Standing On The Promises - [Hebrews 11:8-13]

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I'm wondering what kind of advice you would give to someone if they called you up. They said, I'm a
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Christian and I'm struggling with this particular trial. I wonder how you would counsel them.
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What would you tell them? What advice would you give them? And I hope eventually you would tell them and primarily you would tell them about who
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God is and how important it is to walk by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I remember my mother when she had cancer would think regularly about things that she shouldn't think about and treatments and possibility and all these kind of things.
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And she then began to develop a pattern and that would be to go through the alphabet and for every letter of the alphabet to think about an attribute of God or something that he's done to get her mind off of her problems and onto the right object, the
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Lord Jesus. And you'd start with a, and of course you could think to yourself, God is almighty and he's all powerful and he's all knowing and you'd get to be and you could just recall what scripture would teach that he's, he's beautiful.
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The son is the eternally begotten one that he is blameless, that he's the bread of life.
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You get to see, and you might think of things like compassionate, caring
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D he's a deliverer E he's eternal. And I would imagine that everyone here today, if I ask you, can you tell me an attribute of God that starts with a letter
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F you would all say faithful. That's exactly right. So take your
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Bibles. Let's turn to Hebrews chapter 11 and talk about the faithfulness of God. We are
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Christian people and we want to walk by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and not by sight.
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And it is important to remember as we're walking by faith that we're not the faithful ones. We are not faithful at all in many areas, but the
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Lord God, he is faithful. And we come to this chapter called the hall of faith and it's called that for a reason.
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It's not because these people are faithful. We even learned about some of that today with Isaac and we've learned in the past about Abraham, but we are to walk by faith in the faithful one, the
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Lord Jesus Christ. He was in 1923 when Thomas Chisholm wrote the poem.
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Great is thy faithfulness. Oh God, my father, there is no shadow of turning with thee.
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Thou change us, not thy compassions. They fail, not as thou has been thou forever will be.
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And it is good for Christians to be regularly reminded that God is faithful.
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We know that, but we have to preach that to ourselves. I am a preacher and the person that I try to preach to, to the most, the most is myself because I look at trials and they're real and they're difficult and they're visible.
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They're, they're sensual, they're tactile, but then I have to be reminded of a God who is invisible, but just as real.
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The question for all of us this morning is, can you trust God even though, and then you can fill in the blanks after that.
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Can you trust the faithful God even though, can you stand on the promises of God?
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And what a great message for the beginning of the year in 2020 with all the different issues swirling around the world and overseas and the
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Middle East and our own lives and our own congregation. Can God be trusted? Can you rehearse with Paul and second
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Corinthians when he says for all the promises of God, find their yes in Christ Jesus.
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That is why it is through him, Christ, that we utter our amen to God for his glory.
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The Christian, he or she trusts his soul or her soul to the
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Lord God. And the great thing about our Lord God, and we reminded all the time from scripture, he will never let you down and he is to be trusted even though, well, how do we just parachute back into this passage?
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I think a couple of weeks ago we were in first Timothy chapter three and we were talking about the incarnation last week.
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My son was preaching and, uh, I'm so glad he did a good job by the way. Wow. So thankful for that.
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I said to him in my office and my study before the service, I said, you're 23, you're too young to preach in my pulpit, but I've heard that message before and it was
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Christ honoring. So let's just pray. And you go out there and preach. But thinking about Hebrews, big picture.
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Remember any time you study any book of the Bible, you ought to say to yourself, why is that book in the
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Bible? Why is it written? What's it concerning? What's the occasion? Who are the, who's the audience?
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Because how do you understand a small portion of that passage or that book? If you don't know why it was written are a big portion.
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And really Hebrews is written for one reason. There are displaced people that follow
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God or say they do. They're in trials. It's difficult persecution. They're going through hard times.
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And this writer needs to remind those people who the Lord Jesus is.
