Two Journeys

Well, it's an incredible gift of God's grace and providence that today is New Member Sunday, and that we have the opportunity to read over again our church covenant, and there's a line in it that has been on my heart and has been growing in my mind since the very first time that we read the church covenant together, when I came here almost 14 years ago. And that is the statement, "We will watch over one another in brotherly love." I thought much about that, and I believe it to be the centerpiece of my calling as an elder, as an under-shepherd under Christ, to do precisely that. But this is something in the church covenant that we're promising to do, all of us, for one another. It's not specifically set aside for the elders of the church to do, although it very much is their work and the focus of their work, but it's something that we are promising in our covenant to do for one another. But what does it mean? What does it mean to watch over one another in brotherly love? If you look at the things that follow it in the covenant, how it talks about caring for the sick and the needy, and avoiding backbiting and tattling and other aspects, I think there are many churches that might not esteem the Word of God properly, that do that kind of good man, or type things.

Caring for the elderly, caring for the sick, visiting the sick, bringing meals to people, they do those kinds of things. But I think that the statement in the church covenant specifically has to do with spiritual shepherding of souls. And the premise behind it is... And just moving away from the covenant now to our text... The premise behind it is that just because you make an outward profession of faith in Christ, doesn't mean you're genuinely regenerate. Just because you make that outward profession of faith in Christ and you assemble together with the local church doesn't mean that you're saved." We understand that there has to be more than that profession. And we are in a section of scripture now which bears down on that and makes that clearer than almost any other passage in the New Testament. What does it mean for us to shepherd each other spiritually? What does it mean for us to look over one another's souls?

Now, this is not a new concept for us in Hebrews, we've seen it many times. We know that the context of the whole book of Hebrews is of Jewish professors of faith in Christ, those who had made a profession, an outward verbal commitment to Christ, who had even testified to it by water baptism, but who are under intense pressure by the surrounding, I think, Jewish community to give up their faith in Christ and go back to Old Covenant Judaism, go back to what was safe and comfortable. In our text, we're going to see also a pressure just from the world, in general, to just go to a secular, godless kind of life. Either way, to turn away or drift away or fall away from Christ is the danger that we all face everyday. And so the author to Hebrews has been dealing with this topic of apostasy, this danger of drifting away from Christ, of turning away from Christ. And we already saw that earlier in Hebrews 3, "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God, but encourage one another daily, as long as it is called 'Today,' so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness." We have come to share in Christ, if we hold firmly to the end the confidence we had at first.

So that brings us right to Hebrews 12, where what's laid in front of us right at the beginning is a race to be run, as we saw a few weeks ago, "Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race marked out before us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith." And so, we have this race to run and we have to have endurance for it. This latter stage of the book of Hebrews is very much... The author is really bearing down on this issue of endurance, perseverance in the Christian life. And, in this case, it's in the context of Christian community, that we are together going to help each other. And so, in Hebrews 12:1, we have this race that we are to run, a race of holiness, a race of endurance in the face of persecution and opposition.

And then, last week, we saw how the Father helps us in that race by disciplining us, when needed, for our sins, for our transgressions. And so we are told on to endure hardship as discipline. And so there's again that issue of endurance, of staying under it and letting that discipline have its work. And all of us needs it, because we have a Roman 7 struggle with sin, the very thing that we hate, we do. And the very thing that we would do, that we yearn to do, we do not do. So we struggle with the flesh, all of us struggles. And so the Lord disciplines us, he says, so that we may share in his holiness. "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore... " We're in our text now, that's the context.

"Therefore, strengthen those feeble arms and those weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed." And so we have this command. Now, it's not clear whether the individual is being addressed, or whether the community, the church, let's take it both ways. These verses speak an individual word to us to not grow weary and get discouraged in the Christian race. And that as you see yourself drooping and sagging in the Christian life, spiritually, you see your hands hanging down, is literally what it says here. Your knees are buckling, you're getting discouraged in the Christian life, then strengthen yourself in the Lord, be strong in the Lord and his mighty power. Go back again to God's word and strengthen and renew yourself in Christ.

Strengthen your own feeble arms and weak knees. And that's, I think, completely valid. The text being quoted here, the author is constantly quoting Old Testament text, even if you're not sure that he is, he probably is. And it's just a river of scripture coming all the time. The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. He's just constantly quoting the Old Testament to us.

This is Isaiah 35. And the context in Isaiah 35 is of the judgment that God is going to bring on Judah, in Jerusalem. He's going to bring a judgment by the Gentiles. But in due time, in Isaiah 35, he's going to restore the nation, and he's going to make the desert bloom like the Garden of Eden, and therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and your weak knees. God is going to restore you, he's going to establish you, really, is a picture of final salvation, that beautiful flowering of our relationship with each other and with God. And so don't get discouraged as you're being chastised by God, don't get discouraged as you're going through hard times because of sin, because God is going to establish and make you strong, firm, and steadfast. But I don't think that the individual focus is primarily right here. I think he's really talking to the whole church. And he's really asking us to develop a horizontal eye toward the brother and sister in Christ, strengthen each other's feeble hands and weak knees.

Look around you. Notice and see what's happening in the lives, spiritually, around you. And it takes a special discernment. It's really, in some sense, not hard to see, although sometimes it can be, but not hard to see if somebody's physically ill, maybe their pallor is a bit off, they've got beads of sweat on their forehead, or some symptoms. Doctors in our midst are better at it than we might be. Harder to do spiritually, though, to see if someone's sick or weak spiritually, you really have to know and be known there, and be in those close relationships one with another. And so I do think that the Lord is speaking to us, as a congregation, to notice what's going on with each other spiritually. And I think there you just have to have relationships with people, you have to spend time together. So tonight, when you go to Home Fellowship, I don't mind, there's nothing wrong with some chit-chat or talking about the weather, or current events, that's fine, that's normal. We do that. But don't let it stay there. Go deeper. Go deeper, talk to each other, ask each other real, genuine questions.

How is it going with you spiritually? How is your soul? Are you healthy spiritually? Do you feel like you're thriving or are you weakened? Are you struggling? How can I help you? How can I strengthen your hands that are hanging down? How can I lift you up? The image here in the word strengthen is of building something back up that's been cast down. I get the image, biblically, of Nehemiah going to Jerusalem, and the wall's just rubble, just a pile of rubble. And he's going to have to take and just restore that wall out of, more or less, the same building materials. And to some degree that's what you're doing, in a loving way, with a brother or sister in Christ. They're just... They feel like... Spiritually, like they're rubble. And they're just down, and you just want to build them back up. And so I think that's what the Lord is commanding on us, commanding us to do, that we would strengthen those feeble arms and the weak knees, and it says make level paths for your feet.

The word paths here is of a cart that leaves tracks. And so, you can imagine, back in those days, that there's just these cartwheels that you're going, and it leaves a track in terms of where you're living and where you're going. It has to do with the direction and the flow of your life. And he says make level paths for your feet. This is, again, another quotation. This one from Proverbs 4:25-27. There the proverb says, "Let your eyes look straight ahead of you. Fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet. Take only ways that are firm and do not swerve to the right or to the left. Keep your eyes from evil." So it's just a total focus, just go straight ahead, do not turn to the left or to the right. Now, you know I love Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress', and there's just such truth in that allegory of the Christian life, and it just presents the Christian life as a journey, from that initial justification at the cross all the way to the celestial city, which is heaven. And there's a journey to be traveled. But one of the basic rules of the road, so to speak, in 'Pilgrim's Progress', is you've got to stay on the highway, stay on the road, don't get off it ever.

And there's one section of the story that teaches us very, very clearly, they're on that way leading to the celestial city, the straight and narrow way, but it's gotten very difficult. There's a climb involved, and it's steep, and it seems to be filled with rubble, and they notice, right alongside the highway, a very smooth and comfortable meadow with lots of soft grass for their feet. And the only thing they need to do, because it, more or less, runs along the same way, is they just have to jump the fence, and just go along there for a while, and then they can easily jump back in the future. Bad mistake. Even as you're reading it... If you've never read it, it's like, uh-oh, don't do it. They jump the fence, they go into By-path Meadow, and they do not notice that, little by little by little, it's diverting from the straight and narrow way.

They didn't notice it. It was comfortable to them, they made a choice for personal ease and comfort, but it led them gradually slowly away from the straight and narrow, and they got lost. And night came, and a storm came, and they couldn't find their way back. And suddenly, the next morning, Giant Despair sees them, arrested them for trespassing on his property, and threw them in Doubting Castle, and pressed on them over the next number of days to commit suicide. And they got more and more desperate. In my opinion, it was the worst trial that Christian ever faced, and it all started so innocently. You just make a choice for personal ease. A choice, a little... Little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and things just get a little bit easier for you spiritually, and next thing you know, you don't know where you are.

And so, the author says to make level paths for your feet. Stay on the straight and narrow. Don't make your life difficult by getting off of the path, that's what he's saying here. And do that for each other. If you sense there's a brother or sister wandering, you say, "You know, I think you're off the path. How can I help you get back on? How can I help you get back going again with the people of God, and with the Lord? What can I do?"

And so that's what he is saying here. So the lame may not be disabled, but rather, heal. The idea is of a limb put out of socket or out of joint, it's out of socket, it's out of the place where it needs to be. And so it's painful sometimes to put it back in the socket, but it's got to be back in there. So it's speaking, I think, of a member of the Body of Christ that's not settled in where he or she needs to be. And we are to be spiritual physicians. And though it may be somewhat painful to get it back in the socket, that's what has to happen. So that's the image that the author gives here. We are to watch over one another in brotherly love, dear friends, we are to be engaged with each other, spiritually, we are to care about what's happening spiritually, in each other's lives. That's a healthy church. In the next verse, he talks about a pursuit. Part of the shepherding that we have for one another, and part of the love that we have for one another is to make sure that we are at peace with one another.

It says, in the NIV, "Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord." And so the Greek word here is pursue or hunt peace. As it says in another Psalm and in 1 Peter, seek peace and pursue it. Our God is a God of peace, amen. Isn't it glorious? Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and because we have peace vertically with God, we have peace with brothers and sisters in Christ too. And we are in a relationship of peace with each other, as we are in a relationship with peace with God.

And yet, for all of that, the world, the flesh, and the devil constantly assault the bonds of peace between Christian brothers and sisters. It's constantly under attack. All the time our pride, our selfishness, our anger, our sin seeks to sever the bonds of love that we have with one another. And so this could be referring to the peaceful relationship that we should have with any other human being, anybody, it doesn't matter whether they're Christian on non-Christian, and that's a valid New Testament theme, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with all men, that's Romans 12. And so whatever you can do to get along with your co-workers or your non-Christian neighbors or others, do it. But I don't think that's what the author is talking about here. I think what he's talking about here is intramural peace, peace within the church, seek peace and pursue it. There are many verses in the New Testament that teach this. It says in Ephesians 4 in verse 2, "Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace."

