Hebrews 11 and the Hall of Faith (Part 3)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and we�re talking about Hebrews 11. I�m in the studio, i .e., the church building today. It�s Saturday, 430, and it�s dark as anything.

I don�t want to complain about that, but I think the daylight savings time thing is pretty bogus. Bogey. You can write us info at nocompromiseradio .com if you want one of those new stickers. This is backwards, I think, but you can see it anyway.

You can send a self-addressed stamped envelope to No Compromise Radio, 307 Lancaster Street, West Boylston, Mass, 01583. Attention Spencer. I was watching Shark Tank the other day, and there was some kid from West Boylston, Mass, and he�s going to be a millionaire.

Maybe he�ll get saved and come to church. Yeah, how�s that celebrity thing treating you when the celebrity comes to your church? I think life is simpler when they don�t, but it�s not my church, so we�ll see.

We�re far enough out of Boston, no celebrities come to BBC. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and those people, I don�t even know, or Wahlberg, do they live in Boston anymore? I don�t even think they live there, but who knows?

Hebrews 11 in Context: The Sandwich Around the Hall of Faith

We�re talking about Hebrews 11, and here�s what we�re talking about. It is a massive chapter. Mike asks, �Is it snowing No, but it snowed two inches yesterday, and it snowed two feet last week. I go to California for Thanksgiving and come home to two feet of snow.

It�s crazy. It�s supposed to be 54 in rain on Monday, so we�ll see what happens, how much of it melts. What am I talking about? Mike, you�re interrupting me. Oh, Hebrews 11. It�s a great chapter. People love Hebrews 11.

I don�t blame them for loving it, but I don�t think people understand it very well. So the last two shows, including this one, I�ve talked about how to understand Hebrews 11 better. So the first part was context, where you see a sandwich, 10 and 12, as the outer like buns or something.

Then the Popeye�s spicy chicken sandwich in the middle that people fight for is Hebrews 11. Simultaneously, when you think of context, don�t forget that it�s the Jewish people that this person is preaching to, writing to, and he is basically telling them, �You know, you�re heroes of the faith.

They were all looking for this day that you�re in. Why would you go back there? Because then you�re just looped back. Right? And then I talked about figures of speech. Anaphora is Hebrews 11, �By faith, by faith, by faith, by faith.

And it�s meant to remind you. It�s meant to impress on your memory. It�s meant to make it vivid, appealing, encouraging. Anaphora is a way we can do things by faith, repeated over and over and over.

And then thirdly, I wanted you to read carefully. And that�s where we ended up last time. For you radio listeners, where we ended up yesterday, for the Facebook Live people, for the hordes on Facebook Live, we�re talking about the difference between faith and faithfulness.

The only time the word �faithful� is used in Hebrews 11 is �of God. And by faith, what do we mean? So, when you read the Bible carefully, you�re going to distinguish between faith and faithful. If I ask you, and this is how we ended the show last time, �Are you a person of faith you are going to say, �Yes because all no-co-listeners are persons of faith, peoples of faith.

And I ask you how to describe that, you probably will give me things like, �I read the Bible, I pray, I listen to podcasts, I go to church, I serve, I�m a member. That�s describing faithful though, is it not?

If you are a person of faith, and you want to describe what that looks like, you should say something like this, �Yes, God has given me faith to believe and trust in the only Savior, Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life, died on Calvary, not for his sins but for mine and others, and was raised from the dead.

And I�m trusting that his words are true, and that he has the words of eternal life, and that he said, �If I trust in him and believe in him, I will have eternal life, and I will not have to go to hell and pay for my sin debt, although I sin.

They�re covered by the perfect righteousness of Jesus, and they have been credited those sins to Jesus� account on Calvary, and I get credited his perfect righteousness that is confirmed by the resurrection.

You will talk something like that, but see how we confuse it in evangelicalism? Everything is pushed to faithful, faithful, faithful, faithful, faithful, a life of faith. And therefore, when you read Hebrews, and you see the word faith, and in your mind you translate it to faithful, you�re not going to get it.

So I want you to understand the difference between faithful and faith. When we call Hebrews 11 the hall of faith, make sure you don�t turn that into, mentally, the hall of faithfulness. The word faith is found 33 times in the book of Hebrews, with a concentration here in chapter 11, because of this figure of speech, this anaphora, this exemplary list of people.