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And if we got to H for the attributes of God in this book, every one of these Jewish recipients would say with the writer, if it's
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Paul or someone else, it doesn't matter. It's inspired. They would all say H high priest, and he's a faithful high priest.
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And by the way, before Hebrews 11, just back up to chapter six as maybe a good review of all the book.
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If we look at just chapter six for two reasons, it talks about the Lord Jesus in a way that will remind us what's going on in Hebrews.
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And additionally, it ties into chapter 11 directly with the promises of God through Abraham and for Abraham, both chapter six and chapter 11 in our section today, talk about Abraham and the promises of God.
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And so if you go to Hebrews chapter six, verse 17, for instance, and we just drop in there, you can immediately get the tenor and the tone and the heart of this preacher as he's trying to encourage his people with the encouraging one, the faithful high priest,
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Jesus verse 17 of Hebrews six. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the air of the promise, the unchangeable character of his purpose, he's talking about Abraham.
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Of course, he guaranteed it with an oath. In other words, he's putting people on notice once again, that God can be trusted.
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He's faithful. He keeps his promises. Verse 18, you can sense the thrust here so that by two unchangeable things, obviously the old
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Testament talks about two or three witnesses. Here are the witnesses in which it is impossible for God to lie.
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We who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.
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And isn't that what everybody needs when they're going through a trial to be encouraged, to have hope before them, to know
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God will be there in the future when they arrive there, to keep believing, to keep trusting that we might have strong encouragement.
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And by the way, when you think like a Jew, everything just opens up who have fled for refuge.
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If you're Jewish and you think of refuge, what do you conjure up? Remember if you were a manslayer, there were six cities that if you fled to one of those cities, you would have what in that city refuge.
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And so we are men slayers. And we, of course, were there with Pontius Pilate and with the
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Roman soldiers and with the Jewish leaders, as it were saying, you know, crucify him. Our sins have put
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Jesus on that cross, but we have refuge. And that's why we can have encouragement. It also says, and verse 19, just to kind of review
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Hebrews in general, the superiority of Jesus. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.
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I mean, the world is chaotic. Everything's swirling around. It's just this dust storm of chaos. Is there any stability?
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Is there any firmness or is any rock and fortress where we can just say, you know what? I'm safe. We have this sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.
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We move from refuge to soul, a hope that enters into, into the inner place behind the curtain.
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Anchors denote firmness. Anchors denote stability.
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Anchors back in the old days did exactly what anchors do today. Support. And then verse 20, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
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Not only is Jesus a refuge, you can flee to him for help. Not only is he anchor of the soul, but he's also a forerunner.
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This is military language. This is, this is language that says this. There's somebody that goes out before marching in front.
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He doesn't lead from the back and he leads you out. And there are followers who follow the forerunner.
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We are those followers. If Jesus is the forerunner, someone is following, that's us. So everything about this book, the writer wants you to say to yourself, that Jesus is worth trusting.
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That Jesus is worth hoping in. That Jesus is the one that I need to see my trials through as it were.
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You know, you have a screen door. You can see what's on the other side of the screen, but you kind of look through that screen door to see what's on the other side.
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And if you focus on the screen door, you can see it. And so it's like, that's what we need to do. We need to be reminded today as Christian people, who is the
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Lord Jesus? You don't need a Ted talk. You don't need to pick me up sermon. You need to be reminded and we will be visibly reminded in.
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I was going to say moments, but any while we will be reminded of who God is, this truth outside of us to kind of reboot everything, every single
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Saturday night. I reboot this iPad. Why? Because I don't want it to glitch.
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And so many times, and I think I've said this before, but we just repeat ourselves regularly. I'm not trying to say
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I'm a dog or you're a dog or something like that, but my dog, she gets fixated and she's staring at something.
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And it's like, she just needs to stop. And I just kind of tap her a little bit and kind of bumper. And she's like, oh yeah, now
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I can think clearly, right? I don't know what you do with the cat, but that's another story.
