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The Faith That Pleases God (Hebrews 11:6)
Good morning.
Please stand with us and sing your great name we praise. Immortal, invisible,
God only wise, In light inaccessible, hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days, Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.
Resting on hasty and silent as night, Not wanting or wasting, you rule us in night,
Your justice like mountains high soaring above, Your clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.
Most holy, most glorious, the
Ancient of Days, Almighty, victorious, your great name we praise.
All life comes from you, Lord, you both great and small, In all life you live,
Lord, the true life of all, We blossom and flourish, but quickly grow frail,
We wither and perish, but you never fail.
Great Father of glory, pure Father of life, Your angels adore you, all veiling their sight,
All praise we will render, O Father of grace,
Till one day in splendor we see face to face.
How I love to proclaim it, redeemed by the blood of the
Lamb, Redeemed through His infinite mercy, His child and forever
I am. Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed by the blood of the
Lamb, Redeemed through His infinite mercy,
His child and forever I am. Redeemed and so happy in Jesus, no language my rapture can tell,
I know that the light of His presence with me doth continually dwell.
Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, Redeemed through His infinite mercy,
His child and forever I am. I think of my blessed
Redeemer, I think of Him all the day long, I sing for I cannot be silent,
His love is the theme of my song. Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed by the blood of the
His child and forever I am. I know
I shall see in His beauty the King in whose law
I delight, Who lovingly guardeth my footsteps and giveth me songs in the night.
Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed by the blood of the
His child and forever I am. Your love,
O Lord, reaches to the heavens,
Your faithfulness stretches to the sky,
Your righteousness is like the mountains,
Your justice flows like the ocean's tide.
I will lift my voice to worship You, my
King, I will find my strength in the shadow of Your wings.
Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens,
I will lift my voice to worship
You, my King, I will find my strength in the shadow of Your wings.
Your faithfulness stretches to the sky.
Your love,
O Lord, reaches to the heavens, Your faithfulness stretches to the sky.
Your faithfulness stretches to the sky. Please turn your Bibles to Psalm 143.
The pre -script for Psalm 143 says it is the psalm of David. This is a psalm of trust and confidence in God, asking
God to fulfill His Word and to sustain Him. Psalm 143. Hear my prayer,
O Lord, give ear to my supplications. Answer me in Your faithfulness, in Your righteousness, and do not enter into judgment with Your servant.
For in Your sight no man living is righteous. For the enemy has persecuted my soul, he has crushed my life to the ground, he has made me dwell in dark places like those who have long been dead.
Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me, my heart is appalled within me. I remember the days of old,
I meditate on all Your doings, I muse on the work of Your hands. I stretch out my hands to You, my soul longs for You as a parched land.
Answer me quickly, O Lord, my spirit fails. Do not hide Your face from me, or I will become like those who go down to the pit.
Let me hear Your loving kindness in the morning, for I trust in You. Teach me the way in which
I should walk, for to You I lift up my soul. Deliver me, O Lord, from my enemies. I take refuge in You.
Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God. Let Your good spirit lead me on level ground.
For the sake of Your name, O Lord, revive me. In Your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble, and in Your loving kindness cut off my enemies and destroy all those who afflict my soul, for I am
Your servant. Will you stand with me as we pray? Let's bow our heads.
Our Father, as Your people, we rejoice to be able to be here and to gather together and worship. Our fellowship is sweet.
The unity that we have in Your Word and around the truth is precious to us. The friendships that we have are precious to us,
Father. And, of course, the salvation that You have granted to us in Jesus Christ is the most precious gift of all.
You have redeemed us for Your name's sake. You have given us righteousness which You demand from us.
As the psalmist says, no man is righteous in Your sight, and that is our true and honest condition before You apart from faith in Jesus Christ.
You demanded of us righteousness. That is what is required to stand before You and to receive Your blessings.
And then because of the work of Your Son and through faith, You have granted that to those who have believed. And so we thank
You for demanding that of us. We thank You for providing for us what You demand for us.
We have a righteousness that is not our own, a righteousness that is ours on the basis of faith. It's the righteousness of Christ.
We rejoice in that, and we thank You for it. It is a precious gift. Our forgiveness, the forgiveness of our sins, our transgressions, and all of our iniquity,
You have taken it all out of the way, and we are grateful for that as well. We thank You that You have brought us into the body of Christ and granted us such sweet fellowship and the blessings of Your provision,
Your protection, Your guidance, and Your sanctifying hand. And we pray that our time together here today may serve that end, that purpose of honoring and exalting the
Lord Jesus Christ. It is our privilege and our joy to sing to You praises and to worship
You in Your great name. And we pray that You would grace us and strengthen us to lift our hearts in praise to You and focus our minds and our hearts upon You, our great
God and Savior, upon the salvation that You have wrought in Your Son, and upon Your Word this morning we pray for the glory of our triune
God in the name of Christ our Lord. And all God's people said, Amen. And I am safe on this solid ground
The Lord is my salvation I will not fear when darkness falls
His strength will help me scale these walls I'll see the dawn of the rising sun
The Lord is my salvation Who is like the
Lord our God Strong to save, faithful in love
My head is plain and the victory won
The Lord is my salvation My hope is hidden in the
Lord He flowers each promise of His Word When winter fades,
I know spring will come The Lord is my salvation
In times of waiting, times of need When I know lost, when
I am weak I know His grace will renew these days
The Lord is my salvation And when
I reach the final day He will not leave me in the grave
But I will rise, He will call me home The Lord is my salvation
Who is like the Lord our God Strong to save, faithful in love
My head is plain and the victory won The Lord is my salvation
Glory be to God the Father Glory be to God the Son Glory be to God the
Spirit The Lord is our salvation
The Lord is our salvation The Lord is our salvation
Wonderful, merciful Savior Precious Redeemer and Friend Who would have thought that a
Lamb could Rescue the souls of men
Oh, You rescue the souls of men
Counselor, Comforter, Keeper Spirit we long to embrace
You offer hope when our hearts have
Hopelessly lost the way
Oh, we've hopelessly lost the way
You are the one that we praise
You are the one we adore
You give the healing and praise
Our hearts always hunger for Oh, our hearts always hunger for Almighty Infinite Father Faithfully loving
Your own Here in our weakness
You find us Falling before Your throne
Oh, we're falling before Your throne
Our hearts always hunger for Oh, our hearts always hunger for You are the one that we praise
You are the one we adore You give the healing and praise
Our hearts always hunger for Oh, our hearts always hunger for Oh, our hearts always hunger for Oh, our hearts always hunger for Oh, our hearts always hunger for Oh, our hearts always hunger for So we pray that our hearts and minds would be open today and that you would illuminate our hearts and minds to Your word.