Think about in Philippians, where, in chapter 2, Paul says, "If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but, in humility, consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interest, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus," Who also had, of complete humility. And so why does he say this? Because they're human beings. The Philippian church was healthy, it was fruitful, God blessed that church and they were a blessing to him.

Things were generally good, it wasn't like the Corinthian Church or the Galician church, where there were so many significant problems, but yet, for all of that, the Philippian church, there was still some divisions and problems. In chapter 4, in Philippians 4, you have these two ladies, Euodia and Syntyche, and they are not getting along. And Paul is grieved by this, he said these ladies have helped me in my ministry, both of them have. God's at work in their lives, but they just don't seem to like each other. They don't seem to be able to get along. And so, he pleads with this other person, some translate it true companion or loyal yokefellow, this other individual, will you please help these two ladies to get along?

Just like he says, in Corinthians, "I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought." So there's many verses that talk about this. So this must be a big problem in the Christian life, friends. Galatians 5 says, "If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out, or you will be destroyed by one another." And that's... He goes right from that to talking about the acts of the flesh, and many of those acts of the flesh dissensions, factions, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, that's acid poured on the bonds of love that we have with one another.

And so, therefore, as we're watching over one another in brotherly love, we have to seek peace and pursue it. Practically, what does it mean? It means don't harbor any resentment against one another, forgive as the Lord has forgiven you. And it means, in Romans 14, don't flaunt your freedoms in front of others, just because you can eat meat sacrificed to idols, if your brother or sister can't, you're violating their conscience, to do it right in front of them. Don't do it then. Do everything that leads to peace and to mutual edification, Paul explains in Romans 14.

And so many, many verses teach this, and so we, at FBC, we need to be zealous concerning this, we need to be sure that we are pursuing peace with one another, and doing whatever it takes to keep that unity and that piece. Now, the second part of the verse, you're not getting today. I know it's in your outline, but you're not getting it today. I'll tell you, next week, why you're not getting it today. I'll tell you a little right now. I consider Hebrews 12:14 one of the single most important verses in the whole book of Hebrews. I consider Hebrews 12:14 to be one of the single most important verses in the Bible, so it's not going to be a sub-part of this sermon, it can't be. I'll tell you more next week, but what does it teach? What it teaches is that you are to pursue or to seek after, to energetically drive after a holiness that, if you don't have that holiness, you will not see the Lord.

It's a verse that can be very confusing to some people, because it seems to teach justification by works, when it doesn't. And so, next week, I want to work on it in depth with you, to show you what is this holiness that we are to pursue, why is it that, without it, we will not see the Lord. We're going to talk about that next week, but it's really at the center of this text, so I want to mention it. The yearning, the drive for personal holiness is really the center of this whole wheel, it's the desire that each member of the church be conformed to Christ. That's the race that we're running with endurance, and that's what we're trying to do as we shepherd one another.

And so, moving from that, we are called on, therefore, to oversee ourselves in areas of personal holiness. So, we're somewhat hindered by me not stopping and doing 12:14 right now, but just defer it to next week, because all of the things that follow in this section talk about personal holiness issues. "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness."

See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. See that no one is sexually immoral or is godless like Esau. These are matters of personal holiness, and this is really the centerpiece of the shepherding that we do for one another.

And now, I've held back from you, until now, this marvelous verb in verse 15, NIV just gives, see to it. But it's... Episcopal is the Greek word, and I don't usually like pronouncing Greek words, accept that I want you to see the significance of it. It's from which the Episcopalian denomination gets its name, but it really is translated, usually overseers, overseers, Episcopos, to oversee. It's almost a literal translation, to stand over and watch. And so, obviously the elders, the overseers in the church are to do these kinds of things, but they're not addressed directly here, except as members of the congregation. This is something we're supposed to do for one another. This is your watch over one another in brotherly love verse, this is it, Hebrews 12:15. So, watch over one another so that no one misses the grace of God. Do you see? We're going to shepherd one another. We are going to look over one another and be sure concerning this issue.

See That No One Misses the Grace of God

Now, what does it mean then? What is the author talking about here? See to it or shepherd one another so that no one misses the grace of God. This is a very, very important issue, what is the grace of God here, and what does it mean to miss it? Well, I believe the grace of God is everything the book's been unfolding about the work of Jesus Christ in our lives, it is the priestly ministry of Christ where he offered his own blood as a sacrificial atonement for us. As our high priest, he pleads on our behalf, at the right hand of God. This is the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ, how God sent his son, who is the radiance of God's glory, and the exact representation of his being, sent him into the world, the God man who lived a sinless life, did all of these miracles, signs, and wonders to identify himself as God's son, but primarily came to obey God's law perfectly, and then to give his life as a ransom for many, whose blood was shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins, and who was raised from the dead on the third day. And by faith in Jesus Christ, all of our sins can be forgiven. This is the grace of God in Jesus, this is the gospel, the good news of Christ that we've been unfolding all these many months in the Book of Hebrews.

It's enough to get sinners like you and me to heaven, amen? Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more, and this is the grace of God in Christ. And if I can just pause and say, every week, we pray and we yearn that unbelievers would be here and have an opportunity to hear this, and hear it. If you know yourself to be outside of Christ, let me speak to your heart right now. Don't miss the grace of God. The word here means to lack it, to come short of it, to lack the grace of God. And so, I'm pleading with you that you would not lack the grace of God. And you might wonder how can I receive it? All you have to do is look to Christ with the eyes of faith. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, not might be saved, will be saved. All you have to do is call on Jesus, even in your heart, and say, "I'm a sinner, I've broken God's laws, I violated his commands, and I have no hope. Apart from Christ, I'm lost."

This is the grace of God here in verse 15. Now we are told to see to it that none of us come short of that grace. So what I think it means is what I said at the beginning of the message, making an outward simple profession of faith in Christ is no certain proof to the outside world that you are genuinely born again. We can't know your hearts, so we're supposed to shepherd one another, we're supposed to be involved in each other's lives, and be sure that everyone has genuinely come to a saving knowledge of Christ. We're not making simple, childish assumptions here. Now, I know that there can be a harsh way of doing this, we're not advocating that at all. There is something called the judgement of charity, we accept one another. Somebody comes to me and tells me they're a believer in Christ. I believe it, for what it's worth, my belief, I mean. If they want to become a member of this church, we ask some more questions, lots of them, but we know that the asking of those questions, they can be answered. Laura said, "I knew all the right Jesus answers." That's not enough.

What actually is enough is a new creation, amen? A transformation of the heart by the spirit, see to it that no one misses that grace of God, that there's actual evidence of regeneration.

See That No Bitter Root Grows Up

And he goes on from there to say that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. What is this bitter root?  Well, I know what bitterness is. Bitterness is something that's wretched in your mouth. I remember, when I went on my first mission trip, we talked about this before. I had to take an anti-malarial medicine called Chloroquine. The quine part, I think, is related to quinine. It is as bitter as anything I've ever put in my mouth, and, to boot, it was incredibly water-soluble, so as soon as I put it on my tongue, it immediately started to melt. So I got to experience the bitterness.

So what I would do is I would kind of suck all of the moisture out of my mouth, get my tongue as absolutely dry as possible, get the drink ready, put the thing on my tongue and just wash it down immediately. And it usually worked, except one time, it got caught between my molar and a cheek there, and just melted, 100%. Two hours later, I'm still tasting quinine, oh, is it bitter. So, in scripture, bitterness has to do with sin, and it has to do with something that you want to spit out of your mouth. But this is called a bitter root. So the idea here is of something that's hidden, a bitterness that's hidden. Now, there are two great possibilities for this. One of them, I think, is it may just be the issue of unforgiveness in the Christian body, that a bitter root could be a broken relationship in which someone is going through the motions of forgiveness, but hasn't really forgiven. And so there is a bitter root, and that interpretation is, I think, supported, in one sense, from Ephesians 4:31-32. And there it says, "Get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as, in Christ, God forgave you."

So it links bitterness to forgiveness, and I think that's important. An application for us, a practical application is clear, do you, are you harboring any bitterness against a brother and sister in Christ here, for any reason? Something that they have done to you, something they've said, something they didn't do or didn't say. Sometimes those sins of omission can be just as fostering of bitterness as... You went through it a certain time in your life, you went through some illness or a surgery, and you had thought that people would do this and that, and they didn't, and then you feel unloved, you feel unwelcomed. Friends, we need to do better at those kinds of things, but just providentially, from time to time, you may find yourself, at least in one relationship, wondering about someone, because of something they didn't do. And some bitterness can creep in, and it can be very poisonous. Or it could be something more severe, something that actually was done. And bitterness is submerged anger, it's down below the surface, and at some point, it's going to come up. So I think that's a possible interpretation, but I don't think that's actually what the author is talking about here.

Actually, he's quoting Old Testament scripture again. Here, he's quoting Deuteronomy 29:18. And in Deuteronomy 29, Moses... God talking to Israel through Moses, as they're just about to enter the promised land, and he is saying that when you go in there, you're going to be surrounded by a bunch of pagans, and they're going to have sensual, wicked religions that are going to be very alluring to your flesh. Deuteronomy 29:16-18, "You yourselves know how we lived in Egypt and how we passed through the countries on the way here. You saw among them their detestable images and idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold. 18 Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison."

That's what the author's quoting. And so, the issue here really has to do with the way we relate to the world, worldliness, idolatry. And the things that flow right from this statement support what it is I'm saying. See to it that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. This is an individual who, outwardly, you thought was a Christian, but in their heart, they're not. Well, if they're not a Christian, then what are they living for?

That No One is Sexually Immoral or Godless

Well, this world. They're living for the things of this world, they're living for the gods of the Canaanites, they've gone after that stuff, but it's secretly... It's why it's a root, you don't see it. And so, what the author is doing is saying when this kind of person is exposed, get rid of it. See to it that there is no such root among you, because it will defile many.

I think this is really dealing with the issue of church discipline on serious sins, because he goes on from here, "See that no one is sexually immoral or is godless." One translation... I think a better translation is it talks about fornication, the sin of fornication, see that there is no fornicator among you.

Fornication is sexual relations between unmarried people, as distinguished between adultery, where one... At least one of the partners is married. So the sin of fornication is highlighted here. Back in the ancient Greek world, at that time, it was thought to be a light thing, not a serious issue, really, unless a pregnancy resulted. Even among Jews of that time, they thought as long as you do it with a non-Jew, you're fine. The attitude is very loose. It was the Gospel of Jesus Christ that shone the light into this dark area of the human heart, which has been a weakness ever since Adam and Eve fell in the garden, ever since their eyes were opened and they realized that they were naked and they couldn't handle that kind of disclosure, and God definitely agreed because he made coverings for them out of animal skin. In effect, our souls... John Bunyan, another allegory, 'The Holy War', likens the individual human soul to a walled city, a walled fortress, he calls it Mansoul.

