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Bro. Bill Nichols
Who loved me and gave himself for me.
Now you notice that every one of these talks about faith, not being something that we have, but something
that God has.
It's God's faith that we're talking about.
Philippians 3 .9, and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is
of the law, but that which is through the
faith of Christ.
And the righteousness which is of God by faith.
And then Revelation 14 .12.
Here is the patience of the saint.
Here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.
Each one of those is talking about the faith belonging to God.
It's God's faith, it's Jesus' faith.
It's the son of God's faith.
It's not our faith, but it's faith that he has given us.
With his faith, we're now able to rest.
Assured that the new reality that he has promised us is as certain
as if it had already happened, which in a sense, it has.
One more word about faith.
Mark 9, verse 24.
And straightway the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I
believe.
Help thou my unbelief.
Well, what is it?
Which is it?
Is it belief or is it unbelief?
Clearly, his own belief was not sufficient.
What was necessary was Jesus' belief
given to him.
And then back one more time to Ephesians 2 .25 or 2 .5 and pick up the rest of
that verse.
Even when we were dead and our sins hath quickened us together with Christ,
by grace are you saved.
And he hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in
his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourself,
it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath
before ordained that we should walk in them.
Now, back to verse one of Hebrews chapter 11.
Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen.
For by it, by faith, by it, the elders obtain a
good report.
And I'm gonna ask quickly, what faith is it that is effective?
Is it your faith or is it God's faith?
God's faith.
It's God's faith and it's God's faith that he gave to you and to me.
For by the faith of God, God bears witness on the behalf of these saints,
that's the elders, that will be spoken of all the way through chapter 11, that
they lived by faith and divine approval is given unto them.
Verse three, through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God
so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
I couldn't pass that verse without doing a major,
as Brother David calls it, rabbit trail.
Things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
What does that mean?
The visible is made of the invisible.
The visible is made from the invisible.
The invisible also is made from the invisible.
But it's a different invisibility.
And that's what we're gonna deal with.
There's no big bang here.
There's no room for the evolution of species.
The world was not formed by one thing, simply changing over time into another
different thing.
Even if we're something as simple as light, energy changing into matter.
Invisible light changing into matter.
We have, we've seen that happen in labs.
That is things that are observed being created from things that are observed.
So the word seeing is broader than just, the word observing is broader than the word just
seeing.
So the world was not formed by one thing, but simply changing over time into another different thing.
The world and everything that is in it was created by God.
And it wasn't created out of something.
It was created out of nothing.
Where is that sentence right there?
Okay.
Out of nothing, it was created, yes.
So I'm gonna go to Genesis 1 .1 and read a little bit.
Wasn't it created out of faith?
I'm sorry?
It was created by God, by the Son of
God, by the Holy Spirit, by the whole triune before there was a
place for them to go.
When they were all in heaven, it was created then.
And what was it created?
By the word of God, by the simple spoken word of God.
Somehow God puts into everything, everything.
And then we have it.
It's not like the Big Bang Theory that if you wanna sum it up kind of humorously, we can say
in the beginning there was nothing and then it exploded and became everything.
That's what the Big Bang Theory says.
It's exactly the essence of the Big Bang Theory.
Well, you're gonna have less patience with the Big Bang Theory when we
get through.
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
Creation is something we cannot observe.
And because we cannot observe it, it's something that we can neither prove nor disprove.
So clearly, creation does not fall in the realm of science.
It falls in the realm of religion.
The biblical account assumes creation was not a natural occurrence.
The basic presupposition of the biblical account is that
creation is supernatural.
It's not natural, it's supernatural.
And as such, an explanation will not, and in fact cannot, be found in the
natural sciences or math or philosophy.
Not that these things are useless.
Science is a tool.
It's a tool that when used properly in physical situations where observations and
measurements are possible and where rules of behavior can be found,
it's a tool that has led to many great advances.
So science, math, philosophy has led to many great advances as
long as it's used properly in physical situations, not when you try to extrapolate it
into the realm of the supernatural.
In fact, the Bible itself told us that this would be the case.
Daniel 12, four says this, but that will, Daniel,
shut up the horse and seal the book.
Even to the time of the end, many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall
be increased.
Now, why is knowledge increased in these later days?
Because of the science and the math and the philosophy and other pursuits of knowledge that have a
role, but that role, when extrapolated beyond space, matter, and
time, leave the realm of scholarship and enter the realm of religion,
which will be called naturalism.
Naturalism is the view that every law, every force operating in the universe
is natural rather than supernatural.