May the ministry of Your Spirit be to the end of equipping and edifying Your people today.
Encourage us and rebuke us as necessary and strengthen our hearts together in and through Your word, we pray in Christ's name.
Amen. Hebrews 11, verses 1 -7 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.
By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous,
God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. By faith
Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death, and he was not found because God took him up, for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up, he was pleasing to God.
And without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.
By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness, which is according to faith.
The Christian life is a life of faith from beginning to end. We are by faith born into the family of God, born again.
It is by faith that we live in God's family and serve one another in God's family and are faithful in this world in God's family, and it is by faith that we die in this world and are ushered into God's presence.
It is faith from first to last, and every aspect of our Christian life is to be characterized by faith, and it has always been this way since the beginning.
Abel was approved because of his faith, having offered the sacrifice that God demanded, and we go back in Genesis and we see from the very beginning it has always been by faith that men were called and expected to relate to God.
Faith has always been at the very heart of what it means to interact with God, to know God, to experience
God, to love God, to serve him and to be known by him and to know him. And Hebrews gives us this list of heroes of the faith.
We see in Hebrews that faith saves. It's by faith that we are made righteous. It's by faith that we are made acceptable to God.
It is by faith that we do mighty works, conquer kingdoms, et cetera. These are the heroes of faith that we have in Hebrews chapter 11, and the author gives to us a list of examples.
There's a chronological order. There's a logical order to the examples. He gives us a definition of faith in verse one.
It is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not yet seen. He gives us examples of faith,
Abel, Enoch, and Noah, and then he also gives to us a statement on the necessity of faith and what it means to have faith and why faith is necessary, and that's in verse six.
In verse six, we read, and without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him or who diligently seek him, and the word seek there talks about the exertion of an effort, a diligence in seeking after God.
He who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
This is a statement on the necessity of faith, and the two examples that we've seen so far in Hebrews chapter 11,
Abel and Enoch, both demonstrate that God is a rewarder of those who seek him, and last week, we just looked at Enoch's example, but we didn't get into verse six, which is really the commentary on Enoch's example.
It's connected to verse five by that phrase, he pleased God. You'll notice in verse five, by faith
Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death, and he was not found because God took him up, for he obtained the witness, that is the testimony,
God testifying of Enoch, that before his being taken up, he was pleasing to God. Now, verse six is the commentary on that.
It explains how it is that Enoch pleased God, and what it was about Enoch that pleased God, namely, his faith.
So without faith, it is impossible to please him. You can see that the author is cuing off of the language that he used in verse five to describe what it means to please
God, and how faith is necessary to accomplishing that task. So then the question before us is, what does it mean to please
God, and how does faith do that? You'll notice that the author in verse six states a positive truth in a negative way.
He says, it is impossible without faith to please God. So the impossibility is a negative statement, and being without faith, that is a negative statement, and if you put the two negatives together,
I'm not gonna get into complex math, but when you have a sort of a double negative structure like that, that means that the positive aspect of it is that with faith, it is possible to please
God. In fact, faith is the only way that it is possible to please God, and faith is the only thing that pleases
God, because the one who comes to God, that is, approaches God initially, and pursues and seeks after God through a lifetime of faith, that person must believe that God is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
And that language, pleased God, is the equivalent of walking with God. We saw that last week with Enoch. In verse five, when it says at the end of verse five that Enoch was pleasing to God, we saw that back in Genesis chapter five, it doesn't say that Enoch was pleasing to God, it says he walked with God.
But the Greek translation of the Old Testament that the author of Hebrews had before him, the Septuagint, it translated that idiom, walked with God, as pleased
God, and that is a faithful, it is an accurate, and a very good translation of that idea, that walking with God is pleasing to God.
So the Septuagint just translated it as pleasing to God, and it's that that the author seizes on.
God was obviously pleased with Enoch, or he would not have walked with Enoch. For God does not give his blessings, his benefits, the comforts and the joys of being with him,
God does not give those to people who do not please him, to people who do not have faith. It is something that the unbeliever does not have.
What kind of faith is it that is being described here? It's not the indescript and nondescript and sort of vague idea of believing in a higher power, or believing in a
God, or just a feeling of confidence in something, whatever it is, just believe something, that's not the idea that the author is talking about.