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I like cats more than you think. Like tiger cats is what I like. Pumas. That's what I like.
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So what we do is we come for corporate worship and the Lord knows we are weak people. We're frail people.
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We need to be reminded about truths. We know the trials are true. We know these issues are true, but we need to be reminded about this
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God that we want to worship by faith and rest in. So that's why the book of Hebrews is written.
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So now we go back to chapter 11. There are promises talked about in this book.
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There are issues with the high priest. And now we move into this section that follows chapter 10.
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Remember chapter 10, verse 38, but my righteous one shall live by faith.
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If he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him, but we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.
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Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen your congregation.
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You and I need to be reminded that faith is not faithfulness. Faith is shorthand for faith in this high priest that he's been talking about in chapter one, who's better than angels in chapter three.
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That's better than Moses in chapter five. That's a Melchizedek in chapter seven priesthood.
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We need to be reminded that it's faith in Jesus. When you hear the just shall live by faith, you should say that just shall live by faith in the faithful Lord Jesus Christ.
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Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for. If you had to define faith, maybe you would say it's knowledge, assent and trust.
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That would be good. But listen to maybe my all time favorite scriptural definition of faith.
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Before we look at the faith that Abraham had in the Lord Jesus, just listen to Paul and Acts 27, 25.
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You don't have to go there if you want to write it down for reference. Great. Acts 27, 25. It might be my all time favorite description of faith.
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Paul said, so take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told.
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It will be exactly as I've been told. King James says, for I believe
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God that it shall be even as it was told me. I take God at his word. I can't see all these issues because these truths are invisible, but I take
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God at his word. These men, these women in this chapter, and for us as well, take
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God at his word. It's not a blind faith. It's faith in the promises of the faithful God.
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And do you notice in this chapter, if you haven't noticed before that the focus isn't inward, the focus isn't toward us.
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The focus is outward. It's pointing outward, not pointing inward. It is not our commitment to him.
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It is his commitment to us. By the way, we live in evangelicalism and it is baked in the cake of evangelicalism.
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We start off preaching. We start off thinking about my commitment to God versus his commitment to us.
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And this chapter, this book, this Bible is about God's commitment to us, not our commitment to him.
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Because when we think of his commitment to us, it is unfailing. It is unending. It is eternal.
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It is faithful. When you think about your commitment to him, it's less than. So we need to be reminded that we're going to trust in God no matter what.
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Because of Christ's work, we are good with God and it is his commitment towards us that matters.
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Well, let's go to Hebrews chapter 11 verses 8 through 16.
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And I don't know how far we're going to get today, but let me give you the outline for this section of chapter 11 verses 8 through 16.
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I'm just going to give you four words. And those words are going to be unknown, unmanageable, unfulfilled, and unreal.
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The outline today is unknown, unmanageable, unfulfilled, and unreal. And those are four even though words.
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When the future is unknown, when circumstances seem unmanageable, when hopes are unfulfilled, and when heaven seems unreal, you can still trust in the faithful God.
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The four even though words, unknown, unmanageable, unfulfilled, unreal. We don't do alliteration all the time, but sometimes we do.
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Always alliterate? Just trying to keep you awake. Four even though is that this faith in the right object endures even though, number one, the future is unknown.
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Verses 8 through 10. Since Jesus is the compassion of the high priest, he's faithful, he gives himself as the offering, he intercedes for us, he doesn't condemn us because he's taken our condemnation, he's been raised from the dead.
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Faith endures even though, number one, the future is unknown. This applies to these men and women, and certainly dear congregation, it's applicable to you because trials are real, and the high priest, he is real.
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How will everything work out in my life? What will tomorrow bring? What about that diagnosis?
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What about, what about, what about? Verse 8. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance.
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And he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
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For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is
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God. The first even though word is unknown. Here Abraham did not know all the details when
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God sent him out. He obeyed God's voice. That's what faith does. It results in obedience.