The word faithful is only found one time in the book of Hebrews 11, and that is, God is faithful. She, Sarah, considered God faithful, who had promised. So here�s what happens. Especially if you come from a kind of a hyper-lordship background, Hebrews 11 is tricky, because while there�s many wonderful people here, some stand out as pretty crazy.

Some stand out as pretty carnal. Some stand out as sinful. Let�s look at one. What about chapter 11, verse 7, �By faith, Noah. And so he talks a lot about Noah. Well, there�s many things about Noah that I like, but did you forget this?

�The sons of Noah, who went forth from the ark, were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed. Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard.

This is after the flood. �He drank of the wine, and became drunk, and lay uncovered in his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and took his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both of their shoulders, walked backward, covered their father�s nakedness.

Their faces were turned away. And so here we have drunk Noah and the whole nakedness issue. You say, well, who else is in this hall of faith? What about chapter 11, verse 32, Gideon? We could talk about Gideon and his crazy fleeces.

Samson and Jephthah. I mean, David and Samuel, I kind of get, right? To me, in my mind, they're the hall of faithfulness. I understand that, but it's amazing. We've got Jephthah and Samson. How do we get Jephthah and Samson in this list?

I mean, Jacob's in the list. He's a deceiver. Abraham, he's in the list. Hey, don't kill me. Sleep with my wife. She's really my sister. Not once, but twice. There's a lot of unfaithful things going on here.

This is the hall of faithfulness. And I will say that there are many things that these people, David, Moses, Abraham, what they did, they did do faithful things, but they weren't always faithful. So the writer here is trying to say by faith, this is by faith in the Messiah.

This is by faith in who God was revealing himself to be at the time. I mean, I believe in progressive revelation. That's true. But still, how about Samson? Samson is in, no, this is not Ralph Sampson, this is Samson.

Samson went down to Timnah, Judges 14, and at Timnah, he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines. Then he came up and told his father and mother, I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah.

Now get her for me as my wife. Faithful? Now go get her. I mean, I think his father should have had a different tact. His father wasn't very faithful either, but here's how his father responds. It strikes me as very timid.

Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives or among all your people that you must go and take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines? But Samson said to his father, get her for me for she is right in my eyes.

Wow. How about in chapter 16, Samson went to Gaza and there he saw a prostitute and he went into her. The Gazites were told Samson has come here and they surrounded the place and set an ambush for him.

I want you to read carefully. And if you take faith and faithfulness and transpose them, interpose them, what are other words? To transpose, to interpose, to jam into, what's the Greek word for to jam into?

If you confuse them, we'll just leave it at that on No Compromise Radio. If you confuse these words, faith and faithful, it's going to wreak havoc on you. It's going to be hard for you to really function, I think.

And what do I mean by that? Well, that gives us to number four. Number four, embrace theological vocabulary. All right. How do you understand the Bible? And it applies to everything. We're using Hebrews 11 as a test case.

Context, think sandwich. Figures of speech, anaphora. Read carefully, faith and faithful, different. Four, embrace theological vocabulary. Okay. This is going to be a fun one. It's my show. I do what I want.

For those of you that need a change of pace on ADD Radio, somebody sent me this. And at first I thought it was an eraser. I wouldn't know why I wouldn't have an eraser. It's not an eraser, but I get this thing and it says strength on the front.

That's all it says right there. Strength. You have to take my word for it. It's blurry. Why would somebody send me this? I guess for my implant, hold, holds. Supposedly my implant is stronger than my other teeth, but I've yet to try.

Strength. I think they want this to be Jesus, but since I don't want to have commandment violations, this is really, I just think of this as Mary. It's so feminine, it's Mary. Yeah. Because they're pagans.

That's true. So embrace theological vocabulary. All right. Here's what I mean. I know you know that the Old Testament is written in Hebrew with some sections, small sections of Aramaic. I know you know that.

With the New Testament written in Greek. But I also want you to think about a different language that is a gospel language. We live in a law-driven world and everything's law, law, law, as we say here in New England.