We defined faith back in verse one. It is specifically a faith in a specific person, it is a specific kind of faith, it is a very narrow faith, it is a very intentional faith, and it has in its mind a certain goal or certain ideal, namely that God is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
So this is not an undefined or an ill -defined notion of just believing in a higher power, but it is a specific faith in a specific
God to a specific end for a specific thing, very specific. And that alone is the kind of faith that pleases
God. But what does it mean to please God? That's the question, isn't it? What does it mean to please God? Does it mean that you make
God in some sense happy? Because we talk about being pleased by something, right?
Somebody does something for us and we become pleased with that. We're pleased, in other words, we're kind of made happy, we're made a little joyful, we're kind of got a skip in our step, right?
We're tickled by this, that's a phrase my grandmother used to use, tickles me pink. We're tickled by this, we're encouraged by this, it puts a smile on our face.
Is that what faith does to God? Is that what it means to please God? The verb that's translated please here is, the word that is translated as please here is used as a verb only three times in all the
New Testament. All three of them by the author of Hebrews. It's used twice, once in verse five and once in verse six, that Enoch was pleasing to God and without faith it is impossible to please him.
It's used twice there. The third time that it's used is in Hebrews chapter 13, verse 16, and do not neglect doing good and sharing for with such sacrifices
God is pleased. That's the verb form. The adjective form of that word is used elsewhere in scripture numerous times and when it is used as an adjective, it describes something that is acceptable or accepted by someone.
In fact, that's how it's used in a familiar passage, Romans chapter 12, verses one and two, where Paul says, I urge you brethren by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable.
That's the word, pleasing, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship and do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect, that which is good and pleasing.
In other words, the idea behind the word is not that God suddenly feels happy about something, that we change his emotions toward us by an act of faith, but rather that we are made acceptable.
This is something that God is pleased with, that he accepts. The idea is that God accepts this,
God approves of this, and this is, of course, the whole context in Hebrews chapter 11. By this, the men of old gained what?
Approval, acceptance, God's pleasure. God is pleased with it or he accepts it, and in view in Hebrews 11 is both our person and our works.
In other words, it is not just us as individuals as fallen creatures in this creation that are made acceptable to God by faith and faith alone, but it is that everything that we do, all of our deeds, our service, our life itself, everything that we offer to the
Lord must also be offered in faith or it is not acceptable to him. Anything that is not of faith is what,
Paul says? It's sin. Anything that is not of faith is sin.
So that means that if I'm seeking to please God or be made acceptable to him on the basis of anything other than faith, it's sin.
Without faith, it is very difficult to please God. Is that what the text says?
Harder to please God than with faith? Is that what the text says? Does the text say that without faith, it's a real challenge to please
God? Or that your chances are skimmer if you're gonna try and please God? That's not what it says. Without faith, it is impossible, absolutely impossible.
There is no chance, there is no wiggle room, there are no exceptions, there is nobody who has ever been accepted by God who has been so on the basis of anything other than the kind of faith that is described in Hebrews chapter 11.
There is no work that has ever been done which has been approved of by God, been accepted by him, been pleasing to him that has ever been done on the basis of anything other than the kind of faith that is described in Hebrews chapter 11.
It is impossible to please God. Now what would you say about somebody who spent their life trying to do the impossible?
Would you think that they're smart, industrious, a real entrepreneur? Or would you think that they're crazy?
What would you think of somebody who set out to swim the Atlantic Ocean? You recognize that that's impossible? Would you think that he's a brave person?
Or would you say, no, he's a crazy person, he's nuts. What would you say of me if you were walking down at the city beach, not right now, but during the summer months, because this is the only time that I would ever think of attempting something like this.
You were walking down at the city beach and you saw me, you're walking on that path that kind of goes all the way around the city beach and you see me down on the beach and I'm there with a pad of paper and a pencil and I'm holding a palm full of sand and I'm doing this.
And I write something down and you ask me, Jim, what are you doing? I think, well, I've set it out, it's my goal to catalog every grain of sand in the world.
To name them, number them, and catalog every last one of them. And I thought I would start with the city beach and then
I'm gonna move on to other beaches around Lake Pend Oreille and then Priest Lake and then Coquitlam Lake and then Round Lake and eventually all the lakes in the
Northern Panhandle and then I'm moving on to other states and then the West Coast and the East Coast. And this is my life's goal, to catalog every grain of sand on the planet and I'm starting right here in my own backyard.
You would call me what? Nuts. Yeah, you'd think we need to be looking for another pastor because we've obviously stressed this one out too much.
He's down there counting grains of sand. Spurgeon said that to attempt a difficulty may be laudable, but to rush upon an impossibility is madness.
It's impossible to please God without faith. To attempt to do something that is difficult is admirable, but to do something and to attempt to do something that is impossible is insanity.
Without faith, it is impossible to please God. An impossibility. And we are told that it is impossible and therefore any and all who try it and attempt to do it, whether to relate to God and to come to him and be accepted by him for eternal life or salvation or to do anything, any act, any work that is pleasing to him in any way is a mad fool.
And yet people do this all the time. This was in fact Cain's issue, wasn't it? Wasn't it?
Cain had revealed to him how it was that he was to approach God. He knew this. He knew what the sacrifice was to be.
He knew when the sacrifice was to be offered. He and Abel both had the same amount of information. They had grown up in that household.