Naturalism is an inherently anti -theistic
notion.
It's inherently anti -theistic.
It means they don't accept the presence or the existence of God.
They reject the very concept of a God.
And many assume that naturalism, therefore, has nothing to do with religion.
In fact, it's a common misconception that naturalism embodies the
very essence of scientific objectivity.
In fact, naturalists themselves like to portray their system of philosophy that stands in opposition
to all faith -based worldviews, and that would include Mohammedanism, Buddhism, all of
the other religions.
They set themselves apart from all religions, not just Christianity and Judaism.
They pretend that it is scientifically and intellectually
superior, precisely because of its supposed non -religious
character.
But that's not so.
Religion is exactly the right word to describe naturalism.
The entire philosophy is built on a faith -based premise.
I call that, every time I've read that, I've called that faith -based, and it's not faith -based.
So I'll probably do that a couple of more times.
Its basic presupposition is a rejection of everything supernatural.
So now we've got two opposing religions.
We've got Christianity, whose presupposition is
the creation is supernatural, and
naturalism, whose basic presupposition is the rejection of everything that's supernatural.
So these are in contrast one to another.
You can't have one and the other.
You've got to have one or the other.
Supernatural, I'm sorry, naturalism requires a giant leap of faith,
and nearly all of its support theories must be taken by faith as well.
Now here is a really interesting comment.
I took this from Dr. MacArthur's book on,
I can't remember what it's called, but it's the creation, its account of creation.
Nobel laureate, Harvard professor George Wald, pondering the vast
arrays of factors that would have to arise spontaneously and simultaneously
in order for a non -living matter to evolve even into the most
primitive one -celled form of life.
Now that's only a tiny little slice of creation.
Tiny little slice.
The simplest one -celled primitive creature.
What he said was the array of factors that would have to arise
spontaneously and simultaneously in order for non -living matter to evolve
even into the most primitive one -celled form of life.
He wrote, one has to only contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede
that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible.
Now if he'd stopped there, I would have nodded my head in agreement.
It is impossible.
But then he adds this, and you'll see how much he has to rely on faith, but not on
saving faith, not on God's faith, on his own faith.
And we know what kind of trouble you can get into when you're relying on your own faith.
So then he adds, yes, here we are.
As a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.
He continues, time is in fact the hero of the plot.
The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years.
Now I'm gonna hesitate there and go on a secondary rabbit trail.
That was the number that was commonly understood by scientists to be the age of the universe
when Walt wrote this book, wrote his article.
We have more time if we need it.
How much more?
As much as we need.
And need it, we do.
The current accepted age of the universe is, anybody care to guess?
When Walt did it, he said two billion.
When we went over this five years ago when we were studying Genesis, it was five or seven.
You know what it is right now?
13 .9.
13 .9 billion and growing.
So how much do we need?
We'll just take as much as we need and if we need more, we'll just take more.
Well, we got a problem.
The current crisis, the thing that's perplexing scientists so far as I know today,
Methuselah.
Not Methuselah man, Methuselah the star.
They found a star.
They named it Methuselah.
It's the oldest thing known to exist.
You know how old it is?
Take a guess.
How much?
One would think, wouldn't one?
14 billion.
So now what's the struggle?
To explain how a star can be older than the universe that it's a part of.
Okay, back to, was that clear?
Did I get that clear?
Right now, the rules and the formulas and the math says the
age is 13 .9 billion years, but they have a star.
They dated its age and it dates to be 14 billion and now the wonder is, how can the
star be older than the universe that it's a part of?
So now back to Wall's quote.
I'm gonna pick it up where he says, time is in fact the hero of the plot.
The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years and you got that in quotes now, right?
What we regard as impossible on the basis of human experience is meaningless
here.
Given so much time and more if we need it.
The impossible becomes possible.
The possible becomes probable and the probable virtually certain.
One only has to wait.
Time itself performs the miracles.
That's how he ended his quote.
Impossible happened, but given enough time, the impossible becomes possible.
The impossible becomes virtually certain.
My comment was, wow, what a conclusion.
To translate what he says, enough time renders that which is impossible
a virtual certainty.
The absurdity of that statement perfectly illustrates the blind faith that underlies
the naturalistic, I refuse to call it, science, religion
because that's exactly what it is, but it's a false religion based upon a false
faith, not Christ's faith.
Either way, the first issue is that of faith.
If it's your faith, you're pronged to error.
If it's God's faith that you have, then you're in good shape.
And the second is that of religion.
