world's going to look like a week from now. None of us know. Jesus knows.
He's the King of Kings.
He's the one who all world governments rest. They rest on his shoulders. He doesn't rest on theirs.
Some of you need to trust your work to Jesus. You feel unseen in it or unappreciated, or you feel like it's meaningless or purposeless. You need to entrust your work to Jesus, your money, your future. This could be in the form of a breath prayer. Father, into your hands. I commit blank.
So let's spend three minutes. Posture yourself however you want to posture. We're in no rush. Okay, posture yourself. Come to the front, kneel at your seat, get up and go minister to somebody. After we do this for three minutes, you'll be invited to come get the elements and go back to your seat. The band is going to come up and play for a little bit. While we do this, I'm going to pray for you. I love you. I'm excited to go through Hebrews 11 with you.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: SA.