And, basically, in effect, if you notice all of the enemy running to a certain place in the wall and focusing all of their attention there, you can be sure they have discerned a weakness in your defenses. Well, do you not see Satan putting a ton of effort toward the sexual side? We are assaulted every day by sexual temptation, every day, males and females alike, assaulted with it. It's impossible to be in this world and not be assaulted with it, but it's getting worse, through the media, through the movies, through the internet, even through smartphones, through the mall, through... All kinds of things, images can flow into your mind and heart and defile you and draw you away. Many other verses talk about the sin of adultery, this talks about the sin of fornication.

Young people can think it's no big deal to be together sexually. Well, it is a big deal. It's a devastating sin. And so the author is commanding us to be sexually pure. Not only that, but in connection with 1 Corinthians 5, if there's anyone exposed who isn't sexually pure, we are told very plainly, in 1 Corinthians 5, to expel the wicked man from among you. And the mentality is the same, although the image is different, here, it's a bitter root that grows up and defiles many, there it's yeast that spreads and defiles many, but the answer is the same in both cases, get rid of it. Now, you may say, "Is there no mercy? Is there no forgiveness? Is there no grace?" Of course there's grace. We already talked about it. See to it that no one misses the grace of God. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. Most interpreters of 1 and 2 Corinthians say that this very same sexually-immoral individual later repented and was brought back into sweet fellowship with that church, and Paul commanded them to welcome this one back because he has been brokenhearted, and sought forgiveness, and is genuinely repentant. But without dealing with the sin, the Church cannot maintain its holiness and its purity. And so he warns, see to it that no one is sexually immoral, or, he says, is godless.

And, in doing this, he brings in this example of Esau, this godless man "who, for a single meal, sold his inheritance rights as his oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. He could bring about no change of mind, though he sought the blessing with tears." So here, we have this example, this central biblical example of the godless man. The word translated godless here is the word profane, to profane, let's say, a holy place. You could imagine someone going into a shrine, a sanctified place, and just taking some spray paint and just spraying graffiti, all of it, that's the image of profaning something. But this was a profane man, and Esau is the quintessential anti-example of what the author to Hebrews wants us all to be. For chapters now, the author to Hebrews has been highlighting faith, and living for another world, living for a glorious and beautiful world that is yet to come. And he said, "Remember those earlier days when you first received the light? When you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution at other times  you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison, and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property because you knew that you had better and lasting possessions"

And then, in chapter 11, he talks about faith being the "the assurance of things hoped for, conviction of things not seen." And that, by faith, we yearn for the reward that God alone can give. And in 11:13-16, he talks about people who consider themselves aliens and strangers in this world, just passing through, who weren't looking for any permanent dwelling place here, they were looking ahead to a city with foundations whose architect and builder is God. And so God is not ashamed to be called their God for he has prepared a city for them, and they're living for that future city, living by faith, like Moses, who didn't hold on to a comfortable pleasure-filled life in Egypt, but gave it away so that he could suffer with the people of God. These are people who wandered around in deserts and caves and holes in the ground, they were persecuted, mistreated, men of whom the world was not worthy, the scripture says. That's what the author's been celebrating.

But now you have Esau, what's he like? What does he live for? It says, in Philippians 3, there's a kind of person whose God is their stomach, that's Esau. You remember what happened in Genesis 25, he comes in from the field, and he's famished, he's hungry. His God is calling to him, "Esau, Esau, time for a sacrifice." He's hungry, stomach's growling. And there is Jacob, twisty, crafty Jacob, and he's making some stew, real mama's boy, I guess, and he's just cooking, and he's a good cook. And Esau is hungry and he sees the stew and he smells the aroma, his stomach grows even more, and he says, "Quick, give me some of that stew." And what does Jacob say? "First sell me your birthright." Then comes the fateful statement, "I'm about to die. What good is my birthright to me?" "Swear to me first," said Jacob. So he swore, he served the meal, included bread, so that was good, so he had the stew and the bread. He sat down and he ate the whole thing, and it says, very plainly, coldly, "He ate and drank, and then got up and left, so Esau despised his birthright."

What would you sell Jesus for? What would you trade... What earthly thing would you trade your place in heaven for? What good is my birthright to me? And so, for a single meal now... Not a year's worth of meals, wasn't worth that much, just one meal, the author really stresses this, a single meal, he sold his birthright as firstborn son. If you look later, in the next text, not next week, but the next text, he talks about the church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven.

That's you, friends. Brothers and sisters, you are part of the church of the firstborn. What is your inheritance worth to you? Esau was godless. He lived for this world. The world is constantly clamoring for your attention and saying, "Live for me. Live for a good meal, live for good sexual encounter, live for a beautiful spouse, a nice home, a good paying job, a degree from a prestigious institution, accolades of the world, a nice vacation, just the stuff of this life, live for that. The other stuff isn't worth anything. It isn't," so they say. "You can't taste it, you can't see it, you can't hold it. Is it even real? A bird in the hand's worth two in the bush. I'm not going to live for pie in the sky, by and by. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to take the bird in the hand right now, it makes me happy."

Do you realize how much we are assaulted with that mentality everyday? Every temptation that comes and panders to your lusts and panders to your flesh is the spirit of Esau all over again. It's a devastating thing. So it was just an instant, it came on him in an instant. In an instant, he sold his birthright, but it was confirmed over decades of unrepentance, because the final act of that drama didn't come until Isaac was laying in his deathbed, and he wanted to just have one more meal to share with his son, and then give him his patriarchal blessing, the blessing of heaven, and then die. So he went out to hunt, Esau did, and he came back, but by the time he got back, the patriarchal blessing was gone. He had maybe 50, 60 years to repent of selling his birthright, never did. There was no God in him, he never thought about God. And afterward, when it was gone, he sought the blessing, he did not seek the God who gives the blessing. You can easily misunderstand this text. Some of the translations give us a sense that Esau was seeking repentance, and he couldn't find it. I don't understand that. How do you seek repentance and not find it?

I think the NIV does a good job of translating. He's really trying to change Isaac's mind, it's his father's change of mind. He said, "Bless me-me too, my father!" And he cried and wept bitterly. That's what the author is talking about here. So he's trying to change his earthly father's mind, he's not thinking about God, because, in his mind, there's no room for God, he's not thinking about him at all. Don't misunderstand. Jesus said, "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away." And so, therefore, "Ask and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened."

So you say, "Well, how do I apply this? What do I do with this? Well, simply put, be warned about the spirit of Esau, it's worldliness. Do not exchange your place at Jesus's table for a single meal or a whole series of meals. Don't live for earthly things. And if you say, "Well, how do I engage the world? How do I use the things of the world, but not be enslaved by them? Well, get involved in a good church. And FBC, let's be a good church. Let's help each other, let's ask real questions, how are you doing with the things of the world? Are you enslaved by anything? Is there anything you're living for that you think has too hard a grip on your life? Is it computer games? Is it movies? Is it hobbies? Is it a person, a relationship? What is it?

Let's help each other with this. But this Esau, there was no redeeming him, he was rejected by his earthly father, and had been rejected before eternity began by his heavenly Father, who he... Was not his father, because Jacob I loved, and Esau I hated. Esau is the quintessential reprobate, and just, in space and time, lived it out, a life of worldliness.

Dear friends, God is calling us, in this text, to be a genuine Christian community that shepherds one another, watches over one another in brotherly love, cares intimately about each other's spiritual wellbeing. Read over this text, pursue peace with one another, strengthen those feeble arms and weak knees, pray for each other, help each other run. Sometimes you have to prop somebody up for a few miles along this arduous road. Do it. Build deep relationships with each other. Close with me in prayer.

"Behold what manner of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are." How deep the Father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure. And my purpose today is to give you a deeper appreciation and understanding of God's fatherly love for you, as you run this race that's marked out in front of you, as you are called on as we've already seen in Hebrews 12, to lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles you and run with endurance this race marked out in front of you. That you would realize that there is a father shepherd, that's with you every step of the way, who will not give you over to the destruction of your own natural heart, and he will fight the sin within you and do whatever it takes to get you to Heaven, holy and blameless in his sight, that you would celebrate that love and embrace it and understand it as a mature, as a godly son or daughter of the living God, that you would understand your inheritance, the fact that you are a child of God by grace.

And that you would understand this doctrine of the Lord's discipline for our sin. That's my purpose today, the context right in verse 4, it says, "In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood." The author is speaking to Christians, and it's telling Christians that they have a struggle with sin. They knew it anyway, don't you know it? We have a struggle with sin, it's a very strong word here in the Greek, we are in warfare against our sin, we have a struggle with sin. And it's a bitter fight friends, and you know that you need all the help you can get. And you also need to know that all the help you need is fully provided for you in your father's love for you. And you have a struggle for sin, struggle against sin, specifically because God has chosen to save you in stages. He has sovereign power over you completely, and when you die, instantaneously he will make you glorious and perfect in every way. He has chosen however, not to do that right away, but to separate out justification and glorification and give us this Christian race that we are to run. And it's a warfare against sin because God has chosen to leave you in mortal bodies that are well trained in sin.

Habitual sin, you've been training yourselves in sin from the moment you understood right and wrong. So you have a bitter struggle. And it's of the essence of the Christian life to fight that good fight. There's a scripture reading that Eric had us do in Romans 8. It says, "If you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds, the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the spirit of God, those are the children of God." Putting it together, if the Spirit is everyday leading you into battle against your own flesh, then you're a child of God. And if he is not then you are not. So you have a struggle with sin, that's what the author is stating here and he's saying, "In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted…" This is of the essence of our struggle with sin, we are to resist. It's a very strong word, we are to take our stand against sin, we are to take our stand as David's mighty man did in a field of lentils and he fought until his hand froze to the sword. He just took his stand and he would not yield. We are to resist sin as our Lord and savior did perfectly throughout His whole life. What a warrior He was!

Remember how the night before He was crucified Jesus said, "The prince of darkness comes and he has nothing on me, he has no accusation he can make, he never succeeded. I resisted him at every turn in the road", not just out in the desert now, but remember how at the end of that account it says the devil left Him until in a opportune time. Oh he kept assaulting our Lord, but not once did Jesus give in. He resisted even to the point of shedding His blood. He would rather die than sin, that's Jesus. He wrestled in Gethsemane until great drops of blood were coming out, that was His determination to not yield to sin. And then His actual blood came out through the floggings and the crown of thorns and through the wounds of the cross, and through the lance, poured out His blood. He would rather shed His blood than to sin.

And the author is saying here "You oh Hebrew Christians assaulted though you are persecuted and tempted and tried, though you are, though you are in the midst of a struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood." So your commitment to holiness is less than that of Jesus, and it's not been called on you yet to be a martyr for the faith. So, he's urging them to stand firm, they have a struggle for sin.

