August 30, 2016

• Amazing Faith, Part 2 Hebrews 11:29-12:2

   

  When my wife and I were dating, we made a conscious choice to try and go somewhere out of town to worship at least once a month. Three weeks ago we had the opportunity to go to Pittsburgh and worship with Hillsongs United at the Consol Energy Center.  It was so refreshing to be able to worship together as husband and wife, away from our regular responsibilities. This is the third time I have seen Hillsongs and I really enjoy them because their major themes are faith, surrender and the Christian life and their concerts always have a serious time of worship.

  As I was meditating on this passage, I was listening to their song Oceans and these words really spoke to me, as I trust they will to you;  “You call me out upon the waters, The great unknown where feet may fall, And there I find you in the mystery, in oceans deep, My faith will stand.”

  The song goes on to proclaim, “Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders, Let me walk upon the waters, Wherever You would call me, Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander, And my faith will be made stronger In the presence of my Savior”

  Like last week, this is another tough, long , action packed passage. Since this is a Part 2 sermon, let me quickly recap last week.

  • Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians who were being persecuted for their faith by non-Christian Jews.
  • Their faith and practice were indistinguishable
  • They chose to love despite the consequences of sure persecution and loss of property.
  • Faith is not believing in something
  • Faith is not unquestioning
  • Abraham laughed at the idea of becoming a parent
  • Abraham questioned God
  • God used Abraham’s unbelief to grow his faith
  • God spoke. Abraham acted
  • Faith involves death, especially dying to ourselves.

  Faith is not an intellectual exercise, but rather is the foundation of a life of radical, risk taking, sacrificial love

  I asked you as we left, for us to prayerfully ask God to show us how to have the Kind of amazing faith we learned about last week.

  This week, I am trusting that God has a valuable lesson for us packaged in verses 29-40. If you have a Bible, please turn with me to follow along.  In these verses we see a summary of the faithful., but the writer doesn’t want to bog us down in details, as basically to go into details would be a case of missing the forest for the trees.  It is worth noting that all of the references herein are based on historic events of the old testament and have made for a wonderful bible study.

  In verses 29-38 the writer mentions six miracles, five acts of God’s providence and eleven types of suffering, of which four resulted in death.

  Now I told you today was another tough text.  Last week was tough because of some of the Greek words used in the beginning of Chapter 11 are interpreted differently because of rarely used Greek words.

  Today’s text doesn’t share those interpretive issues. In fact, the writer is crystal clear on what he is trying to convey giving us ample examples of historical old testament events what this “amazing faith” looks like.

  What can we take away from today’s text?

  • Through our faith God can and does work miracles and acts of providence to bring practical earthly help and deliverance to his people.  The writer gives us 11 examples in verses 29-35a,

  Now most of us can easily wrap our heads around God intervening in time and space, to come to the aid of His people, whether it be through miraculous interruption of natural law or by working behind the scenes in what is sometimes called the invisible hand of God. These are types of temporal salvific acts, preserving us in the here and now as a testimony of God’s power to the non-believer. Remember even the raising of the dead were temporal acts, as only Jesus resurrection was a true resurrection, the one which we seek.

  • God does not always work miracles and acts of providence for our deliverance from suffering; sometimes by faith God sustains his people through sufferings

  The writer shares 11 types of suffering endured by the faithful for which they are commended, again with ten of the 11 types replete with old testament examples. The eleventh, the being sawn in two is believed to be a reference to Isaiah, which is alluded to in Matthew 24, and later recorded in extant history around 100 AD.

  Now here is where the lesson get’s tough. As just mentioned, most of us would have no problem with God intervening on our behalf because of our faith to save us from disaster. In fact, isn’t that often the topic of our prayers, petitioning God for help in our time of need?  There is nothing wrong with that.

  But where the problem comes is when people question God because He has not intervened into circumstances.  How can a loving God allow this or that?  On one hand people want to be complete moral free agents and on the other hand can’t understand when God doesn’t intervene. I have even heard people say, I couldn’t love a God who would allow”fill in the circumstance” to occur. I imagine they are correct, l;oving a product of your own imagination for a sustained period could be difficult and dangerous. Then, of course, there are those who would claim the people who suffered just didn’t have enough faith.

  I told you last week that I am a pastor’s son, twice over. My dad who had a very good job with International Correspondence School as a proofreader, had a wife and two children when he answered his call to the ministry, starting as a licensed local pastor in the Methodist Church in the 1950’s. He proceeded to preach and finish his degree, then went to PTS, graduating in 1963 with Fred Rogers, whom many of you may fondly remember as Mr. Rogers.

  In the winter of 1969 my dad got very sick, was admitted to the hospital where he spent two weeks and came home looking horrible. He was only home a few days when he had to be rushed back to the hospital, as he was misdiagnosed, and his kidneys were shutting down. Dad never came home. He died three weeks before my brother David’s graduation from HS My mother was left widowed with a ten-year-old son and was headed to an area we had never lived before- New Jersey.

  I used this last example to drive home a point. Both Christians and non-Christians can have distorted views of who God is, and what the Christian life looks like.  Do you know how many Christians made statements like I can’t understand how God could take John when he still had a boy so young, or so early in his ministry, or about what he could have accomplished? Or how could a loving God take a pastor in His prime.

  Thankfully, to the counter, I was taught by my faithful mother Lois the exact opposite. I often heard my mom tell the story of Dad asking her shortly before he died, Lois, don’t you hear the beautiful singing?  He was at peace, he saw and heard from afar off the cloud of witnesses, the promise to be fulfilled on the other side.

  Mom knew that her and dad were called according to His purpose and stood on Romans 8:28, All things work together for good to them that love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.  Mom didn’t believe in God, Mom believed God, as she knew Him personally.

  • Faith that escapes suffering and faith that endures suffering both involve believing that God himself is better than what life has to offer or that death can snatch from us. 

  All of those mentioned in this passage were commended for their faith, whether they were rescued, persecuted or tortured.

  In bringing my part of this two-part series to a close again let’s remind ourselves that:

  • There is an aspect of death in faith, namely when we live for the Lord, we die to ourselves.
  • Faith is the foundation of a life of radical, risk taking, sacrificial love
  • Faith is not alone; it is a by-product of our love of God.

   

  Let me ask you all a question, please raise your hand if you have ever been in a room, church service or anywhere where there was there was almost a tangible presence of God in the room? I believe that was what my mom was describing when my dad was in the presence of the witnesses, the heavenly choir.

  I wasn’t there, but I have been in several situations, at bed sides, in vehicles, in worship, both corporate and private, where I have felt the undeniable presence of the Lord in the midst, and one thing I have always felt in that presence is His love.

   

  If we want this type of faith that we have been studying in our lives today, then we need the same foundation that our forbearers had; where the love of God to be the foundation of our faith.

   

  Let us seek the Lord now:

   

  Almighty God, let us now turn to our High Priest, Our example, Your Son, Jesus Christ. Knowing that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, let us also make a conscious effort to examine ourselves and lay aside every weight and sin that we cling to. God help us run the race before us with perseverance, and to look to trust and love the author and finisher of our faith, your son Jesus Christ.

   

  Lord, thank you for your Amazing Love, demonstrated to us by you taking on the form of a man to take on our sins and be punished unto death for that sin.

   

  Lord we also ask if there is anyone here today who does not know this amazing, life changing, life giving love that we are talking about, you would surround them with your amazing love right now., so that they may encounter you here this morning before leaving this place.

   

  Amen

  • 11:28 pm
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