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Even though he didn't know where he was going. Listen to Genesis 12. Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
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And I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you'll be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you
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I will curse. And in all the families of the earth, you and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
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So Abraham or Abram went as the Lord told him. And Lot went with him.
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Abram was 75 years old when he departed. Why is
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Abraham here? Because he's a great model of faith. That could be true. But think about how significant
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Abraham is and the outworking of God's redemptive plan. That's one of the reasons why he's listed here.
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By the way, Abraham is mentioned 10 times in Hebrews, 15 times in Luke and 11 times in John.
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And here he didn't know where he was going to go, but he would go. And he went.
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What did he have to rely upon? The word of God and that's it. I don't know about you, but I like to know where I'm going.
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And I like to figure out my way. And I get the GPS and it shows similar ETA and which way
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I want to go. And I can drag the cursor and move the map over and go that direction instead. How do
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I know that this is going to work out? Abraham only knew in who
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God was and his word. Verse 9, it says,
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By faith to make matters worse, it seems like, to make it harder for him to live in a land of promise.
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This was a promised land as in a foreign land. And look at how temporal this was.
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Living in tents with Isaac, Jacob airs with him of the same promise. Here's Abraham.
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He goes and it's a complete unknown, by the way, true or false. Did Abraham ever?
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Well, that's a question now. How can I have true and false in a question? I'll just ask a question. Did Abraham ever own a foot of ground in the promised land?
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It's interesting. Genesis 23, I'm a sojourner and foreigner among you. Give me property among you for a burying place that I may bury my dead out of sight.
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Except for the burial plot of Sarah, he never got all this. But he was walking by faith anyway.
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Here, Abraham, a temporary resident, an alien, no rights.
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Walking by faith, trusting in the promises of God. And he doesn't have the full promise yet of this land because what's the text say?
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He's living in a tent. When you think of cities and tents, this is a big difference.
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The writer is trying to say that the only thing he could trust in was God's reliability, God's stability,
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God promising and thinking about the future rather than the present.
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God promised the land to Abraham. He repeats the promise to Isaac and Jacob. And they don't get the land.
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No land until Joshua comes in under his leadership and they take the land for their own.
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But he keeps believing anyway. Listen to what Stephen said in Acts 7.
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Brothers and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran.
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And he said to him, go out from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show you.
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Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. And after this, his father died. God removed him from there into this land in which you are now living.
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Yet he gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot's length, but promised to give it to him as a possession and to his offspring after him, though he had no child.
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And God spoke to this effect, that his offspring would be sojourners in a land belonging to others who would enslave them and afflict them 400 years.
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But I will judge the nation that they serve, said God. And after that, they shall come out and worship me in this place.
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It's simple. What's the truth trying to teach us here? What's the Bible trying to teach us? That God can be trusted even though we don't know how he's going to work out all the details.
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And by the way, you want to know the land he was really looking for? Abraham, verse 10, he was looking forward to the city that has foundations.
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That's a lot different than a tent whose designer and builder is
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God. That's how he could obey because he knew what God had promised and he's looking to God himself.
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By the way, this is really interesting to me because we've got a designer and builder. Designer means we get the word technician from this.
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He designs it. He plans it. He's like an architect. And that second word is builder.
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You've got to have the architect design it and the builder actually builds it. In this particular city, the ultimate city, the celestial city,
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God designs it and he builds it. Hebrews 13 talks about we have no lasting city but the city we seek is that which is to come.
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What's the point? Abraham is trusting in God and he only has him for his word.
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That's it. By the way, think about the guy who was before Abraham in this list.
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Who was before Abraham in the list of Hebrews 11? By faith,
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Noah, verse 7. Do you see it? Noah had for 120 years to build and then he got to see the flood.
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He finally saw the fulfillment of God's promise. But Abraham receives promises, the inheritance of the land and the mighty people and the descendants and he sees neither.
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I think this is good advice for all of us that no matter what the future has for us, we walk by faith.
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No wonder Peter says, Dear Christian, you can commit yourself to this faithful creator.