The Enemy: Sin

Now, that's the context of this sermon today. That's the issue we have in dwelling sin, Romans 7 describes it better than any other place in the Bible, the Apostle Paul called by God to be an apostle, a holy man, who was writing in the midst of writing Romans the book of Romans, filled with the Holy Spirit said this truth about himself. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. And what I hate I do. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it but it is sin living in me that does it, oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. That's your struggle if you're a child of God, if you are a Christian, that is your struggle.

And it's not going to end until you are delivered from the body of death. You're going to have to fight every step of the way. And so, this topic, the Lord's discipline, His loving discipline for His children is essential to you finishing your journey. You must have it because without this you will succumb to sin, you'll lose. And so the Lord must get active.

And so this is a passage on discipline, it's all over the passage. Some passage you have to wonder what is the unifying theme here? You don't have to wonder with this one. Over and over it mentions, it uses the word again and again. Verse 5 and following, it says, "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline and do not lose heart when he rebukes you because the Lord disciplines those he loves and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son. Endure hardship as discipline. God is treating you as sons, for what son is not disciplined by his father. If you are not disciplined, and everyone undergoes discipline, then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them, for it how much more should we submit to the father of our spirits and live. Our father's disciplined us for a little while as they thought best but God disciplines us for our good that we may share in His holiness."

So then what's Hebrews 12:4-11 about. Is it really a mystery? This is about the Lord's discipline for His children concerning sin. So what is it, what is the Lord's discipline? Well, here we come into God's sovereign, His providential control of every aspect of your life. God is sovereignly ruling over the universe and controls every aspect of your life. Jesus said, not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. The book of Proverbs says, "The lots is cast into the lap but it's every decision is from the Lord." God sovereignly controls all things, He rules over all things, and He is ruling actively over all things to bring about for you, His ultimate purpose in your life. Romans 8:28-29, teaches that, "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose for... "

Alright, so what is his purpose? God's sovereignly working, He's orchestrating events, he's in charge of everything, making it all happen. Alright, what's His purpose? "For those whom God foreknew He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son," That's God's purpose for you, if you're a child of God, His desire is to conform you to Christ, to make you just like Jesus. The very thing at the end of this message when it says that God disciplines us for our good that we may share in His holiness. We'll get to that again at the end of the message, but that is God's purpose. And so God is sovereignly orchestrating events to bring about His end in your life, and His end is that you would be completely conformed to Jesus. And so God rules over all things and he uses His rule, His sovereign rulership over all things to shape you and mold you and make you like Jesus. And specifically in this context, He does it as a response to your sin, when He feels it's necessary. When He looks at your life, at the trajectory of your life as He looks at your heart, your motives and He looks at your behavior, there are times that He gets involved, directly involved in brings adverse circumstances, hardships into your life because He is giving you a divine spanking.

He is chastising you for your sin and that's what this passage is about, He is spanking you. He is orchestrating some event in your life to bring adverse circumstances, so that you will learn the lesson He wants you to learn. And the lesson He wants you to learn is that sin is evil, and you should stop doing it. That's the central lesson, He wants you to hate it like He does, and so He orchestrates things. So this brings me to the question of what's fair game for discipline? What is God allowed to do in your life? See once I say it like that, you know where I'm heading. What's God allowed to do in your life to make you holy? Answer, anything. And let's make it quite simple. Anything you value in this world, in this world is fair game, anything. Starts to bring chills up your spine when you think about it. One of the outcomes of this message is the fear of the Lord that brings wisdom. I think we should fear the Lord's discipline. If there's anything you value in this world, it's fair game for discipline, as God thinks it's best.

So what I mean? Let's get specific. How about your health, your physical health? Yes, it's fair game, when David committed adultery with Bathsheba, Psalm 32 describes his physical maladies. "Day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer." God was pressing on David physically. Sickness for him personally.

How about the physical health of those you love? Yes, especially if you're in a position of authority or leadership. As David was remember when he committed a sinful census, and God asked him to choose his penalty, remember. And he ended up choosing a plague to come on the people, because God's mercies were great, he knew God and that was the right choice but when other people started dying for David's sin how did that make David feel? He cried out and said, "Let it be on me and on my family. Not on them, they're just sheep what did they do?" God's hand was heavy on David by means of people he cared about. And so people you love that can be fair game.

Anything material, any of your material possessions, your house, your car, your clothes, your money, your bank accounts, your credit cards, your savings, your pension, anything like that is fair game. God can touch it, He can get to it, don't think He can't get to it. If the federal government can do it, friends. God can garnish your wages. God Has the power to garnish your wages. God Has the power to have you put your money in a purse with holes in it. And then all of a sudden, you find that you're having to do repairs. Boy, one thing that bothers me as a car owner, and as a home owner, is having to pay a lot of money to get back where I was a week ago. Just money for status quo. I don't have any better car, I don't have a better house. I just now have a new well pump. I had a well pump before I was happy with my well pump, it was fine. Anything is fair game, anything you may want for the future, any ambition, anything you've set your hopes on something you may want to achieve, maybe you're applying for a job, and you have good hopes of getting it. But it doesn't come through, anything.

And maybe in some ways the most subtle of all and I think the most frequent of all that God may simply just withdraw from your life for a while. He's just not there when you go to pray. And you start sounding like the psalmist in Psalm 13 saying, "How long long must I wrestle with my thoughts?" Where are you, oh Lord? Where are you? Have you ever felt that? Could it be that you're under discipline for sin, at those times. And that God is being far off to cause you to come back to him and to cry out for him and to yearn for him, again?

So those are the disciplines that God can bring. What do I mean by sin? Well, any violation of your conscience, any violation of the laws of God, again. And we know the scripture says, Our sins are more numerous than the hairs of our head. We have many sins. God doesn't always discipline in every case for every sin, it doesn't work that way, God is so wise in how he does it, but it could be an ongoing pattern of gossip or slander, it could be a lust pattern, an issue with internet pornography, it could be an issue of bickering and arguing between spouses. It could be a matter in terms of your parenting, how you're parenting, your relationship with people in church, it could be an issue of forgiveness or lack of it. You're not forgiving somebody. Anything God chooses in which He mobilizes Himself and moves out. So that's what we're talking about, when I'm talking about the Lord's discipline.

Now, there are two wrong reactions to discipline in the text.

Making Light of It

It says, "Do not make light of the Lord's discipline and do not lose heart when he rebukes you." quoting Proverbs 3:11. Get back to that in a minute. But these are two wrong reactions when the Lord disciplines you. The first wrong reaction that he mentions here is to make light of it. To make light of the Lord's discipline is to blow it off in one way or another. Well, how do we blow it off? Well, first you may just not agree with the doctrine of this message, say, "God doesn't do that." You may have some health and wealth and prosperity gospel tendencies in which you think God only ever brings blessings the way people define them in this world. And He would never take away any of your earthly blessings that's something only Satan will do. Friends don't be deceived that is not true, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, He has that power. And He can use Satan to do it. Satan is just God's lackey in so many of these things, but it's God that's doing it. And Job knew that, didn't he. Job knew that it was God who was doing it. Did you ever noticed how Satan just drops out of the story after chapter whatever chapter two? He's gone, it's Job and God and that's right. Because he was the one he was dealing with.

And so do not make light of it, do not blow it off, but take it to heart, believe first and foremost, that God can do this kind of thing. That God actually frequently does this kind of thing, that God does discipline us for our sins. In one sense, you could just forget about it, just like the author says they're doing, you've forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons, etcetera. You forgot that God did this, did you forget? Have you ever had a bunch of adverse things happen in your life? A bunch of things, and you may be actually fulfilling this very warning here, at this point. You have forgotten God, and all that you forgotten the sovereignty of God, you've forgotten the providence of God, that everything that happens to you comes through God's hands. And so you've become in one sense, a practical deist. Those who are those philosopher/theologian types. The thought that God created the universe and wounded up it like a clock and just set it running and just stays out of it.

Do you know how many times we Christians behave as practical deists, things happen when it just never occurs to us, to go back to God and say, Oh God. Are you doing this to me, is this something that you're doing, is there a reason, is there a purpose, is something going on in my life? So we become practical deist, by making light of it. Another way you may make light of this is by acknowledging that you may have sinned et cetera, but dealing quickly and lightly, with your sin as the false prophets did in Jeremiah's day, these people treat the wound of my... These prophets treat the wound of my people as though it were light, not serious. They say Peace, peace, and there is no peace, and so sometimes we make light of the Lord's discipline by not standing under it for a while. And by trying to get out of it quickly back to happy times are here again. Hallelujah. When God may actually want you to stay under it for a while and humble yourself and grieve, and mourn, and wail, and change your laughter in the morning, in your joy to gloom. James Chapter 4, part of the Christian life. There's a time to do that, where you just humble yourself under God, and you don't make light of it, you take it seriously.

God, what are you doing in my life? And you listen, and then you deal honestly with the sins that the Holy Spirit brings to your mind. So that's one error is making light of the Lord's discipline.

Losing Heart Because of It

Then there's an opposite error mentioned here, and that is to lose heart when He rebukes you. These are different kinds of people. The first people are just hard-headed. Just plowing through it all, or they think they're just having bad luck or a bad day. No, but these people, they know it has to do with God, but they read the wrong thing out of it, they become depressed, they're crushed by it, they lose heart, that's biblical language for become depressed. And as these hard things happen, they don't go back to God appropriately, they just say things like this, "God has forsaken me, God doesn't love me anymore, if God really loved me, these kinds of things wouldn't be happening to me." And so they get depressed, and they get discouraged and their arms grow weak and their knees grow weak and they can't continue in the Christian life, and they get crushed and discouraged by it. And they come to the shockingly wrong conclusion, based on this text, "I can't be a child of God, if he's doing this to me." It's exactly the wrong conclusion, but they say it and they're so depressed, and so that's the opposite error.

Two wrong reactions to discipline. At that point, a person has forgotten the doctrine of justification by faith apart from works, has forgotten that all of Christ's righteousness has been imputed to them. They're perfectly righteous in God's sight, apart from any works of the law. They've forgotten these things and now they're in the depths of despair and murky, forgetting that they're going to heaven when they die. That they're children of God. And that they're more than conquerors. God's just giving them a spanking because of their sin. And that's actually, frankly a great encouragement. This is the encouragement of discipline. How He says in Verse 5, "And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons." You've forgotten that. Oh, how beautiful is that?

The whole epistle is called to be, in Hebrews 13, a word of encouragement, paraklesis. The Paraclete is the comfort of the counselor, the one called alongside to help. This letter is like that. It comes alongside us and it comforts us, it counsels us, it rebukes us, it warns us. All of that's paraklesis, that's what the word means here. And you've forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons. And speaks to as sons. Then He quotes Proverbs. It's marvelous, it's marvelous. Book of Proverbs is a series of brief statements written by, most of them by King Solomon, much of the form of the language is of a father addressing a son. So you could imagine at the human level maybe it was Solomon talking to Rehoboam, trying to get him ready for his reign.