So what religion are you?
Are you, is it Christianity or is it naturalism?
Well, I know everybody in here is a Christian and you believe in Christianity.
Creation is a miracle, meaning that any explanation will be found
outside the realm of science.
So where do you go?
You go to the scripture.
And we may do that later, but for now we're gonna return to Hebrews and the first thing that
the author offers up as someone who lives by faith.
Verse four, we're now at 11 four.
By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain,
by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and
by it he being dead yet speaketh.
Both brothers knew what God wanted.
Abel obeyed and Cain did not.
Abel acted in faith, in God's faith.
Cain acted in unbelief.
Or you might could say Cain acted in his own faith.
Through Abel's faith, he left a testimony to all succeeding
generation that a person comes to God by faith
to receive righteousness.
And by what faith does he come to God?
By the faith of God.
By the faith of God, a person comes to righteousness.
Because of his faith, evidenced by obedience to God's requirements
for sacrifice, Abel was accounted righteous by God.
So it's not necessarily the fact that what
Abel did, it was the fact that Abel believed and did what God told him to do.
He was obedient to God's commandment.
He had faith in God, he had a saving faith, and he did what he was
required to do.
He was obedient.
So Abel was accounted as righteous by God.
Romans 4, 6 says this, even as David also describes the
blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works,
saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
And Christ himself referred to the righteousness of Abel.
In Matthew 23, 34, he says, behold, I send unto you prophets and
wise men and scribes, and some of them you shall kill and crucify, and some of them
you shall scourge in your synagogues and persecute them from city to city, that upon you
may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous
Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, whom you slew
between the temple and the altar.
Verily I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation.
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killeth the prophets and stoneth them,
which are sent unto thee.
How often would I have gathered my children together, even as a hen gathereth her chicks
under her wings, and ye would not.
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.
For I say unto you, you shall not see me henceforth till you shall say,
blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.
And for the Jew, it's a really precious phrase that it says, until you shall say, because that leaves room for
them to once again be a member of the house of God.
That was Abel.
Now Cain, on the other hand, was not deemed religious or righteous.
His sacrifice was evidence that he was just going through the motions.
He was doing ritual, and he was doing it in a disobedient manner, not
evidencing authentic faith.
He didn't do what God asked him to do or told him to do.
He did what he wanted to do.
He relied on his own faith rather than relying on God's faith.
And no one can please God without
the faith of God.
And no one can receive the imputed righteousness without the faith of God.
Abel's offering proved something about his faith that was not demonstrated by Cain's
offering.
It proved that his faith was the real, genuine faith of God.
Now, verse five.
By faith, Enoch was translated that he should not see death and was not found,
because God had translated him, for before his translation, he had this testimony, that he
pleased God.
Now, a question.
What can you do to be able to please God?
Nothing.
I like that.
There's nothing he can do.
But there is something he must have.
What must he have?
The faith of Jesus.
He has to have the faith of Jesus, and he can only have that if what?
God gives it to him.
If Jesus gives it to him, if God gives it to him.
And I will read that verse again.
It's short.
Ephesians 2, 18.
For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourself, it is a gift of God,
not of works, lest any man should boast.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ unto good works, which
God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
Now is there something we can do?
Now that we have God's faith, is there something we can do?
We can be obedient.
That what we ought to do is to live an obedient life.
Will we ever sin?
We will always, we all of us will sin often.
But we simply have to repent, turn from our sins, call on Jesus, and he
will be faithful to forgive us of our sins.
So now we can be obedient.
Verse six.
But without faith, it is impossible to please him.
If you don't have faith, there's nothing you can do.
For he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder
of them that diligently seek him.
What do you think the focus of that verse is?
Faith or Jesus?
How many times is faith mentioned in that verse?
You want me to read it again?
For he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and
that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
How many times was faith mentioned?
Once.
One time.
Now be careful, because I bold faced mine, and I bold faced one wrong.
How many times is he or him referred to?
Please him, and it says, for he that cometh to God, that he that cometh to God is not
the he that we're talking about.
It is impossible to please him, and that he, God, is the redeemer of them
that diligently seek him.
So the focus of the paragraph, of the sentence is,
Jesus or God.
Now how did Enoch please God?
Because he had faith.
Without such faith, it's not possible for anyone to walk with God, or to
please him.
And I'm gonna refer back to Hebrews 10, 38.
Now the just shall live by faith.
If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.
And the he, him, that's the true God.
Genuine faith does not simply believe that a divine, a divine
being exists.