But I want you to think about categories too. And I want you to think about gospel-ese. Every culture has their own language. Every group of people have their own dialect. And Christians ought to have their dialect.

Christians ought to have their nomenclature. Christians ought to have their Christian-ese. And I don't mean Christian-ese like you get on Caleb or something like that. But I mean ways to think about things categorically, in categories.

And once you begin to think that way, it's hard to unthink that. And if they're the right categories, it will help you. And so one of the words we're going to learn today, if I was R .C. Sproul, I'd draw it on a chalkboard, is simul justus et peccator.

When you get this down, you get Hebrews 11. It will help you so much. And it kind of leads into the faith-faithfulness talk that I had for point three, and that's why I made it point four. What was implicit in that, I'm now making explicit with a new point.

That's what pastors do. They make implicit points explicit by making them their own points. Because they're pagan. By the way, for the no-compromise radio listener, I'm looking over here to the recorder to check the time.

These little comments that I make sometimes out of nowhere, like, is it snowing? Bill said preach it. Meg said praise God for imputed righteousness, handle with care because they're pagan, from Mike and Veritas.

Veritas, is that your real name? They're just there on the Facebook Live people. They're the ones who are watching it. If you think of the category, simul justus et peccator, it's going to help you. Simul, easy, simultaneous, at the same time.

Justus, where we get the word justice, J. No, I cannot lie. In vino, Veritas. Justus, J-U-S-T-U-S, justice, or just, righteous, et, R .C. Sproul always says, et is past tense for eight. If you eat something, you et it, you et three, it just means and.

And then peccator is sinner. I didn't say pescato. That would be simultaneously just and fish. You can tell why I often think, shall I continue with No Compromise Radio, or should this just be the end?

I want you to think in theological categories. Simultaneously just, that is your declared righteous. As Meg would say, the perfect law-keeping man, God-man, Jesus earns righteousness by obeying the law.

Whenever you think of righteousness, you do the right thing, you keep the law. Jesus doesn't need righteousness, he already is. So he's earning righteousness, not for himself, but for other people. And since he's God, he has an infinite amount of righteousness that he can bestow on all those who would ever believe.

And therefore, I'm standing before God as just because my sins have been paid for by Jesus, and I get credit for what he has earned, right? That's the doctrine of justification, and that's true because of the resurrection.

There we go. Meg's got a good little article there from Ligonier. I've read that article, and it's actually here in my notes. Hupomenon. Simultaneously righteous, that's the doctrine of justification.

Yet we're not in heaven yet, and therefore we're not glorified yet, and we still struggle with sin. This is Paul crying out for deliverance in Romans chapter 7. I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh, for I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.

Bill just said, milk just came out of my nose. Would that be cashew milk? It seems like there's not so much viscosity in cashew milk. One time, it was probably fifth grade, I went to Master's Elementary School in Nebraska.

It had nothing to do with Master's Seminary or this Master's. We were the Master's Monarchs, and I had Dan Sanfilippo as my teacher, my favorite teacher of all time. I looked him up on the internet and called him and said, thank you.

You affected my life. I told him about some of the books I wrote, blah, blah, blah, and he was really encouraged. Then he said, did you have a sister named Marcy and a brother named Pat? I'm like, wow, no wonder he was such a great teacher.

He could remember those things. Dan Sanfilippo. Well, in cafeteria in Nebraska in what must have been 1972, can you imagine the quality of food in the cafeteria there? Oh, I'm sure we had all kinds of special things.

Anyway, I think it was like St. Patrick's Day or something. My buddy, Dave Jorgensen, I don't even know what happened to Dave Jorgensen. He was in the cafeteria, and you know how you're trying to get other guys to laugh and stuff like that, and we're horsing around.

So we had green milk, and we got him to laugh so hard. Green milk comes shooting out of his nose. I would pay to see that today. That is amazing. Paul says in Romans 7, for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it that sin that dwells in me. And you can just hear Paul asking for deliverance as he says, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Then you understand for yourself. Now let's think about it. I want you to, Christian, I want you to honestly think for a moment about you and your sin. Now there's two things that happen when we think honestly about our sin.

Well there's one main thing. It's devastating. We despair over that. If you don't think honestly about your sin, you tend to be self-righteous. That's my default. I read passages and I go, I think I do that, you know, by the grace of God.