But it's in the cannon, it's in the scripture and therefore, ultimately, as the author does here, he says, "You know, this is ultimately about God talking to you, addressing you as sons and daughters of the living God." And notice the tense of the verb here, this Proverbs 3:11 is presently addressing you, right now, as sons. It's talking to you and it's calling you His son, my son, God's speaking to you like that because He loves you, He cherishes you, you're one of His adopted children. And so these hardships that God's bringing into your life, it's not that He doesn't love you, it's that He does love you. That's exactly why He's doing it, it's because of His. Deep love for you and His knowledge, that sin is a deadly poison, and it's hurting you, and it's destroying your life in many ways, and He wants you to be free of it.

And He will make you free by His sovereign power when you die, but He wants you to learn to fight now and to stand up and be strong and take up the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit and learn how to fight and be like Him and hate sin the way He does. He wants to train you. But it's not at all that you're not one of the sons and daughters of God, because these things are happening to you, not at all. He loves you, and He's addressing you. The Word of God is living and active. It's sharper than any double-headed sword, it's able to penetrate to the dividing of soul and spirit, joint and marrow, it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. And so God is speaking to you. "My son, do not make light of my discipline and do not lose heart when I rebuke you." He's talking to you directly by the Scripture.

And so this is greatly encouraging. And so He says in Verse 6, "The Lord disciplines those He loves and He punishes everyone He accepts as a son." That's a very strong word. It's the same word used in reference to Jesus' scourging. He scourges, so He can bring some very hard, hard things in your life. I was talking to somebody recently, and saying there's two statements we commonly make that are... I think never true. Okay. Isn't that good, there are things you come to church to learn. Two things, statements, you commonly make and they're never true. I think pretty much never true. Okay, number one, "I did the best I could." And number two, "I can't take much more of this." God knows how much you can take and you can take more than this. He is carefully measuring out these disciplines and He knows what you can take. And he will not crush you beyond what you can bear, but he brings this discipline, because you must have it. Verse 7 and following, "Endure hardship as discipline." Anything difficult, anything hard, anything that opposes, endure it as discipline. "God is treating you as sons." The word treating is a very strong word, God is dishing it out to you, God is measuring out this discipline to you in a very wise and loving way.

Never forget the super natural gentleness of Jesus as He says in Matthew 12, "A bruised reed, He will not break, and a smoldering wick, He will not snuff out." We were talking about this at men's Bible study a bruised reed is a reed that's just hanging by a few green threads. Reeds are weak anyway, aren't they? What did you go out into the desert to see? Speaking of John the Baptist, a reed swayed by the wind. No, John the Baptist was no reed swayed by the wind. So reed is a picture of weakness. What then is a bruised reed but a picture of supreme weakness, and Jesus is able to bind that up and to heal it, and strengthen. He knows how to do that, he is gentle in His discipline, but he's effective, he's effective.

I remember one time, we used to use... I don't even know if I should tell this story, well we used to use Tabasco sauce to train for verbal sins. Alright. Verbal sins. You know what they might be. Not that my kids ever committed any but actually they kind of have to for this story, but anyway, and we were giving them this and at one point, one of my kids said, "Dad, yes, we all like it." "We like it." It's not effective. I don't think they said those words, but that was the message, and I appreciated the thoughtfulness of letting me know.

God must bring you hardship, it must be something difficult or it isn't discipline, it's got to be something that hurts. All I'm saying is God isn't going to break you with it. So the Lord disciplines every one of His children, the text says it very plainly, "If you are one of God's children, you have been disciplined and you will continue to be disciplined." The choices of God saints, the heroes of church history, all of them have been disciplined by God. We don't teach perfectionism here. Everybody needs discipline.

The Lord Disciplines Every One of His Children

And the most mediocre and even below average Christians, God disciplines them too, everyone that is His child, He disciplines, all of them. Conversely God disciplines no one who is not His child. This is a very, very sober thought. God does not discipline those who are not His children, says, "If you do not undergo discipline and everyone undergoes discipline then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. So this is as serious and as sober-minded things, I can ever say to you.

The most terrifying thing that God can do to anybody in this world, in this present world age, the most terrifying thing God can do to anyone is to give you over to your sins. There is nothing worse that God can do. "My spirit will not strive with man forever." He said, before the flood. "I'm not going to fight with you forever." And so three times in Romans 1, Romans 1:24, "God gave them over… to sexual immorality, for the degrading of their bodies." Romans 1:26, "God gave them over to shameful lusts." Romans 1:28, "God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done." It's a dreadful, judicial hardening that God brings on and is the fulfillment of Romans 9:18, "God has mercy on those He wills to have mercy, and He hardens those whom He wills to harden."

And so it is a great mercy to be a child of God and God not give you over. God is saying, "I will never give up this fight for you because I love you too much and I'm going to keep disciplining you, I'm going to keep training you, I'm never going to give you over to your sin, you may be so stubborn, you may be so hard-headed, you may have a stiff neck, but I'm going to win in the end. And I'm going to just keep loving you and I'm going to keep discipling you, and if you just make it harder for yourself, well you're just going to make it harder for yourself, but I'm never going to give you over to your sin."

But here I just must warn you, if you are outside of Christ right now, if you are here today, you were invited by a friend perhaps. Maybe you're here for the jobs for life graduation and praise God that you're here. But especially for this moment, that you may hear that you are in grave danger. And that there is a way to escape condemnation because God giving you over to your sin is not the worst thing he can do to you, the worst thing he can do to you is send you to hell forever and ever.

But that's in the next world. And the one leads to the other. But there is a savior, there is a savior praise God and all you need to do is call on the name of Jesus, and He will forgive you of all your sins and all of His perfect righteousness will be imputed to you by simple faith. And your sins credited to him, He died on the cross in your place and you have eternal life, and you'll be adopted into the family of God, and then he'll start disciplining you for your sins when needed.

But come to Christ don't leave this building without knowing Jesus as your Lord and Savior. It's the most important thing. Our earthly fathers did it, it says the author here, we had Verse 9, "Human fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them for it." We understood why they did it. I know that there are abusive fathers in this world. I know that that happens. But a good father, a loving father will discipline his children. Will do it with tenderness, will do it with wisdom, with restraint, with consistency he will do it.

But this is a how much more argument, if the earthly father did it for a little while as he thought best, as seemed best to him, it's not perfect, just as he thought best. How much more then should we submit to the father of our spirits, our Heavenly Father and live. That's what he's saying.

So what ultimately is the purpose of discipline? Look at Verse 10, "God disciplines us for our good that we may share in his holiness." Again verse 11, "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful later on however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." The purpose of discipline is to train you to hate evil as he does to turn away from it in genuine repentance, and to live a new kind of life.

He wants you to remember the harshness of the discipline, remember and stop doing that sin, that's the purpose of it. He wants you to share in His holiness, He wants you to be conformed to Christ and be righteous like He is, to be holy like He is. Hebrews 1:8, speaking of Christ says, "You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness." God wants us to do that too, and so He trains us. And He trains us because some things are just too hard for us to handle on our own, we prove that consistently, we prove it.

And so when we can't get ahold of something, and we stubbornly go on in a certain way, God intervenes, He interferes, He gets involved and He disciplines us, so that we may be holy.

So what then is the proper response to discipline? Well, first don't fall into those opposite errors, don't make light of it. Don't be a practical deist. If you're going through some hard things in your life, go to God privately in your prayer closet, get on your knees and say, "God, these following things have happened to me this week. These are hard for me. It's what's going on right now. It's hard financially, it's hard physically, or this is going on in my family, this is happening at work. This is what happened with my car, and I'm finding this hard. God, are you disciplining me for sin."

And then just get quiet. So I did a couple of weeks ago, you just get quiet and you say, "Search me, O God, search me and know my heart and show me if there's anything in me that's offensive to you." And then whatever the Lord the Holy Spirit brings to light, He wants you as I said two weeks ago, to lay it aside these nets that are entangling you, so that you can run this race with endurance. This is a private discipline, something you do on your own.

He commands you here to submit to your Heavenly Father, so humble yourself under, don't try to rush out from under the discipline say, "Lord you're bringing this discipline I'm going to stand under it, I'm not going to murmur against you, I'm not going to complain, I'm not going to rail against you or act like you're treating me unfairly, where is God in all of this? I'm not going to do that, I'm going to quiet myself, I'm going to be quiet under this discipline, I'm going to let it have its full impact on me. I want to be holy, like Jesus is holy. I want you to do your work in me. So it says, "How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live." And be trained by this discipline, the harvest of righteousness is what you want, seek and yearn for a harvest of righteousness in your life and say, "Okay God it's going to be a hard road to get there, but I want it and whatever it takes to make me holy please do it, and I'm seeking this now and I'm not afraid to pray this, "Oh Lord bring whatever hardship in my life, you need to bring, so that I'll be holy like You are."

Pray that honestly and fear the Lord's discipline, I don't think there's anything wrong with this. I think the Lord means for us to learn from discipline and not want it to happen again. Doesn't that make sense? And so we go through certain things and we should fear the Lord's holiness and his discipline. So you know these things are precious to me and I want to protect them. I can't give myself into sin here, I'm endangering my family, I'm endangering my possession, I'm endangering my health here, I can't give in to this sin. Fear the Lord, He's going to bring the rod on me, and I don't want that to happen, I know He'll do it out of love, but if I judge myself He won't need to do it. And so I'm going to submit to that, but ultimately realized God does this for our good, He does it cause He loves us, He does it with gentleness and wisdom and walk in confidence that your father will get you to Heaven, close with me in prayer.

This is an Olympic year, Summer Olympics coming up this summer, and you know that every Olympics ends with the marathon. Traditional event, it always ends with the marathon race 26.2 miles, rooted in history, rooted in a battle fought many centuries before Christ was born and a messenger that traveled over long distance to bring the news of victory. 1968 in the Summer games, the final event was the marathon then as well, and the event was won by Mamo Wolde from Ethiopia, but the final contestant was John Stephen Akhwari from Tanzania. And he's a man who early in the race fell and injured his leg, and it was bleeding and it was a pretty significant injury, and he was bandaged up quickly and sent on his way but greatly disadvantaged by this injury. And he continued to run and continued to lose strength, but he just wouldn't give up. And so, long after a time when an Olympic athlete would have finished the marathon, there still were spectators in the stands waiting for this man to come, and he entered the stadium and the crowd rose and started cheering for this man. At this point he was barely running, more like limping jogging, just trying to get around the track. Of course, any hope of an Olympic medal long gone.