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You can say, do you know what? I'll tuck myself underneath your promises. I don't know what's going to happen. But I do know that momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.
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You say, Mike, what's the big picture? Verse 39 of the chapter tells us, Hebrews 11, 39.
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And all these, we're talking about all these people in the hall of faith, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us, they should not be made perfect.
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Here's the point. We're all walking by faith. There's all kinds of trials and the
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Lord hasn't come back yet. And so we're going to suffer. We're going to go through different difficulties. And so what do we do?
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We still walk by faith, even though we haven't received what was promised. And that is eternal glory yet.
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God is faithful and to be faithfully praised for his faithfulness.
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First Corinthians 1, God is faithful through whom you were called into fellowship with his son,
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Jesus Christ, our Lord. Okay, full stop. Just think about the trial you're in now or your friends in.
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You say to yourself, I'm in this trial, I'm going through these things. I just want you to know from the authority of the word of God, God hasn't fallen off the throne.
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God's faithful. You can count on God. You can depend on God. Your friends let you down.
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The doctors let you down. The test results let you down. The world lets you down. The church lets you down.
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I let you down. God's faithful. You need to repeat that as you see those circumstances in your life.
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God is faithful. And when people call you and say, I'm struggling with something, your privilege is to talk about the stability of the high priest, the loyalty of the high priest, the compassionate love of the high priest.
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And God is faithful. I'll never forget standing right over there when the sanctuary was flipped around, standing next to Ron and Cheryl.
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And Lily dies on the first day she was alive. Her twin, Tori, dies on day three.
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And we put both of those little babies in the same casket sitting right there, I think, on this very table.
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And we are standing there. I'm standing next to Ron and Cheryl. And do you remember what we were singing to try to rehearse the truths of God?
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Because we don't know what life is in its total chaos, disaster. And we have to stand there.
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And I remember crying along with Ron. I couldn't see Cheryl. We're crying through blinding tears.
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Great is thy faithfulness. That's what you have to do. You go,
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I don't know the future. I don't know what all these things are going to bring. I know. But God is faithful. And you need to rehearse
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God's faithfulness. His promise is He will keep.
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Faithful is He who calls. And He will do it. 2 Corinthians. 1 Thessalonians, rather. James 1.
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Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there's no variation or shifting shadow.
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No wonder the psalmist could say, For the Lord is good. His loving kindness is everlasting.
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And His faithfulness to all generations. No wonder the psalmist in Psalm 36 says,
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Your unfailing love, O Lord, is vast as the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.
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You can trust God. And this God has shown that He's given you His Son, the High Priest, in Hebrews, to be worshipped and to be trusted and to be glorified in.
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Faith in Jesus can say, Do you know what? Even though I don't know the future, even though the future is unknown,
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I can trust in Him. The second word is unmanageable. Not just when the future is unknown.
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But since Jesus Christ is the compassionate High Priest, you can trust Him, rely on Him, rest on Him, when the circumstances seem unmanageable, or might
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I say impossible. Verses 11 and 12. By faith
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Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered
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Him faithful who had promised. Oh, sometimes
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I love my sermon prep time. Most of the time
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I do. And other times I come to the passages and I'm just working through, okay, Abraham, now
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Sarah, and all of a sudden you just hit this brick wall. Did you know this is a super hard verse to translate grammatically?
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Did you know one commentator said of this verse, quote, this is a cross which is frankly too heavy for expositors to bear.
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End quote. Another commentator said, this verse has been a notorious crux from early times.
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Now if you remember the big picture, you won't get too bogged down with the details. The big picture is
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God commenced faith in the Son, and you need to keep trusting Him. And Abraham had faith, and now the text says, by faith
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Sarah. Except here's where we get the problem. In the language, in English or in Greek, Sarah's the subject, and there's some grammatical things to back that up.
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She's the subject, by faith Sarah. That's not disputable. But it's
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God here in the language of the Greek, that she is having power for laying down of seed.