This was part of their regular practice. Cain came at the appointed time on the appointed day to the appointed place and he offered his sacrifice, but Cain decided
I'm gonna do it my way. The big Frank Sinatra attempt at worship. I'll do it my way. I'll please
God my way. I'm not gonna do what I've been commanded to do to be obedient to the Lord. Instead, rejecting what
God had said and not believing God's testimony, Cain attempted to do it his own way. Abel's sacrifice pleased
God because Abel believed what God said concerning sacrifices and how
God was to be approached. Then he, in acting in that obedience, was an expression of his faith and it is by that faith that was the evidence of his faith, the sacrifice was, that is what made
Abel's sacrifice pleasing or acceptable to God and thus what made Abel pleasing and acceptable to God.
This is how all the Old Testament Jews pursued righteousness. Not all of them, but most of them. Paul says this in Romans chapter nine.
They did not pursue it by faith, but by works. They were pursuing righteousness because they knew they had no righteousness and they thought that righteousness could be attained on the basis of works and so rather than pursuing it by faith, which is what they should have done following Abraham's example, they didn't do that.
Instead, they pursued it on their own terms, which was by works. Any attempt to keep the law for salvation, it is impossible to please
God. Any attempt to keep the 10 commandments, thinking that in the 10 commandments I can be justified,
I can be made righteous, any attempt to keep those in order to earn righteousness and somehow merit
God's grace or God's favor or God's blessing is nothing less than a denial of faith.
It is impossible to please God on those terms. Any trust in a ceremony, whether it be communion or baptism or last rites or mass or anything else that is done for you or by you or on your behalf by another, anything like that is nothing less than a disbelief in what
God has said and a rejection of faith and an act of unbelief and therefore it is impossible to please
God. You cannot trust in your lineage. You cannot say because my parents were believers or because my grandparents were believers or because I know people who are believers or because I grew up in a
Christian family. None of those things merit you righteousness and any attempt or trust in any of those things is nothing less than a lack of faith.
To approach God on your own merits, by your own good deeds, to say I've served in a church or I've helped other people,
I served at the soup kitchen, I've done these good things, I've improved my lot in life, I've lived a moral and upright, upstanding life.
When I look at all the neighbors around me, all of them are a bunch of fire -breathing, drunken, adulterous, fornicating liars and thieves.
I don't trust any of them and that's the neighborhood in which I live but look how righteous I am compared to everybody around me.
Obviously, I can warrant or merit God's righteousness. I can merit his approval. Without faith, it is impossible to please him.
It was George Whitefield who said, if I were to trust, trusting in my own works to get me to heaven, I would sooner try and climb to the moon on a rope made of sand.
Your odds are better. You could catalog all the sand in the rope if you wanted to but you're not gonna be able to climb to the moon on a rope made of sand.
You cannot gain God's approval apart from faith. Now, this is good news and it's bad news.
It's bad news because it means that you have to turn your back on every other attempt at pleasing
God and being acceptable to him except faith and faith alone. But here's the good news. It's by faith and faith alone and not your works.
That is good news. The bad news is you have to abandon all of your attempts at self -righteousness. You have to divorce yourself and abandon all of your trust in anything other than that.
You have to admit that you're wrong, turn from your sin, trust in Christ and Christ alone, throw all of your confidence in him and him alone.
That's a very difficult thing to do, nigh unto impossible thing to do apart from the grace of God but the good news is is that it is by faith and faith alone.
If it were by some work or some good deed or something that we could merit, the bad news is we could never merit enough.
We could never be confident enough in anything that we have done but if God says just come to me and believe what I have said concerning approaching me and being acceptable to me, if those are the terms, we can meet those terms.
We can come to him on that basis. Without faith, it is impossible to please him. And the reason given is the rest of verse six.
For he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. He who comes to God, this is the very first movement of the soul toward God.
It is faith that is active at the very, very beginning of us coming to understand who it is that God is and how it is that we are to approach him.
He begins, we have to, the one who comes to him must believe that he is. The one who approaches
God, who thinks to themselves, who reasons to themselves, I am a sinner, my conscience bears witness of this truth and there is a
God who exists and his standard is perfect righteousness and if that is the case, then I have fallen horribly short of that standard and therefore,
I need forgiveness and I need all of my sin debt taken away and I need righteousness in order to stand before him but I have only sin and I have no righteousness and what he demands is no sin and perfect righteousness so that everything he demands,
I have nothing of that and everything that he forbids, I have a heaping helping of that in my caseload before a holy and just God.
So since that is the case, for me to approach God, I must first of all believe not only that he is but second, that he will reward me for seeking after him, that in coming to him, there is a reward.
I have to believe that there is a God and that I can lay hold of his promise that if I will believe him, trust him and place my faith in him and him alone, that is all
I need for forgiveness of my sins and perfect righteousness and to be made acceptable to him on the last day.
The one who comes to God, that is even approaches God for the very first blessing and what is the very first blessing for which we approach
God? Forgiveness of our sins and perfect righteousness. The one who comes or even approaches unto
God must believe these two things and now we're given the object of our faith and the content of our faith.
He must believe that God is. You must believe that God is. Not that there is a
God, the difference between this. It's not that you believe that there is a God but that you must believe that God is.