He just wanted to finish, and he did, and you can't imagine the crescendo of adulation, of praise that went on him just for finishing, but there were questions too at the cost and the pain that he went through over those miles. Hard enough, fully healthy and strong, hard enough. But why did you do it? And he gave a very significant answer, relevant for our study today. Said, "My nation did not send me 5,000 miles merely to start the race, they sent me 5,000 miles to finish it." Well, whatever was in his heart, compelling him to uphold the honor of his nation, to finish that race, should be multiplied infinitely in the heart of a Christian, to enable us to finish the race that's marked out in front of us, for the Lord did not appoint for us merely to start that race, but that we should finish it. And he said very, very plainly, "He who stands firm to the end will be saved." We must have endurance, we're told in Hebrews 10:36, "You have need of endurance." We must finish this race.

Endurance in what? Well, at the end of chapter 10, those who trust in the Lord will live, the righteous will live by faith. It's a run of faith, which has been unfolded beautifully for us in the faith chapter in Hebrews 11, that we would live that kind of a life and run with endurance the race of faith marked out. We must have endurance. Now, the great encouragement of the fullness of the counsel of the New Testament is that we will finish. It has been promised to us to finish, as Jesus said in John 6, "For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but to do the will of him who sent me, and this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." But putting it all together, between the time that Jesus initially calls you in the embrace of faith to the time when you see him face to face, you must run a race with endurance, and it's going to be hard. And that's the purpose of our message today to look at that race. Let's understand the context.

We've just finished Hebrews 11, we've looked at the hall of faith, we've looked at the examples of one individual, one man or woman of faith after another. And it said in the context of this whole book of Hebrews, which is written to Jewish people who had made an outward profession of faith in Christ, but who are being pressured by their Jewish family and friends and relatives and authorities, religious figures, to give up their confession of Christ and turn back to Old Covenant Judaism. And so the whole letter is written to enable these people to stand firm and not do that, to not turn their backs on Christ.

The Danger of Apostasy

And so there are these repeated warnings against apostasy in this book. In Hebrews 2:1, "We must pay more careful attention therefore, to what we have heard so that we do not drift away." That slow drift from Christ, the danger of that. Hebrews 3:12, we are to " See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God." In Hebrews 6 the issue of falling away is mentioned, and it says there it's impossible to renew again to repentance those who fall away. Don't drift away, don't turn away, don't fall away. This is the message, the danger, and the remedy has been throughout this to give us a sense of the greatness and the glory of Jesus Christ and of the new covenant. And so the author has been doing that, and now he gives us chapter 11, all of these examples of men and women of faith who ran with endurance, and now he is applying it.

And he gives us this command, "Therefore," verse one, "Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." This is the command, "Let us run the race and let us do it with perseverance right to the end." That's what the author wants us to do. So what is this race? The Greek word is 'agon' from which we get agony, a sense of something that takes intense effort and struggle. It's not easy, this race.

And the text calls it in the NIV, a race marked out for us. That's a little strong. Other translations will just give us the race set before us. There is a race course, however. We are not just to run any 26.2 miles here, friends. Imagine that, imagine if they brought the Olympic athletes or the Boston marathoners to the starting line and said, "We want you to run 26.2 miles, it's up to you where you go." I mean, how would you know who won, and how would the race be fair? No, there's a very, very plainly marked course. The Boston Marathon went right through my hometown, plainly marked course. And there are rules about this.

We ran cross country when I was in high school, and I'll never forget that experience and all that it meant to me. And whenever you would go on the road, to one of the neighboring towns, the thing that they would do is put you on a bus, and they would drive you around the course, and they would show you at the top of the hill you turn left, 100 yards you turn right, then you go down through these woods. They want you to know the course, because you're not allowed to innovate. You may be a great runner and a great innovator, but that's just not welcome there. You must run the race that's marked out. And I remember in my freshman year, the best runner in the league was from our cross-town rival. He was a beautiful runner to watch, he was tall and fluid and had not lost in two years, he was a senior by then and just incredible to watch, and at the conference race, he'd gone through the regular season undefeated, the conference race he was running 30-40 yards ahead of the second place runner, and he took a wrong turn. I'll never forget that. Got off the course. I don't know how he got confused, but he ran a good ways up and then realized his mistake, and the only way to remedy it is to U-turn and go right back where you came and then... You can't cut across. And he ended up coming in fourth, and I remember the anguish in his face at the mistake and the mental error and all that.

The Race is Marked Out Before Us

And I think that the point is clear here, there is a race marked out for us, we're not to innovate here. In one sense, we could say it's laid out for us in the law of God, in Psalm 119:32, "I will run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free," it says. We are not innovate, as it says in Judges 17, "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." No, there's a very plain course marked out for us. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. There are paths of righteousness Isaiah 35 says that there is a way of holiness, and wicked people don't go on it, but we stay on it. Jesus said in Matthew 7, "Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction. And many enter through it, but small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it." Why the broad versus the narrow? Because there's many ways to go to hell, but only one way to go to heaven. There are a lot of different ways you can destroy your soul, but this is a race course that's marked out for us, very plainly, and ultimately, dear friends, his name is Jesus, He is the way marked out for us.

Remember how he said in John 14, "You know the way to the place where I'm going." And Jesus never said anything amiss. They thought he was wrong. How often did Jesus' disciples think he was wrong? That was one of the many times they thought he was wrong. Lord, we don't know where you're going, so how can we know the way? You do know the way, I am the way. And because you know me, you know the way. "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." He is the race marked out before us. And in this way, all of these things harmonize. He is the law embodied. We run in the path of God's commands, because Jesus embodies them. He is the way, the course marked out for us, and we are to run this race. We are to run it, and there's many verses that speak of the Christian walk, this is not one of them. This speaks of the Christian run. And the difference between a walk and a run, they're both metaphors, I understand that, I'm not in any way minimizing the word walk. It's an important theological word, but here I'm just telling you it's going to take everything you have to finish this race. It takes extreme effort. That's the difference between running and walking, it's the energy level, it's the commitment, the willingness to feel pain, the willingness to suffer.

And we have to run this race, it's marked out for us. It's the way that was trod by these heroes of the faith, these men and women that went ahead of us, they ran that same race of holiness and perseverance and faith. We are to run too, and we are to run it with endurance, perseverance, and that's really the focus, that's the issue here, that the author is getting at.

Perseverance is Needed

You need to persevere. The implication is that there are going to be, there are going to be difficulties. It's going to be a hard race to run, and you must run with perseverance, you need endurance here. Many verses speak of this, that the word of God produces endurance in our hearts, and endurance must finish its work. We've got to have this endurance. That's why God brings us trials. Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance, and perseverance must finish its work, so that you'll be mature and complete, not lacking anything. We must have endurance here.

And think of the alternative. To drop out of the race because you are weary today, because you're tired of this race, you're weary, you've been assaulted, you've been attacked by the world, the flesh and the devil, and you're so weary in the Christian life. And you want to give up. But consider the alternative. Do you realize if you give up, you will be one of the stony ground hearers that the Lord warned about, that heard the word with joy and went with it for a while, but when things got tough, when persecution or difficulty came because of the word quickly fell away, had no root system. No, no, we, the true sons and daughters of the living God, we have a root system. Amen. And we must have endurance to finish this race, that's what the Lord is giving us here, the command.

Now what are the obstacles? Well, they're right in verse one. Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance. There are some things that hinder this running with us. If you look at it the, everything that hinders, any weight that weighs you down. Can you imagine going to the start of the Olympic Marathon or the Boston Marathon, and there was one particular contestant that had a belt of Scuba weights around his waist? You know what I'm talking about, those lead bricks, it's like, "What are you thinking?" There's no extra credit for running with that belt around your waist, you don't get more of a gold medal if you should win, you're not going to get a gold medal, as a matter of fact. You've got to loosen that belt and let it drop to the ground. Been doing some research on this. Nike has come up with a shoe for the Olympics, for the marathon, and it's 20% lighter than the shoe worn by the gold medal winner in 2008, that one weighed 200 grams, this one weighs 160 grams, that's 5.6 ounces. I mean, they're making them just about disappear. They said, "Look, that 20% difference over the 40,000 steps of the marathon, equals one ton." If you don't wanna lift the extra ton, then buy our shoe" that's how that works.

I wonder what the original marathoners wore and what those leather shoes were... They're probably more like dress shoes at this point. Just an incredible thing. Those kind of athletes, they know the need to lighten what they're carrying. Tour de France bike riders, they're always looking for lighter, stiffer cycles, they don't want to be carrying extra weight up the Alps and the Pyrenees. And that's the image that's given here, throw it off, everything that weighs you down. And it says, "And the sin that so easily entangles." the idea, again, you picture a marathon runner, and he's got a big fish net, like the kind used by fishermen trying to gather in lots of fish, and he carries it over his shoulder and occasionally casts it on the road ahead of himself. It makes no sense. What are you doing? And he trips up on it and falls, and his elbow is bleeding, and it's insanity, dear brothers and sisters, but that's what we do when we willfully sin. We are taking on a belt of weights, we are entangling our own feet and making it difficult to finish the race.

This is not talking about the duties of the Christian life, we're not talking about church attendance, throw that off. You know, private prayer, throw that off. Daily quiet times, "Oh, what a burden." The burden of witnessing, of having to share the gospel, it's not that. Neither am I talking about afflictions and difficulties that God brings into our lives that James tells us we should count it pure when it happens, because those are the things that do develop perseverance and endurance. No, we're talking about sin, we're talking about violating the law of God, we're talking about the issues of holiness, and we're told here to just throw them off, as though it were some easy thing to do. Well, in one sense it really is in the end. You are free. We just sang about it. Did you celebrate it? We're set free, we've been set free. And no temptation will ever come to you the rest of your life with a sovereign compulsion that you cannot resist. You're free the rest of your life to say, "No," effectively no, to every temptation that comes to you, throw it off.

This is how holiness is taught again and again, put off the old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, be made new in the attitude of your minds and put on the new self. It's again and again this kind of thing. We are the ones who are able to obey those commands. By the power of the Spirit, we are able to put to death the misdeeds of the body, and as a matter of fact, that is the primary ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of the individual Christian. Because Romans 8, "If you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." And so the Spirit is in you, and he is leading you to put to death these wicked things, these lusts that wage war against your soul, whatever it might be. It might be some lawful pleasure, something that God has given you ordinarily as a gift, but it's gotten bigger, it's swollen in your life, and it now threatens to be an idol. Maybe in some cases it is an idol, and it's hindering you, throw it off, you have the power to do this and run with endurance. You may wonder what are you talking about? Ask the Spirit right now, what should I throw off in my life?

Whatever is popping up in your mind right now, that's it, if you're a child of God. Kill it, it's hindering you. If your right hand cause you to sin, cut it off, throw it away. Whatever it is, kill it, by the power of the Spirit, and you will run lighter, dear brothers and sisters, you will run lighter and freer and with greater endurance. This is the command, these are the obstacles that the Lord is highlighting in your heart, free yourself. You are set free, run free.