I botched that, I'm gonna do it again.
Genuine faith does not simply believe that a divine being exists,
but that the God of the scripture is the only real and true God who does
exist.
Not believing that God exists, and can only be approached through his son,
Jesus Christ, is equivalent to calling him a liar.
John tells us that in 1 John.
He that believeth on the Son of God, hath the witness in himself.
He that believeth not God, hath made him a liar.
He made God a liar.
Because he believeth not the record that God gave to his son.
A person must believe, not only that the true God exists,
but also that he will reward men's faith in him, with forgiveness and righteousness.
And why must he do that?
Because that's what God has promised to do.
And now number seven.
Verse seven.
By faith know I, being warned of God of things not yet seen.
What's not yet been seen by God?
I'm sorry, by Noah.
Or the world.
The flood, rain.
Okay, two things.
The flood, the worldwide flood, that's one thing.
Not even rain.
They had not even seen it rain.
Much less a worldwide flood.
Nevertheless, Noah spent 120 years building the ark.
And while he was building the ark, warning the people.
So what happened?
What did the people do?
They ignored him.
They mocked him.
They made fun of him.
They refused to accept the message of salvation.
And were condemned to destruction.
How did they die?
They were ground in a flood that they didn't believe could exist because they'd never seen it before.
They relied on their own knowledge, their experience.
Some of them were five, six, 700 years old.
And they had seen all their life not a drop of rain.
And you're telling us it's gonna rain?
And you're gonna tell us it's gonna rain so much that the whole world's gonna be flooded?
And you're gonna build this boat out in the middle of nowhere, out in the middle of the desert?
And it's gonna save us?
Save us from what?
So much for trusting the science.
That's right.
That's so much for trusting in science.
I was barely, I could hear you, but I wanted to put that on the mic so everybody could hear.
So much for trusting in science.
But not Noah, not Noah.
Not Noah.
Noah moved with fear.
He prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world.
How was the world condemned?
Because they refused the message that they had heard for 120 years.
And he became the heir of righteousness, which is by faith.
What faith?
The faith of God that he possessed because God gave it to him.
Now, I'm gonna read some of Genesis 6 and leave out some.
I'm gonna go to Genesis 6, verse 3.
This one is to get to 120 years.
I thought when I read this the first time that this verse was saying that after now,
men are gonna live for 120 years as a maximum.
But that's not what it's saying.
Verse 6, chapter 6, verse 3.
And the Lord said, my spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he
also is flesh.
Yet his days shall be 120 years.
Now, what's that talking about?
It's talking about from the time Noah began preaching the message of salvation until he got on the boat
and left them behind was 120 years.
That's how long he spent preaching.
That's how long they spent rejecting.
That's how long it took to build the ark.
And then skipping down to verse 13.
The first is just a description of how the world was at that time.
If you want a good commentary, a good current message, just look around you today.
In fact, the Bible says as the days of Noah, so will the last days be.
And God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with
violence through them.
And behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
Make thee an ark of gopher wood.
Rooms shall thou make in the ark, and shall pitch it within and without with pitch.
When I practiced this last night, I asked my brother and my sister -in -law, why inside and outside?
Now I got one boatman in here, I know.
Why inside and outside?
Because if you just do one of them, it's gonna leak.
Well, if it leaks, it's gonna be full of water, isn't it?
Yeah.
And if you do the other side, it will keep it from leaking?
No, not necessarily.
You can't get it scratched off.
You need to do the outside.
You need the inside to push it.
So if it's got a crack on the outside, and you put the coating on the inside, and the crack is on the
outside, it will push the coating that's on the inside out, and it'll leak anyhow.
So that probably was not the reason it was pitched within and without.
What do you think it was?
Now this is a conjecture.
I label that in white letters.
I think, so it would be preserved so it could be found in the latter days.
I think it was coated inside and outside so the wood would not rot.
Not so it wouldn't leak.
Why'd it not want to leak, Ben?
Because it had supernatural protection.
They had, not the tar on the outside, they had supernatural protection.
Yeah, the same person that shut the door was surrounding it the whole time.
So it didn't leak.
It didn't leak because it had supernatural protection.
Could it have had supernatural protection all these years from the time it landed on the mountain, wherever it was?
And now, it could have.
But I think the Lord protected it a different way.
I think he had Noah coated inside and outside so it would last, and so that we could find it.
And there are people that claim they have found it.
But I'm not sure about that, so I'm just gonna leave it as what it is.
People are searching for the ark even now.
