August 30, 2016

  • Amazing Faith

     

    In the mid 1990’s I bought my first PC and proceeded to get hooked up to AOL and this thing called the internet. I didn’t really know what I was looking for when I signed on, so relied on the AOL helps.

    Within a year I had begun to experiment with building websites and built my first site using Trellix and experimented with a few different hosting companies. By 2005, I became a web hosting reseller and at one point hosted 16 different websites on that leased space. At the height of it, I was using Microsoft Front Page on a Linux server, modified html and rewrote some Cascading Style Sheets on my blog.

    But as time proceeded Microsoft Front Page became yesterday’s news, it wasn’t supported by all browsers, and PHP, Pear, PERL and other languages were emerging.  All of my software had become outdated, I was able to use some the new programs, but I didn’t understand the programming language. I couldn’t look at the code and have it make any real sense, and that was when I made the decision to stop designing websites.

    I knew what I knew, the end product looked good, and I also knew the market I was serving, small non-profits who site I did for a donation and some small clubs and organizations who would not otherwise have a website. But put into perspective, it was a hobby and the amount that I would need to invest in time, education and the cost of perpetually updating software and upgrading my own equipment was not an investment I could justify.  This was happening at the same time I was struggling with my call to the ministry.

    Now that I am in the candidacy process, I know what I know, I have great resources, but I am painfully aware of what I don’t know. I can find the sources to tell me what Greek and Hebrew translations are, what others say about it, but when I look at the Greek or Hebrew I don’t see or understand it.  Therefore, I have to go to school to learn more, which I am in the process of doing.

    Well today’s text, put in simple lay terms, contains some really difficult Greek and there is some real disagreement on the translations.  So instead we are going to look at what this large lectionary passage has for us today here at Woodland Ave United Methodist Church. Okay?

    So, what is happening that is causing this passage to even be here in the first place? Hebrews was a letter for the people in the early persecuted church, and more specifically the Jews. They were getting it from all sides.  We get a glimpse at their circumstances immediately prior to this discussion on faith in Chapter ten, verse 32 reminding them of the very public abuse, suffering and the persecution they had undergone for the sake of the gospel.

    Their persecution had gotten to the point that some were considering taking the church underground or perhaps even abandoning the way of the gospel. How tough was it? Verse 34 tells us that when they showed up to show their fellow Christian brothers and sisters compassion in jail, or would publically associate with other Christians, they would have their possessions taken from them and be humiliated. This is kind of reminiscent of Paul tracking back notes left for prisoners to their writers and then hauling them in.  Incidentally, much of the torture up to 64 AD was fratricidal. Today we term that as Christians or the religious folks eating their own.

    But the writer here is reminding them (and us today) they chose to intentionally love their brothers and sisters, fully knowing the cost of doing so. Why?  They knew they possessed something better and more lasting.   “For you had compassion for those who were in prison, and you cheerfully accepted the plundering of your possessions, knowing that you yourselves possessed something better and more lasting.”   Bythe personage in this letter, I believe the writer is also experiencing this because, in the crescendo/preamble to our text today he declares in verse 39, But, we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

    While this is a foreign concept in the church today, the early church expected persecution. Why? Because Jesus Himself was persecuted, rejected and killed.

    These Jews understood their Jewish heritage and that denying their faith to live was not even an option.  In the non-canonized book of fourth Maccabees, sixth chapter we see the following discourse between Elazar and Antiochus IV:

    "May we, the children of Abraham, never think so basely that out of cowardice we feign a role unbecoming to us!

    It would be shameful if we should survive for a little while and during that time be a laughing stock to all for our cowardice,
    [21] and if we should be despised by the tyrant as unmanly, and not protect our divine law even to death.
    [22] Therefore, O children of Abraham, die nobly for your religion!
    [23] And you, guards of the tyrant, why do you delay?"

    When they saw that he was so courageous in the face of the afflictions, and that he had not been changed by their compassion, the guards brought him to the fire.
    [25] There they burned him with maliciously contrived instruments, threw him down, and poured stinking liquids into his nostrils.
    [26] When he was now burned to his very bones and about to expire, he lifted up his eyes to God and said,
    [27] "You know, O God, that though I might have saved myself, I am dying in burning torments for the sake of the law.
    [28] Be merciful to your people, and let our punishment suffice for them.
    [29] Make my blood their purification, and take my life in exchange for theirs."
    [30] And after he said this, the holy man died nobly in his tortures, and by reason he resisted even to the very tortures of death for the sake of the law.