What are the encouragement? Well, we crossed over it quickly, I haven't mentioned it yet, but we are surrounded, it says, by a great cloud of witnesses, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with endurance." These witnesses I think, can be none other than these brothers and sisters in Christ that we've just celebrated their faith, some of them named, some of them unnamed, some of them seeing great success because of their faith, others going through great suffering because of their faith, but all of them finishing the race and giving us role models to follow. As we get in Hebrews 13, "Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you, consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith."

And so there is this cloud of witnesses, the departed saints, the spirits of righteous men made perfect. It's an interesting thing, you may say, "Can they really see us?" Yes, they can. "Well, that's a bit creepy," you may say. "I thought I was alone, I thought I had some private time." You have none. The fact is everything we do is open and laid bare before the eyes of heaven. There are angels, there are demons, there are departed spirits, and they do see. The Book of Revelation, "The saints that are in Heaven are aware of what's going on earth." They can see it, they know, but don't let that trouble you, because you're not going to be standing before them on judgment day, anyway. The only one that matters when it comes to that is God, and nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight, everything's uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we will give an account. He is holy, and there's nothing concealed that will not be disclosed or hidden that will not be made known. So yes, they see us, but they're not here as judges, they're not here as harsh convictors, they're here as encouragers. They're pointing the way.

The word cloud is a bit interesting. Are they some kind of nebulous drifting thing that's kind of weird in that way? I like instead the idea of them being like a pillar of cloud that leads the way. Do you see what I'm saying? Like the cloud of the Lord in the Old Testament pointing the way, they're basically saying, "Follow me as I follow Christ." That's how they're a cloud of witnesses pointing the way. Because we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us run this race with endurance. So we need role models, we need examples, but we need more than that, dear brothers and sisters, we need power to run this race. And if all you have are examples and role models, it's not enough. Even if the example is Jesus, I would say infinitely if the example is Jesus. We need power, and Jesus does more than merely give us an example, isn't that marvelous?

Do you remember a few years ago when Michael Jordan was at the height of his powers, and Gatorade had a "Be Like Mike" thing. Do you realize how ridiculous that is? The guy had a what? A 42-inch vertical leap. Just astounding basketball skills. Was he mocking us? Was he standing in front of us saying, "Be like me, do the things that I do." Seriously, I analyzed this, I was thinking about this on my way to church one day, I was thinking, what percentage of the population can dunk on a regulation hoop? Think about that with me. What do you think? Real small, alright. You can take, I'm not meaning to be offensive, but you can pretty much take all the 60-year-olds and just move them right on over, okay. I'm not trying to be offensive, but if there is a 60-year-old out there that can dunk, he is one in a several million and whatever. And you just start doing the statistical analysis, just goes down to zero, zero, zero, zero.

And if you're just going to stand there and tell me, "Be like me," that's not enough, but that's not what Jesus does here. He intends to give you of his power, the same power that enabled him to resist every temptation that came his way, and so he is commanding you to fix your eyes on him, like Peter walking on water, "Fix your eyes on me, and I will get you through." So look at verse two, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him…" etcetera. So we are to fix our eyes on Jesus, it's a very interesting Greek word, it literally is, look away to Jesus, look away to Jesus. I find that interesting, look away from what? Whatever you were looking at before. Whatever it was, look away from it and start looking at Jesus again, look away from yourself in your own strength, look away from the world and all of its allurements and temptations, look away from every created thing, look to Jesus.

And how do you do this? How could you do it except by faith, we just got done with the faith chapter, and Jesus is invisible to us. You've never seen him, and though you have not seen him, you love him. It says in 1st Peter, we have never seen him. Jesus says in John 20, "Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed."

The Necessity of the Word of God

So how do we do it? We do it by the ministry of the word of God, by this word, by the ministry of the word of God, we look away to Jesus. It says in Galatians 3:1, "You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes, Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified." Friends, that wasn't the Jesus film back in the first century, okay, that was preaching. By the preaching of the Gospel, Jesus was put before their eyes, the eyes of their faith, and they saw him, the crucified one, they saw him, the resurrected one, they could see him. Okay, so like we sang earlier, turn your eyes upon Jesus, you almost have to close your eyes to do it. Look away from the world and focus on him and turn your eyes on him, Jesus. I don't know why, but I'm just glad it's Jesus and not Christ there. There's something very intimate and personal. Christ would be fine, but the intimacy of Jesus, of his humanity, of the fact that he has been tempted in every way, just as I am, yet he was without sin. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus.

Jesus the Author and Perfecter of The Faith

And look what it says about him, he is the "author and the perfecter of our faith." You have a faith. You believe in Jesus, you believe that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus gave you that faith, isn't that marvelous? Like the man born blind when he put mud on his eyes and told him to wash and he could see, he gave you the faith to see him, he's the author of your faith, he wrote it in your soul, and he is not only the author of it, but he is the perfecter of it. He who began this good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. He will sustain your faith every step of the way. I can't talk about this text enough, it's just so vital when it comes to this. We already know that Jesus sustains all things by the word of his power, in Hebrews 1. He sustains also your faith the same way by the word of his power. And you remember the night he was arrested, he said to Simon Peter, "Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail, and when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."

It is so important you understand those words, apart from Jesus your faith will fail, you understand that? Jesus must continue to sustain your faith or it will fail, he must protect it, he must nourish it, he must keep it going until you don't need it anymore. And he will, he's at the right hand of God and is interceding for you, he is praying for you that your faith won't fail. He is filtering out your temptations, he is not allowing anything to come to you which is going to sweep you away. So that none of all of that the Father has given him will be lost. He is focusing his priestly ministry on this one thing, your faith, that it won't fail. He is therefore not only the author, but he is also the perfecter of your faith. So here's the twin message of today's sermon: You must endure, you must persevere, and it's going to be hard, but you will, because Jesus is at the right hand of God and is praying for your faith that it won't fail. And put those two together, you have biblical sanctification. You have what God's called you to do. Jesus gives you the power you need to run this race.

And look what it says about Jesus, "who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." So much weighty theology in these phrases. Probably in my life, the most significant non-inspired book is John Piper's Desiring God. In that book, which has been revolutionary for tens of maybe hundreds of thousands of Christians. It's a book of Christian motivation, and it zeroes in on why we do what we do. He coined a phrase which I never really loved, but I see the value to it, Christian hedonism. The idea is that we should live for pleasure, we should live for joy, but it should be the pleasure of God himself, and therefore everything that we do, we should do for pleasure, the pleasure of God. It's not intuitively obvious that that's so, especially when it comes to suffering. When you're going through suffering, you're like, "How do I find joy in this?" This is your text, dear friends. This one right here, Hebrews 12:2.

Jesus shows how it's done. He doesn't enjoy the cross, that's not the joy set before him. He enjoys what the cross accomplishes, he enjoys the final end of his labors. He knows that what he must go through is necessary to get the joy he's shooting for. It's the joy that's set before him. And what is it? We sang about it earlier, we read about it, we were thinking about it. That there is a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe and language and people and nation, and they're standing there in white robes surrounding the throne, and they're holding palm branches in their hands, and they're saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb." that's the joy, and he's got that in his mind. That all of God's people chosen before the creation of the world will most certainly be there and see his glory. Oh, what joy.

Does everything for pleasure, God Almighty, God does everything for pleasure. He's a pleasure filled being. Don't be deceived, Satan's not a god of pleasure, he's a miserable being, and he wants to deprive you of pleasure by tricking you. No, but God in his presence is the fullness of joy, eternal pleasures, pleasures forever more at his right hand, so God does everything he does for pleasure, even this. He delights in giving you the kingdom, "Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." He really enjoys giving you the kingdom. He's the one that told us, "God loves a cheerful giver." Amen. He loves a cheerful giver, friends, God is a cheerful giver. And he gives us a kingdom, but he also knows there's a price tag, an infinite price tag to that gift, and he did that with pleasure too. It was the Lord's pleasure to crush his son and cause him to suffer, Isaiah 53:10, a mystery beyond our ability to comprehend. How do we understand that? Was it Jesus' pleasure to go to the cross? This text says, ultimately yes. But he endured the cross for the joy set before him.

And so there's an endurance aspect, and there is a constant joy aspect in the Christian life. How could you do anything but endure the cross? Hands and feet nailed to wood, gravity pulling you straight down toward the earth, to breathe you have to push up on your nailed feet to gulp air and sink back down, and you do this grotesque dance of death until you can't do it anymore and you die. There's nothing there to enjoy. We don't enjoy the cross, you endure the cross. And that's just the physical side, how much more being under the wrath of God as our substitute, endured it. And look at the next phrase, despising its shame. Shame, it's one of the most powerful motivators in the human heart. We yearn to not be ashamed, we are embarrassed easily, we're afraid of what the people will think. There is a matter of shame, and it's a weighty thing for us. It motivates a lot of what we do, and a lot of what we don't do, could we not say that it's because of fear of shame that we don't evangelize as we should? It's not so we don't know enough theology, we don't care about people and all that, we're afraid of shame.

Jesus was shamed, but not ashamed, you see. They tried to shame him, they did things to him, they spat on him. They struck him in front of the High Priest. The High Priest rejected him and condemned him, that's shameful ordinarily. He went over to Pilate, Pilate though he desired to set him free still gave Jesus over to be shamed. They wove together a crown of thorns, and they put them on his head, and they bashed them down into his brow, and they beat him with a rod, and they blindfolded him, and they struck him and said, "Prophesy to us, Christ. Who hit you?" I think one of the most shaming things that can ever happen is to be spat upon, to have someone come up and spit in your face. They covered him with a purple robe mocking him, "Hail King of the Jews," they said, and then Pilate condemned him to die, and he's carrying his own cross up the streets of Jerusalem, bearing the disgrace of the people as they filled with rage that he had betrayed their hopes and their confidence, poured out derision on him and rejected him. He was led outside the city gates, like a piece of refuse, and he was stripped, and he was crucified out there. That's the shame.

Jesus despised it. What does that mean? It doesn't mean he hated it. It's the way we frequently use the word, but that's not what it means. He thought little of it. It's a small price to pay to save you, he thinks. I'll do it, small, it's as nothing to me, it's a light weight thing. If I can only save that multitude from every tribe and language and people and nation, so that they will not be ashamed on judgment day, I will bear that shame. And to me it's nothing. Think of it as a light thing, light and momentary. So the world rejected Christ, the world scorned him and mocked him and all that, but God didn't. And through that perfect act of obedience, God raised him up and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. God exalted him, and he is exalted, shame is over.

He cannot be mocked, and he cannot be shamed, and he's at the right hand of God. And he's going to clearly call us in chapter 13 to come outside the city gates where he is, but he's saying the race you're going to run, you're going to get... They're going to try to shame you. They're going to try to heap derision on you, they're going to try to persecute you, they're going to try to beat on you, they're going to try to strip you of your self-esteem, they're going to try to reject you, despise it, friends. Think of it as a little. It's a small thing. If only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, think of it that way because that's how Jesus thought of it, and that's the power that he's giving to you.