Which God? The God revealed in scripture. You must believe that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who is incarnated and revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, that this blessed and holy and righteous triune
God who spoke the world into existence in Genesis one and will recreate the entire world in Revelation 22, that this
God exists. The God who was revealed in scripture. Specifically, we have to have a faith in the right
God. It's not enough that we just believe in God as we see fit or as we are comfortable or that we fashion a
God after our own image or that we believe in a God that we are comfortable with and that we enjoy hanging out with.
That's not it. There are a lot of things about our God, the true God, that makes us as sinners very uncomfortable.
There are a lot of things about his character and his nature that can be very disconcerting to us. But we have to believe and trust in the
God who is revealed in scripture. Not a God but the God and not a God of our own making.
God does not countenance idols and he does not sympathize with divided allegiances. He demands our trust, he demands our faith and it's not just a
God that is demanding our faith, it is the God. We must believe that that God exists and that is to say that we believe what he has revealed about himself in the pages of scripture and that we look in scripture and say this is my
God and I will embrace and accept this divine person. I will embrace
Yahweh, I will believe this God, I will trust this God as opposed to everything else that is offered to me.
And we have to believe then also that he rewards those who seek him. What does it mean to seek God? I think if I were to ask that question,
I'd probably get, I don't know, 150, 200 answers to that question. What does it mean to seek God? That is a very, that would require almost a whole series of messages to unfold that I think because we are commanded in scripture to seek
God. What it means to seek God looks differently with different people, there are different ways in which we seek after God.
Psalm 105 verses three and four says, glory in his holy name, let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad, seek the
Lord in his strength, seek his face continually. And again, I mentioned at the beginning that there is a diligence to this seeking for God.
The word describes not just a sort of a wandering around and keeping your eyes open for something, but a diligent pursuit of something.
That's what it means to seek God. He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him. To seek him begins with coming to him for salvation.
That is obviously necessary for it because we are lost ones and so seeking him requires that we lay aside all of our attempts at our own self -righteousness and pursue
God as he is revealed in scripture and in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It must begin with seeking him for that very first blessing which is salvation.
But there's more to seeking him than just that. It also means that we seek to know him, that we seek to know him as he is revealed in scripture, to know more about him, to plumb the depths of his perfect attributes, to become more and more familiar with the
God who is, how he works, what he thinks, how he feels about things, what he has revealed in pages of scripture concerning us and nature and reality, what
God is doing throughout history. To pursue and to seek after him is not simply to say, yeah,
I know God, I have a relationship with him. I had an encounter with him at a camp meeting one time when I was 14 and I went to camp and he and I have kind of been on the outs ever since but I know the
God that you're talking about. That's not what it means to seek him. To diligently seek him means that we begin our
Christian life by pursuing him for that first blessing and then we get to know him through a life that is lived pursuing after him.
We pursue holiness without which no one can see the Lord. We seek to know his purposes. We seek to bask in the delights of his perfections in his nature and his character.
Do you read books about the attributes of God? Do you read those kind of books? I'm not talking
Max Lucado, Joyce Meyer, not talking about that nonsense.
I'm talking about books that unfold God's character, his nature, that cause you to spend some time reflecting upon his transcendence, his immutability, his omniscience, his omnipotence, his justice, his righteousness, his goodness, his grace, the perfections of his character, his
Trinitarian nature. Do you spend time thinking about those things? To pursue God means that I take my mind and I engage it in seeking to understand who he is and how he works and why he loves us.
It is to be conformed to the image of Christ, to be made like Christ and to pursue holiness and to pursue conformity to God's son.
That's what it means to seek him. Of course, you can unfold all of those. It means that we seek to be obedient to his command, to serve his people, to love the truth, to hate iniquity, error, and unrighteousness.
We have to pursue and seek mortification of our sin, killing of our sin, seeking after his purposes, to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.
To pursue his purposes and his glory and honor, his greatness and his name above all other things.
It is to put him first. It is to mortify, to knock over, to kill, to burn down and then salt the ground under every idol of our life.
And we will spend our lives doing that. We will spend our lives moving from one idol to the next.
One thing that brings itself up against the knowledge and the glory of God and we will knock down that idol, we will burn it and salt the ground and move on and find yet another idol.
But that's what it means to pursue God. To never tire of him, to never tire of understanding his purposes and to never, never fully grasp even all that he has revealed in truth but to always be pursuing it and seeking after it.
The one who comes to God must believe that God is and listen, if what scripture reveals about him is true, that he is infinite in all of his perfections.
That is that his omniscience is infinite. His grace is infinite. His mercy is infinite.
His loving kindness, it's infinite. His transcendence is infinite. His immutability is an infinite immutability.
His wisdom is never ending. There's no end to its depth. And if those things are true, if that's the nature and character of God, then you and I can spend all of our lives seeking after that God and never even begin to plumb the depths of his character and his nature and his works.
We can fix all of our minds and our attention and our hearts and our meditation upon that every moment of every day for the rest of our lives and never plumb the depths of it.
Never even get really below the superficial level of it. We can have all eternity to get to do that.
And this may be an unpopular opinion. This is my opinion. I don't think ever in eternity we will ever get to the end of that.
I think that's what eternity is all about. That's why it takes eternity is because he is infinite in his perfections.
So that's what it means to seek God. If we are to seek God in that way, then we must believe that he is the rewarder of those who seek him.
There are some people who think that we should never live our lives or do anything for the sake of a reward. I don't know if you've read verse six, but does it seem to you when you read verse six that rewards are out of the question?