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Now some translates it, she can conceive. She has the power to conceive. But this language in the
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Greek is the male part of procreation. Giving of the sperm, giving of the seed, giving of the laying down of seed literally.
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So how can she do that? That's the problem. Grammatically. But theologically, there's no real problem.
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I think of Abraham and I think of Sarah, and they're one, and both their bodies didn't work. Right? Both of them were old.
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Both of them could not bear children. Their bodies ceased to function.
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But God's promises and His trustworthiness and His reliability didn't cease to function.
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And so what happens is when you translate this, you could say to yourself, all right, what's the best way to look at it?
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Here's Greenlee's translation. By faith Sarah herself also received ability for the deposition of seed in her body by Abraham, even beyond her normal age, since she considered the one having promised to be faithful.
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And I know what you're all thinking. You're all thinking that's worshipful. I know you're thinking praise
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God from the heavens. Here's the point. It seems to be a problem for us.
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I know it wasn't a problem for the original writer. Faith by Sarah in the object of the
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Messiah to come gave the ability to recognize who
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God was and God did His great work because He promised through Abraham, I'm going to make you a great nation, and not
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Hagar. See, some people come to this passage and say, Sarah, how could Sarah have faith? She says, here's my maidservant.
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Go into her. How could Sarah be here? What kind of faith does she have? She's in the tent laughing her head off.
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Well, that's true. But what about Abraham? What about as Steve read today with Isaac?
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This is not about their faithfulness. This is faith in the promises of God. They trusted in God, and so I think
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Greenlee's got a good point. By faith, Sarah herself also received the ability to receive the seed from Abraham.
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That's the point. What does that mean for us? Here, it seemed impossible for them to have children.
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Once in a while, and I try not to do this too much, but if I'm in a place where I see some folks that are 90 and 100 years old, and some of these, how do you say it?
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Centenarians? Centurions? They're really strong centurions. I couldn't believe it last week when
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I was listening to Luke. He's like, what do you call that thing? I said,
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Luke, sometimes I ask the question, and I know the answer, but sometimes I don't know the answer, so you have to be careful.
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I just look at old couples, and they're 90 and 100 years old, and I think, can you imagine if you're 100 years old, and you think, okay, there's going to be a promise through us that we're going to have children.
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It seems impossible, but they both took God at His word. They both said, you know what?
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We're going to trust in God, who's faithful to His promises, even though it seems impossible.
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That's the point. We don't know all the details. We don't know the science. We don't know how plausible this is.
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It seems all impossible, but we're going to trust God anyway. Therefore, verse 12, do you see it? Therefore, from one man, and him as good as dead, we're talking about procreation dead, were born descendants, and I love the similes, don't you, as many as the stars of heaven, and as many as innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.
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Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. And by the way, this is not just people,
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Jewish people. These are Christians. Remember what Galatians 3 says? And the
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Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying,
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In you shall all the nations be blessed. So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
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Children of Abraham. Father Abraham had many sons.
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Yes? Many sons had... I've told you that I have to amend that song. It's no fun singing songs when you have good theology.
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Or at least you think you have good theology. Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you.
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If you're a believer in the high priest, so let's all praise the Lord. Stand up, sit down, turn around, high five.
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They're trusting in who God was and His promises, and the result... I'm looking at part of the result.
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I am part of the result. Faithful to His promises.
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And if God's faithful to Abraham and Sarah, do you think He's going to be unfaithful to you? We know the answer to that.
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Genesis 22, I will surely bless you, I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore, and your offspring shall possess the gate of His enemies.
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As numerous as, as countless as. On one side of the scale, and on the other side of the scale,
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God is faithful. Turn to Romans chapter 4, and I want to just show you from Paul's perspective what's going on here.
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Paul does the same thing, extolling who God is. It has nothing to do with Abraham. It has nothing to do with Sarah.
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It has everything to do with the object of their faith. Romans chapter 4, verse 18 and following, talks about the same thing.