But if you're really, really honest, I think you're going to despair. But when you read a passage like this in Hebrews 11, I think you ought to be thinking these people, men and some women, they were right in God's eyes based on the future Messiah's life and death and work, yet they still struggle with sin.

No wonder two shows ago, I read that email from Randy who struggles with assurance because if the focus is always internally, curved in on ourselves as Luther would say, and you only deal with subjective side of assurance, that is, do I do what Christians do?

That isn't enough. That isn't going to help you with assurance. But thinking objectively, the objective work of Christ will help you. Now I think both need to be thought about, but one has been eclipsed today and that is the work of Christ.

The idea of John Bunyan saying, my righteousness has been in heaven for 1700 years. There's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, even though they still sin. Now you can look it up on your own if you'd like, but what about David?

David's in this list in Hebrews 11, simul justus et peccator. Does that make sense for you? When you think of David, a man after God's own heart, and then David, Bathsheba, Uriah, Israel, and those even aren't the main ones he sinned against, right?

Psalm 51, against thee and thee only have I sinned and done what is evil in thy sight. How many Psalms did David write before he slept with Bathsheba? I think he wrote some, and yet he could do that? Now, that just makes me think, you know what?

I'm as bad as I know I am, but is there hope for somebody like that? I think people today think that, you know, theological sanctification, progressive sanctification, there's no major dips. I don't want there to be dips.

Do you want to be a dip? No-co dips. Dip and dots. No, I don't want that, but it is inevitable. And therefore, I think to myself, simul justus et peccator. We have righteous and at the same time, a sinner.

Listen to Romans 4, 5. But to him that worketh not, but believeth, here's some King James for you, on him that justify the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. This is so good. We have an idea as we watch these people in the hall of faith who are going to get to heaven, who endured, who weren't perfect in terms of their practice.

Positionally, I get. Ultimately, I get. But as they were on this earth and they were walking by faith, this was not Keswick faith. This was not perfect faith. This was not inner faith. Meg said, that's a hard balance.

I've struggled with morbid introspection and my pastor helped me see it was darker side of pride. And Meg, if I could say this, and I don't mean any joke about it, you're worse than you think. Because so am I.

We are worse than we think. And when we look to the inside, I don't even think we're really that honest with ourselves because it's a lot worse than we think. Therefore, when we do look to ourselves and we say, well, you know, 2 Peter 1, I understand.

But eventually, you've got to look to the Lord Jesus. And for every time McShane said he looked at himself, he looked at the Lord Jesus 10 times. That's the missing element in assurance conversations these days.

And I think Sinclair Ferguson's book, The Whole Christ, will help everyone with that. And therefore, when I think at once justified and a sinner, that's very, very helpful. I'm looking for a Luther quote here that I can't seem to find because you guys got me off track.

Oh, where's my Luther quote? I can't find it. Okay, then I give you Westminster Confession of Faith. Notwithstanding the persons of believers being accepted through Christ, their good works also are accepted in him, not as though they were in this life, wholly unblameable and unreprovable in God's sight, but that he looking upon them in his son is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere, although accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections.

So, let's just forget just for a second, Christian, about our sins. How about our good works? Think of Isaiah chapter 64. Even our righteous deeds, our best works are like filthy rags. If you have a problem with assurance, don't look to your sin.

Things are worse. Look at your good works, and even those things are tainted with bad motives and sinful effects. But we're accepted in the beloved, and therefore our works are accepted as well. That's such good news.

Righteous, declared righteous by the work of another, and still sinful. Now, don't take that as an excuse to sin. Take that as an excuse to show gratitude to the Lord by living a holy life because of God's great grace.

Well, that's No Compromise Radio today. We're just talking about Hebrews 11 and some general principles using theological categories. Justification, sanctification, and they are separate. One will lead to the other, but they are separate categories.

Iniquities forgiven, sins are covered based on what the Lord has done. Even after we are reborn, John Knox said, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. It is therefore essential for us to lay hold on Jesus Christ in his righteousness and his atonement since he is the end and the consummation of the law, and since it is by him that we are at liberty so that the curse of God may not fall on us, even though we do not fulfill the law at all points.

My name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.