And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of.
The length of the ark shall be 300 cubits.
The breadth, 50 cubits.
And the height, 30 cubits.
Now, a cubic is a foot and a half, so that's about 450 feet long.
It's about 75 feet wide,
and it's about 45 feet thick.
It's like a big two -by -four.
It doesn't look like the ark that you see pictures drawn in the book, little things like this with the elephant,
with the giraffe's head sticking out to the side.
That's not what it looked like.
Looked like a two -by -four.
Why?
Because a two -by -four floats like that.
It doesn't float on the end.
It doesn't float on the long side.
It floats erect.
The only thing you can do to a two -by -four is turn it all the way over.
A window shalt thou make to the ark, and a cubic
thou shalt finish it above, and the door of the ark thou shalt set in the side thereof
with a lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.
And behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth to
destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life from under heaven, and everything that is in the
earth shall die.
But with thee I will establish my covenant, and thou shalt come unto the ark, thou and thy sons,
and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee.
And every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort, shalt thou bring
into the ark to keep them alive with thee, and they shall be male and female, of fowls after their
kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind,
two of every sort shall come unto thee to keep them alive.
And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee,
and it shall be for a food for thee and for them.
Thus did Noah, according to all that God commanded him.
So did he.
Now, I've got just one little tiny question left.
And I'm not gonna answer this one except I'm gonna use Ben's answer, I believe.
Was the ark big enough to hold all the animals?
All the animals that came, sure.
It was big enough to hold all the animals that came.
How many animals came?
Well, now, we really don't know.
There are people that say it's one of the things that we have is it says all the animals that breathe.
And insects and ants don't breathe.
They take in their oxygen in a different way.
Like fish don't breathe.
They take in their oxygen through their gills.
In fact, the reason these aerosols are so effective against insects is because of the way they take their oxygen in.
So they didn't really take any insects.
The average size of the average animal that exists is smaller than you think.
It's about the size of a sheep.
Now, of course, an elephant would take more room than a sheep, but then a mouse would take less.
So the average size is about, well, what about taking enough food to live on?
People raise that as an objection.
And what I'm gonna say now is we have, right now, animals that we know
hibernate.
What does a bear eat all of?
What does a black bear eat all winter?
Why not?
He's hibernating.
His cycle has slown down.
He doesn't take as much food.
He's living off the fat that he had.
These animals had 150 years to store up fat.
They were living in the Garden of Eden where they had everything they needed and more.
And I'm sure that of the ones that came in, well, I don't know how he did it, but you know what I do know?
He could have had every animal hibernate if he'd wanted to.
He could have provided food for them if he'd wanted to.
They had about them a supernatural protection.
And I think if we start trying to justify or rationalize how it was scientifically or naturally
that all the animals could fit, I think we've fallen into a trap of trying to justify
supernatural things with natural reason.
And so that's where I'm gonna leave it.
Any questions or comments?
Yes, ma 'am.
I think your comment about the, or your conjecture about the reason it was pitched on
the inside to preserve the woods is probably accurate because if you consider
all the animal life that was in there and they could not go outside of the ark for all that time,
the wood would have been, because of the pitch, protected from anything, any waste matter from
the animals.
It would have been, and that would have been a possible physical reason to coat
the inside, to preserve it through the trip against the, because the trip
was about a year.
Well, it was longer than that, wasn't it?
How long was it that the waters remained on the earth?
It was more than a year.
I don't remember, but yeah, I think that's right, but I still believe
that it's easy enough to slide over and try to
justify supernatural things with natural reasons.
How could Jesus possibly have fed 5 ,000 people with two, well, actually about 30
,000 people, with two little small fish and three pieces of bread and had baskets and baskets left over?
Not because of anything natural.
There's no natural way it could happen because it was supernatural.
Miracles are supernatural.
The miracle is not enough time.
The miracle is not having enough time.
If you wait long enough, everything will happen.
Okay, that's how long before it began to abate or how long it was for the -.
The waters prevailed on the earth for 150 days.
Okay, 150 days.
Little less than a year, half a year.
Half a year.
Anything else?
If not, let's pray.
Most gracious heavenly Father, thank you for this day and thank you for all our many blessings.
Thank you for protecting us.
Thank you for giving us your faith, a faith that we can rely on,
a true faith, a faith that will allow us to be obedient and help us
to be obedient because that's something we've got to do.
We have got to be obedient.
We've got to do what the Lord instructs us to do.
Bless us and keep us and go through the rest of the service today.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.