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It's impossible that these children are going to come from Abraham and Isaac and there are going to be so many, but God does what
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He pleases and nothing is impossible with God. Romans 4, verse 18. Let's just kind of walk through this a little bit.
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I think you'll be encouraged. I think it'll help you understand Hebrews 11 better. In hope, we're talking about Abraham.
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In hope, he believed against hope. I mean, it's impossible that he should become the father of many nations.
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What's a good definition of saving faith according to Acts 27? As he had been told,
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I take God at His word, no matter what He says, I'll believe it anyway. No matter if the future is unknown, no matter if my circumstances are impossible, humanly speaking, as he had been told, so shall your offspring be.
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That's all that needs to be said. As you know, you see those bumper stickers. I've seen lots of bumper stickers in this church parking lot.
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One I thought didn't have the greatest taste, but I remember, I think I still know the person who had it on his car.
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It said hell. Afterlife, smoking or non -smoking? I think I saw that one.
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I think I've seen some no -compromise radio stickers. More class than the first one. I found an old picture of Grandma Evie when she was 93.
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She had a wheelchair because she couldn't walk anymore, and we put a no -compromise radio sticker with all the faux blood and all that on the back of her wheelchair.
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I just saw the picture the other day. But the one that's probably the one you ought to get out of your mind the most is that bumper sticker that said,
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God said it. I believe it. That settles it. You know that bumper sticker? What's wrong with that? God said it.
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That settles it. I want you to believe His promises, but it's done. He's true.
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He's trustworthy. We take Him at His word. And so here, as He had been told.
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Okay, God said it. I'm just going to believe it. And He said go, I go. He did not weaken in faith.
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Remember when you see faith, just think of faith in His object, the Messiah to come. He did not weaken
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His faith when He considered His own body, which was as good as dead. See the comparison to Hebrews 11? Since He was about 100 years old are when
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He considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. He knew He was dead sexually.
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Sarah, she's past bearing children. And He contemplated
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His body. He considered it. By the way, that's a word that means He thought about it a lot. God promised me offspring, and now
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I'm going to think about my own body a lot. How could this be? This is not going to, this is going to have to be a supernatural fact of God, supernatural act of God.
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I'm as good as dead. No unbelief, verse 20, made
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Him waver concerning the promise of God. The King James, I believe, says
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He staggered not at the promises of God, but He grew strong in His faith as He gave glory to God.
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He didn't doubt the promises of God. He wasn't unbelieving. He had an attitude of trust in who
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God was. And He grew strong in that. Strengthened, by the way, it's something that God is doing in Him.
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It's passive. God takes weak Abraham, puts strong faith into him, and emboldens him to give
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God glory. Abraham's faith was made strong by God Himself, El Shaddai, verse 21, fully convinced that God was able to do what
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He had promised. What a great way for us to perceive trials. What's going to happen?
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Will I make it to heaven? Will I be glorified? Fully convinced. That is blessed assurance right there.
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Is anything too difficult for the Lord? Verse 22, that is why His faith was counted to Him as righteousness.
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His faith in the Lord Jesus as the representative, as the substitute, as the risen Savior. Verse 23, here's
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His application for us. Here's the application for you. But the words, it was counted to Him, were not written for His sake alone.
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Well, that could be wonderful, could it not? Verse 24, but for ours also.
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It will be counted to us who believe in Him, who raised from the dead Jesus our
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Lord. It's for you too. It's for all of you who are trusting in the Lord Jesus, credited the perfect work of Jesus, His life,
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His law -keeping, His law -bearing sins covered.
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Verse 25, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
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Back to Hebrews chapter 11. I want you to know, dear Christian, that in spite of the circumstances, in spite of the unknown future, you can trust in the
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Lord. Say, what about heaven? Seems like a long way off. I wonder if I'll ever make it.