I would never, I don't think that we would adequately or passionately enough seek
God if there were not hope of a reward. The reason we seek after God is because we believe that in some way, in some sense, at some time, he is the rewarder of those who do this.
The one who seeks him for salvation finds righteousness, the forgiveness of sins, a relationship with him, adoption into his family.
The one who seeks him in service finds the rewards of that service. The one who seeks him in their marriage finds the rewards poured out upon their marriage.
The one who seeks him in all of life finds that God rewards in this life, through all of these different things, he rewards those who seek him in those ways.
We must believe not only that he is, but something about his nature specifically, that the God who calls us to seek after him will reward us when we seek after him.
That just makes sense. He doesn't call us, at least not in this passage, to pursue after him just for the sake of the pursuit.
You'll run into people who think that way. Hey, we didn't reach any goal, we didn't get to the end, but wasn't the journey worth it?
Sometimes the journey is not worth it, and we're not called to just pursue God for the sake of having something to pursue.
We are called to pursue God so that we might know him, and that we might serve him, and that we might glorify him and be made more like him, and so that he might reward those who diligently seek after him.
How does God reward his people? Do you think that in this life that you have experienced or received,
Christian, believer, do you think that in this life you have experienced or received 50 or 60 % of the rewards that God is gonna pour out on you?
What percentage do you think you have already enjoyed of the things that God has stored up for you?
I think it's infintesibly small, what we have already experienced. I think that the bulk of the rewards that we have yet to experience are all future, the bulk of them, the vast majority of them.
I think we'll look back on this life and think, yeah, that was a taste. It was like, this isn't even an adequate example, it's like the
Costco sample. You get to smell a little bit, you get this little tiny thing handed to you in a cup, and you think, man, that's good,
I should buy that, maybe, I don't know, and then you get to the next one, you forget what the last one kind of tasted like, you move on, and now you're sitting here, and you're like,
I don't remember what I ate last time I was at Costco. That's kind of what I think most of the rewards in this life are like, they're just samples of what is yet to come.
God intends to lavish upon his people, those who seek him, an untold, unspeakable, and infinite river of blessings, because that is his nature.
We're talking about, not just what do we believe about God existing, the God of Scripture existing, but what do we believe about the kind of God that he is, he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him, and he rewards, not just stingily, but abundantly, graciously, in eternity, infinitely, because if there is an eternity in which we will enjoy rewards, then there can be no end to the rewards that he pours out upon us for all of eternity, and therefore, what we sample in this life, the blessings and joys and delights of this life, are nothing compared to the blessing and joys and delights of eternity, an eternal life.
And in fact, in the gospel, what God offers to us as the reward is himself. Don't miss this. He provides for us holiness.
Whose holiness is it? We're conformed to his image. He gives us righteousness. What righteousness is it? It's the righteousness of his son.
Everything that God offers to us in the gospel is himself. God is our reward, and if that were all that there were, that would be enough, that would be sufficient.
That would be more than adequate recompense for everything that we endure in this life.
But it is not just God who is the reward. As our reward, he is also the source of multiple, varied, and multifaceted blessings that he pours out on us for all of eternity.
And this all comes back to his nature. It is because God's nature is he is a God who rewards those who diligently seek him.
So we have to understand how the nature of God ties into all of this. It's not just the blessings in this life, righteousness, forgiveness, and it's not just God himself who is ultimately our reward.
There is also a future reward that we have. Psalm 37 promises that the righteous will inherit the land.
Isaiah chapter 40 and Revelation 22 say that his reward is with him. In other words, there is a heaping, a helping, a storehouse of rewards and blessings and joys that are stored up for us in the future that we will get to enjoy.
All of that is yet to come. And all of this is because God by his nature is a rewarder. He is a good
God. Think about the rewards that God gives just in terms of his nature. Think about God's goodness for a second.
God is infinitely good, which means that the rewards that he gives to those who believe and seek after him are always good rewards.
There's never a point where we are rewarded for something by the Lord in this life or in eternity that we think, I'm not sure that was worth it.
Now, if you get into this life and you think, yeah, I'm not sure that it was worth it, that only means that whatever you think is your reward for that in this life, you still have a lot yet future.
Sometimes we just get to sample it. It's like if you were starving, again, the Costco illustration. If you're starving and you're walking through Costco and you think, wow,
I could really use a taste of this, and they give you one of these old pizza mini bites as big as a dime, and they think, well, isn't that enough for you to be satisfied?
No, that's not enough to be satisfied. Of course, this is where the analogy breaks down. They really don't intend for you to be satisfied. They intend for you to buy a box of satisfaction before you leave the store.
But the Costco reward is just a small taste of that. The future is far richer, it is far deeper, it is far more profound, it is far more glorious than anything we can picture or enjoy in this life.
Think of God's wisdom. Because God is infinitely wise, because he knows all things and he can accurately and rightly do everything in perfect wisdom, that means that whatever it is that God rewards us with in the life that is to come is going to be the best reward possible.
It's going to be the most suitable reward possible. It will be given at the perfect time, and it will be given in the perfect way, and you and I will enjoy it perfectly because it is an expression of his infinite wisdom.
Or consider God's power. Nothing in the world can thwart his intention to reward those who seek him, and therefore, if God is infinitely powerful and infinitely sovereign, if all power and all authority has been given to him, then that means that there is nothing in heaven or on earth, anything created, anything that exists, there's no dimension, there's no being, there's no power, there's no authority that can keep him from rewarding us infinitely wisely and infinitely well because he is infinitely powerful.