    So when we look at Faith, and what it is, in the context of this book to this people, we are not discussing an intellectual exercise. We are not discussing a people who rationalized their faith. We are not discussing a people who prayed some repeat after me prayer and then told to never question their faith, that they were good to go for eternity. The idea that they would be saved and somehow get around to adding on faith and living the Christian life at their convenience would never occur to them.

    Years ago I read a book entitled,” Mere Discipleship, Radical Christianity in a rebellious world” and it shook me up for a season. Lee Camp challenges his readers with Radical Discipleship, Pledging Allegiance to the Kingdom of God, the church as the body of Christ, Why Disciples love their enemies, why disciples don’t make good nationalists, Why Disciples trust God rather than their own calculations Communion and Sharing the wealth and How biblical discipleship makes a difference.  But do you realize that acting on faith has always been radical in the worlds eyes?  Sure we believe in the precepts, but this guy was actually advocating acting on them! The very nature of our faith, despite what Christianity looks like today, is counter cultural.  Hebrews is written to give foundation to the hope that is the foundation of a life of radical, risk-taking, sacrificial love.

    Verse 34 builds the foundation for 11:1 as well. First it shows how their faith and their life are indistinguishable. They have an unshakable hope in God beyond this life, and will gladly give up their possessions in exchange for a better possession that lasts. This unshakable hope is foundational to the faith the writer describes. So if this power to sacrifice and love and joyfully accept the consequences of it is called faith and faith is the assurance of things hoped for, that you have a better and abiding one in God, then we see a link in between sacrificial love and faith.

    This week in preparation for this lessons, I was pondering that “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”  As I am looking at the passage and looking at the Hall of Fame of Faith herein, the thought crossed my mind, how could Abraham be a great man of faith when there wasn’t even a bible written yet, as Moses wasn’t born until six generations later? Of course, the answer is He had the spoken Word, delivered by God himself.

    Our main hero in the Hall of Faith is Abraham, our example to follow.  If he is an example, did he have blind faith?  Absolutely not!  He fell on his face laughing at God when he told him that he was going to father a child at 100 and his wife would at 90. The scientific and biological proof was it wasn’t going to happen. But God used this unbelief on their part, an unbelief with some “factual basis” to question, as a loving lesson in learning how to trust God and take Him at His Word.

    Abraham had a long discourse and challenged God over Sodom and God engaged Him.  If faith involved never questioning or what some called blind faith, our hero in the Hall of Faith wouldn’t be there.

    Abraham left Ur to some unknown place because God told him to go. He was given a promise of a land, a place, an inheritance and of a lineage that would be innumerable. He went. He acted, He obeyed and he trusted God. Abraham lived as a stranger in a land promised to him. He looked beyond Canaan to a lasting, heavenly country and city, designed and built by God Himself

    We are told one thing all of our hall of famers shared. They ALL died in faith, not having received the things promised, but had seen them from afar and greeted them from afar. They all realized that this was not their home, they were strangers and exiles and that their homeland and promises would be found and fulfilled in heaven. To avoid it sounding too spiritual let me put it another way.  There is an aspect of death in faith, and I would posit that to have this Hebrews 11 faith requires us dying to ourselves and yielding our lives to God.

     

    They say if you come to point a finger to remember there are three of your own pointing back at you. Today was a tougher study than normal not only because of the text, but also because it spoke directly to me.

    I am a Preachers Kid twice over. When the Lord put a call on my life, years ago, I ran. I did everything I could not to fulfill the call.  Why?  I will confess, it was because I knew the cost of going into the ministry. This past year, in obedience and in faith, I am answering that call.

    Now, I will speak to both myself and to all of you.  Those of us who have made a profession of faith to be Christians and know Jesus Christ as our Savior, when asked would say we have given our lives to the Lord.

    This week as we leave this place, I would ask you to take time and prayerfully consider if we really have, or what parts of our life we have not surrendered and ask Jesus for the faith to trust him with all of our life.

    I invite you to ask Him for that Amazing Faith today!

    Let us pray.