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I want to remind you of God's promises for heaven. Some of our creeds say something like this,
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I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. We know the
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Lord Jesus said, today you'll be with me in paradise to that thief. Somebody asked a question, so I'll ask it to you.
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Out of everything that's happened to you in your life that's good, what's your favorite thing that's ever happened to you?
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What's the best moment that you've ever experienced in your life? And maybe you could think about maybe the births of your children or maybe when you met your spouse.
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I don't know what the most wonderful moments would be. Out of all those most wonderful moments that you've had, common grace of God being good to us, what's your best moment?
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Well, here's the good news. The best moment of your life hasn't happened yet.
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Spurgeon, the best moment of a Christian's life is his last one. Because it is the one that is nearest heaven.
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And then it is that he begins to strike the keynote of the song, which he will sing to all eternity.
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Death is the porthole into glory. I have surgery this
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Thursday. It's not a big surgery, but I know they're going to put me out on general anesthesia. And I just want you to know, dear congregation,
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I'm waking up to bright lights. Okay, I am.
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I'm waking up in the recovery room where all the 15 lights coalesce into one, or I am waking up in glory.
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The best is yet to come. I love it that the text says in Hebrews 2,
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For it was fitting that Jesus, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, shall make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.
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How can you be of good courage? Paul says, I say and prefer rather to be absent from the body and be home with the
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Lord. No wonder Jesus said to encourage his people, to encourage us, and I go and prepare a place for you.
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I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am there you may also be.
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No wonder Paul echoed that. I'm hard pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better.
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People say, well, you know what? I know the promises of God for heaven are real, but what if it's really boring in heaven?
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Have you ever thought that? Somebody needs to put a sticker, a bumper sticker for that kind of nonsense.
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Boredom in heaven? People are like, well, I don't want to be going to heaven, because I'll be too bored.
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I have no words for that. Think about how God has made your body today to experience physical pleasure on earth.
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Taste buds, adrenaline, ability to laugh, physical intimacy, how you can appreciate music with your ear, beauty with your eye, the sense of exhilaration and nerve endings that give pleasure to your brains.
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And do you think you're going to get to heaven and you're going to have less sensation than you did on earth?
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You're going to be able to worship an infinite God for all eternity. No wonder one writer said, imagine the scope of the universe, trillions of shining stars, burning brighter than the sun, magnificent constellations, billions of spinning galaxies, all magnificent and vast, colorful and mysterious, yet they are finite, brilliant though they are, they fall utterly short in comparison to the breadth, length, height, and depth of the love of Christ.
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His love, grace, kindness, wisdom, power, and mercy each stand as never -ending, infinite universes for all your affections to delight in.
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And then you think heaven's going to be less than that? You, dear friends, will have a greater capacity for joy.
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Your resurrection body will, as some people say, will come equipped with an unimaginable capacity for joy.
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And you go, how can that be? Because God promises that. How can you be bored if you have an ever -increasing capacity for joy, for love, for worship?
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I think after a billion years, even though there's no time in heaven, you'll say, there's still so much to learn about God.
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Won't it be boring to be good all the time in heaven, someone asked? Note the assumption.
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Sin is exciting and righteousness is boring. We've fallen for the devil's lie. His most basic strategy, the same one employed with Adam and Eve, is to make us believe that sin brings fulfillment.
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However, in reality, sin robs us from fulfillment. The opposite is true.
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Psalm 16, You make known to me the path of life. In Your presence there is what?
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Fullness of joy. How do you know it's all true? Because God said it, and you can take
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Him at His word. Bow with me, please. Father in heaven, I thank You for Your Word.
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We're thankful that You work through saints like Abraham, like Sarah, and we would acknowledge that they were unrighteous, but they trusted in You, the righteous
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God. And it's the same for us. Help us. I know there are deep valleys that some folks are going through right now.
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The future is unknown, and it seems impossible on this side of heaven.
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So, I just pray, Father, that Your will would be done, and that they would entrust their souls to a faithful Creator who does what's right.