And because God is infinitely generous, then we know that whatever he lavishes upon us is going to be an expression of his abundant, kind, and gracious generosity.
And because God is infinitely loving, that means that he will withhold from you no good thing.
He will withhold from those who seek him no good thing, which means that in eternity, whatever it is that we are rewarded with will be an expression of his infinite goodness, wisdom, power, and generosity, and his infinite love.
How much does the father love us, his children, whom he has adopted into the family? Is his love limited?
No, it's infinite, it's an infinite love. He loves us more than we could possibly comprehend or understand.
And if that is the case, and he is infinitely gracious, and infinitely good, and infinitely wise, then guess what those rewards are gonna look like?
They are going to be an infinite river of delights. God's aim is the redemption of his people for his own possession so that he might bless them with glories and joys, and the blessings and the rewards of his infinite being put on display for all of his creation, for all of eternity, all of his infinite perfections and attributes.
And since that is our God, then you and I can get some idea of how it is that he rewards those who diligently seek him.
We're pursuing a God like that with the intention and understanding that God does not call us to pursue him without rewarding those who pursue him in that way.
Psalm 84, verse 10 says, For a day in your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my
God than dwell in tents of wickedness. One day in the threshold of God's house is better than a thousand outside with pagans.
That means that just the entrance to God's house, his presence, is a blessing of almost, of infinite magnitude and measure.
Because a thousand days outside with all that the world, the passing pleasures of sin, and all the treasures of Egypt, cannot compare with just one day at the threshold of the house of our
God. Psalm 16, verse 11, You will make known to me the path of life, and in your presence is fullness of joy.
In your right hand there are pleasures forevermore. Pleasures, this is what David looked forward to.
Psalm 36, verse eight, They drink their fill of the abundance of your house, and you give them to drink of the river of your delights.
God has a river of delights. Have you ever drank out of a river? How much of it were you able to take in?
In God's presence, there is a river of delights. And I would suggest that that river of delights goes on forever and ever.
It is infinitely deep, it is infinitely wide, and for all of eternity, we get to drink out of those delights. Without faith, it is impossible to please him, because the one who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he rewards those who diligently seek him.
God rewards those who come to him in faith, he rewards those who serve him, he rewards those who sacrifice for him, he rewards those who mortify and put to death their sin, for his sake, he rewards those who worship him, he rewards those who give their lives to him.
And if God is a God who rewards infinitely in all of those ways, to all of that degree, then he who does not come to God by faith and pursue that God is the worst of fools.
It's wicked folly to not do that. You see, one of the atheist objections of our day is why would
I worship and serve a God who just threatens to damn and send to hell anybody who doesn't worship him? What kind of a God is that? See, there's a horrible assumption that sort of slipped into that objection.
The problem, the issue is not that God threatens with hell anybody who doesn't come and worship him.
We're all under judgment anyway. We're all going to hell. That's how we were born into this world, under damnation.
We don't go to hell because we don't worship God, we go to hell because we worship every other God in the world, and we love ourselves, and we serve ourselves, and we violated
God's commandments. That's why we go to hell. God does not woo us to him, or God does not make us come to him by threatening us with some horrible alternative.
God woos us to him with his infinite grace and goodness. The atheist says, how can
I worship a God who threatens to damn people who don't believe in him and won't worship him? What kind of a megalomaniac, what kind of an egotistic
God is that? That's the atheist objection. But the Christian response is really simple. Why would you not worship a
God who is so infinitely gracious and good? You're a fool, a mad fool, a wickedly mad fool for not worshiping such a
God. It's not that he's threatening to damn those who will not worship him because he's an egomaniac. It's that he woos us to him because he is so infinitely good, and he promises to reward those who diligently seek after him.
If we are to believe scripture, we are to believe that God is and that he is a rewarder, that is his nature. So those who come to him for salvation will be given exactly what it is that he promises.
We will be given eternal life, forgiveness of sins, and complete, perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And those who seek him and seek his purposes receive reward both in this life and in the next.
What we get in this life is just a small taste of what is yet to come. Without faith, it is impossible to please him because to not believe in him is to call
God a liar. And God does not walk with or share fellowship with those who call him a liar. Every time we do not trust
God for something or that we do not come to him, do we not seek after him, every expression, every time we do that, we are expressing the attitude of our heart which is that that God is a liar.
God has promised that if I do this and I trust him, he will do this, and when we don't trust him, we are saying he is not trustworthy.
He has lied to me about what it is that he will do if I trust him. So every lack of faith, every expression of a lack of faith is nothing less than calling that God who is, who is a gracious and generous rewarder of those who seek him, it is calling him a liar.
And God does not reward those who believe that he lies. God is absolute truth, he is perfect truth, and he is everything and all that the sinner needs.
He is our great reward. He is our shield and our great reward. Even as we celebrate communion, when we reflect upon the goodness of God in the giving of his son, there is faith, there is faith even involved in our worship around the
Lord's table. Because you and I are coming to a God that we cannot see and we celebrate a sacrifice that we have never seen, which we believe erased a sin debt that we have never seen, delivers us from an eternal damnation which we have never seen, and grants us eternal life in heaven which we have never seen, and that this sacrifice which we did not see was made by a high priest whom we have never met in a place that most of us have never been to, we are eyewitnesses to none of these things.
So why is it that we would gather around the Lord's table and partake of communion and enjoy this time together?
What is it that unites us around such a sacrifice? It is because we have believed the testimony of scripture, is it not?
Is it not because we have said that we believe by faith that while we are gathered here together around the
Lord's table that he is present with us? Is it not because we have said that we believe that his sacrifice was a sacrifice made on our behalf, and we have trusted in his word that those who come to him on the basis of that sacrifice and trust in the
Savior who offered that sacrifice are given eternal life? So we gather together, and these are tokens, these are tokens and symbols of spiritual realities.
We have embraced these spiritual realities. We believe that as we participate here in the Lord's supper that he is present with us spiritually, that we are eating and drinking a meal with him, that we have communion with him on the basis of faith and faith alone because of what his son has done, and we are reflecting back upon realities which we have never seen with the naked eye.
All of this is an expression of faith. And we are really saying that by faith we participate in the sacrifice that he made 2 ,000 years ago, that what he did, he did on our behalf, and by the merits of our faith, which is a gift from God, that we are participating and taking part in that sacrifice, that his sacrifice was made for us, and that I am the beneficiary of everything that he did on our behalf, that his perfect life lived in righteousness was a life that was lived for us because we were unrighteous, and that the sacrifice that he offered was a sacrifice that was made for us, and he calls us to trust him.
So even gathering around the Lord's table, there is an element of our faith here. We believe that as we pursue God in mortifying our sin, in confessing our sin, and pursuing and seeking after him, that he is fellowshipping with us even here at this time, and that he is present, and that we participate in what he did, that was done for us, and we are united together around the
Lord's table. Really, every expression that we do here on a Sunday morning is an aspect of our faith, is an expression of our faith, and the
Lord's Supper is no different. So now the question is, should you partake of the Lord's Supper with us? If you are an unbeliever and you're here today, you've never trusted
Christ for salvation, I would warn you, because of what scripture says, not to partake of the
Lord's Supper, of these elements. To do so is to eat and drink judgment to yourself, because you are then saying that, as an unbeliever without faith, that you have a share in this, and you do not.
You'd have no share in this until you have repented of your sin and trusted Christ for salvation. If you are a believer who is living in unrepentant sin, then don't partake of the
Lord's Supper. Or, confess your sin and admit your sin to the Lord, seek his forgiveness, and then partake with us.
I'm gonna take a couple of moments to pray quietly, and then I will lead us in a prayer of confession, and then we'll partake together.
Let's bow our heads. Our Father, we can never escape your perfect and infinite knowledge of everything that we are and everything that we have done.
We know that we are sinners, that is why we pursue you for salvation, why we have come to you for saving faith and for righteousness and for the grace that you offer.
We have believed upon your word that we deserve nothing but your wrath, and we have believed that you have provided for us infinite and perfect righteousness in your
Son. And so we confess our iniquity and our sin to you, knowing that you are a gracious God, that you show loving kindness to thousands, that you are infinite in your patience and goodness, that your grace is sufficient to save us, that no matter the weight of our sin, the number of our sins, the kind of sin, that there is forgiveness at the cross of Jesus Christ.
And so we just thank you for that grace. We thank you for your forgiveness. We thank you that it is infinite.
We thank that your patience has not run out with us. And we just are grateful for the opportunity to reflect upon the presence of the
Lord Jesus Christ at our time here. We pray that you would strengthen and minister to our hearts and encourage us through your word as we reflect upon what his sacrifice has made for us.
We pray that you would be glorified in the thoughts of our hearts and our meditation here. Thank you for blessed forgiveness and for infinite righteousness in the name of Christ our
Lord, amen. Will the ushers come forward and help serve the elements? Let's bow in prayer.
Father, what a joy it is to fellowship around your son and to bask in the delights of his goodness toward his people, his church.
Thank you for that substitutionary death and all that it has meant for the forgiveness of our sins and giving us that righteousness.
We thank you for your presence here with us as your people, with your people, as we gather together around your name and your word.
We have fed on your word. We have reflected upon your nature and your character and we pray that you would be honored now as we think about the depth of the forgiveness and the grace that you have shown in Jesus' name.
On the night in which our Lord was betrayed, he took the bread and when he had broke it, he said, take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you.
Do this in remembrance of me. In the same manner also, he took the cup and said, this is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. Christ symbolized here in these elements and so our
Father, we pray that as we've heard the word this morning, that your spirit would work in our hearts, that we would receive it with faith.
For without faith, it is impossible to please you. And so we commit ourselves to you in Christ's name.
Amen. Please stand.
♪ Forgive us of our pride ♪ When our faith becomes a show ♪
Trust in righteousness to hide ♪ All the saints below ♪
We have judged your sons and daughters ♪ For the sin that is our own ♪
May we now forgive each other ♪ And lay down our stones ♪
Forgiven ♪ Forgiven ♪
Through the blood of Christ ♪ We are forgiven ♪
Give us of our love ♪ Of the things we wish to own ♪
We forsake the feasts above ♪ For all the crumbs below ♪
Though you've made us sons and daughters ♪ We do not the world bestow ♪
May we find our greatest treasure ♪ Is in you alone ♪
We are forgiven ♪
Lord forgive us of our shame ♪ When we can't release the past ♪
When we're quick to take the blame ♪ But forget we're free at last ♪
We avoid your sons and daughters ♪ In the sight to see each other ♪
Through your only sight ♪ Forgiven ♪
Forgiven ♪ Through the blood of Christ ♪
We are forgiven ♪ Forgiven ♪
We are forgiven Worship with us this morning.