"Consider him," verse 3, "who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart." That's it, that's the enemy of the race that we are to run here. Weariness of heart, growing weary and losing heart. That's the opposite of endurance.

Is that you today? Did you come in here that way? Have you grown weary in the Christian race? Are you tired of fighting the world, the flesh, and the devil? Do you yearn for heaven, but you're not there yet, and you wonder why? You might be elderly, you might be young. This weariness can come on anyone. Could come on somebody who has been a Christian for a month, somebody who has been a Christian for 50 years. Satan is selling it on every street corner: Grow weary, lose heart. It's what he's trying to do with every temptation to get you to grow weary and lose heart.

The remedy, consider him. Consider Jesus. Fix your eyes upon Jesus, draw from Jesus like a branch from the vine, the nourishing strength you need to keep running this race. I prayed this morning for two categories of people. I prayed in your hearing already. Been thinking about these two categories, those that would enter here, the beginning of this service lost, dead in their transgressions and sins, unsaved, maybe invited by a church member here today. I resolved before God a number of years ago that someone in that condition that heard me preach would not leave not knowing how to be saved.

I have proclaimed to you the basic facts of the gospel. Let me apply them to you. If you turn the eyes of your heart now by simple faith on Jesus, and you see in your mind, Jesus crucified his blood shed, and you recognize, he has shed that blood for you and for your sins, you deserved wrath and judgment, but Jesus is your substitute, and he died for you, and in your heart, you call on him and yearn for him to save you, and you believe that God raised him from the dead on the third day, you will be saved. It's that simple. And so turn your eyes upon Jesus as verse 2 says, and trust in him. The one who went to the cross.

And if you are a believer, and you're growing weary, getting... You're getting slack perhaps in your daily quiet time, allowing sin to encroach and start to have its way with you, developing new habits of sin perhaps, and they're sucking strength from you, you're growing weary because of them, they're parasites on your soul. Follow what the text says. Know that you have a race to run, you must run it with endurance, turn your eyes upon Jesus and trust in him, by faith in him throw aside these weights that you have voluntarily put around your waist, this net that you've thrown in front of your own feet, throw it aside, and run today. Run with endurance this race marked out for you, put your hope entirely in him, and do not be afraid of suffering in the Christian life. Let's embrace it. God's laid before us two infinite journeys. I'm talking here about the internal journey of holiness. There is an external journey of worldwide gospel advance, of evangelism and missions. I tell you that you can make progress in neither journey without suffering. So you have to go to Hebrews 12:2 again and again and say, "I'm enduring this for a joy. I'm enduring this for the joy set before me. I'm enduring this so I can lead someone to Christ. I'm enduring this so I can grow in godliness. I'm enduring these things so that I can be the man, the woman that God wants me to be."

So focus on Christ. If you need some time set aside to pray, to meditate, to draw close again to Jesus, do it. Don't drift away from him. Don't turn away from him, certainly don't fall away from him, but allow this message today in the ministry of the Spirit, through focusing on Jesus to draw you back into a vibrant run with this living savior. Close with me in prayer.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 15:1-8. The main subject of the sermon is the eternal Gospel proclaimed.

You know, all over the world, our brothers and sisters are assembling in places like this one and meeting together to celebrate the greatest victory there has ever been; the victory of the cross and the empty tomb. I never separate them. They're completely together. Christ, by His death, destroyed him who holds the power of death, and freed those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. And that's a lot of people. Every culture, every tribe and language, and people, and nation have their own death rituals, and in some way, they testify to their fear of death and their desire for life to continue as they've known it, that death is an interloper. Their terror of death testified by some of the strange actions that they do.

I was reading about how in March of 1974, some archeologists, actually just some Chinese workers first, and then archaeologists later, discovered a terracotta, a clay army, that was constructed by an emperor who was seeking, in some way, to live forever. You know the old saying, "You can't bring it with you." He sought to bring his army with him. And so these were life-sized terracotta replicas, warriors that were buried with him over a 22 square mile system of caverns and other places, and they're only now still excavating some of it. And each one of them in some way different than all the others. An incredible amount of labor went into these terracotta soldiers, 221 B.C.

So over 2,000 years ago this individual testified to his fear of death, and his desire that life should go on as he'd known it. If you learn about that, the man who called himself the first emperor of China, he did everything he could to stay alive. Some alchemists told him that there was a series of three islands off the coast of China where an elixir was that if he could gain it and drink it he could live forever, and he was told that the only emissaries that'd be welcomed at those islands were children. So he actually got a bunch of children together and sent them off to find this elixir. They never returned. Eventually he concluded that he had to go himself and he went. And there, he contracted an illness where he died. Right before as he was laying, dying in his fever, he did everything that he felt necessary to bequeath the power of the throne to his son, the son of his choice. But his trusted counselor wanted power for himself, and the only way he could really finagle it and do an end run around the emperor’s dying wishes was to conceal the emperor's death until they got back to the capital city, so he bought a huge load of salted fish, and the aroma over masked the stench of the emperor's rotting corpse.

There is only one remedy for death, and it's the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the only remedy there is. And the Vikings can put their warriors with their weapons in long boats, and they can set them ablaze and set them out adrift, but that's not going to conquer death, neither the pyramids, and the mummification of the Pharaohs and all of the gold and silver and accoutrements they brought with them. None of it. The putting of the gold coin under the tongues of the Greeks and the Romans to cross the river Styx, the fact that the Mayans put maize, they put corn in the mouths of the dead, and whistles in the shape of gods and goddesses, so that they could find their way to the spirit world. All of it testifying to people's enslavement to fear of death and their desire to live forever. And we have the secret. We have the truth. We have the statement of Jesus Christ, "Because I live, you also will live. I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me."

And today we get to look again at the Gospel message. We get to look at the simple proclamation of this gospel that Paul gave us in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, which you heard Tom read. And as we look at this and as we study, my prayer is that you who have been saved, who are already saved when you came in, you're already justified would be strengthened in your faith by looking at the same Gospel that continues to save you, and that your salvation process will be strengthened and empowered by hearing this gospel again. And those of you that are here as guests, as visitors who have never trusted in Christ, that you would find salvation through faith in this Gospel message.

And so he begins in verse one and two, "Now brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand." Now, this is the apostle Paul bringing the minds of the Corinthian church back to his ministry in their midst. How he had said earlier, "I resolved, to know nothing while I was with you, except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” He had previously been rejected, and mocked, and scoffed, in the Areopagus in Athens, and he went there with a simple commitment to preach the Gospel in Corinth. And so he did preach, and this church, this Corinthian church, sprang up out of nothing, out of dust, out of spiritual deadness, this church sprang up. But now, years later, he's writing back to them again, a talented and troubled church, and he wants them to remember the Gospel. And so he says, "I want to remind you. I just want to speak the gospel word to you again. I want to make it known to you." And we've already talked about this recently, talked about it a few days ago, Good Friday, we mentioned it a few weeks ago, how prone we are to forget.

When we were talking about the Lord's Supper, how the Lord established the Lord's supper as a repeated reminder of his death, and his resurrection, and his second coming because we are prone to forget. Something that the book of James likens to someone who, you know, when they hear scripture, it's like a man who looks at his face in the mirror and then immediately forgets what he looks like and goes away. We're forgetful, aren't we? And so the apostle Paul wanted to remind the Corinthian church of the Gospel. And it's interesting too because this is the Gospel that they received. He's writing to brothers. He says, "Now brothers, I want to remind you of this gospel." And so this speaks a very clear message to me. I believe the overwhelming majority of those of you listening to me right now are regenerate, you're born again. But you need to hear the gospel, and you need to keep hearing it. You need to hear it again and again and have it unfolded in front of you again, and again. I think a church that stops preaching the Gospel has stopped being a church. There might be other names for it, but it's no longer the pillar and foundation of the truth. It's no longer carrying on it’s ministry in the world, of testifying to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

On the other hand, a church that never gets past the bare facts of the gospel that I'm going to recount here today, is immature, still sipping on milk and should be moving beyond it. And so we can't only do these basic facts week after week. And so there's a balance here. But it's reasonable for us today to look again at the basic facts of the gospel of Christ's death, his burial, and his resurrection according to the scripture, and the Apostle Paul thought it was appropriate for this Corinthian church as well. "Now, brothers, I want to remind you of this gospel, the gospel that I preached to you." This is the Gospel that he said was entrusted to him, and he proclaimed it to them, and he said, "On this gospel, they have taken their stand." Do you see that? This Gospel is the foundation of their existence, as a Church, as a people, and then individually as each one of them had their own standing before God. This Gospel was the foundation of that standing. 1 Corinthians 3:11, Paul says, "For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” 

Just as Christ had said in another place, The Sermon on the Mount, "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rains came down, and the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock." Friends, this is the rock. This is the Gospel. It's never going away. It is unshakable. It is the sure, solid foundation of your soul, and of the Church. It can never move. "And on this Gospel," he says, "you have taken your stand." Isn't it good to know you have some solid ground under your feet as you fight the world, the flesh, and the devil? Isn't it wonderful to know that you have some solid ground under your feet as you face your maker, unafraid? Because of this gospel, you have taken your stand. And he said in verse 2, "By this gospel, you are saved..."

Now, the Greek could go either way. The grammar could go either way. It's either, by this Gospel you have been saved, or, by this Gospel you are being saved. It could go either way. And so the language is kind of right in the middle because both are true. It is true that by this Gospel we were saved, if we're Christians. This is speaking of the truth of justification, of the instantaneous, the beginning of the Christian life. Where, as you hear this message and having believed it, having received it, he says, "This gospel I preach to you, which you received,” receiving it by faith, taking it into yourself, by that Gospel, you were saved. This is the doctrine of justification by faith. You must not merely hear the message. You must receive it. Your heart must be like soft upturned soil, waiting for the seed of the Word. It's a noble and good heart, that's what it says in the parable, that's ready to receive the Word. And this gospel you received, it's the opposite of a hard heart that rejects the message as soon as it's heard and the birds come and eat it right away. He has no interest in it. The hardness of the heart. Isn't it beautiful how God takes out the heart of stone and gives the heart of flesh? What a gift.

And if you're a Christian today, that's what God did to you. You received the gospel. It's the same as in John 1:12, "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." That's what happened to you. By the sovereign grace of God, if you're a Christian, you received this Gospel message. And by this Gospel, you were saved. You were saved from the wrath of God. There is no condemnation for you now because you have been justified, the righteousness of Christ imputed to you. So you were saved the moment you heard it and believed it, you were justified. But it's also true that you are, by this Gospel being saved. The gospel continues to be the power of God for your salvation, because your salvation isn't finished yet. And so you are to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. You are to become more and more godly, more and more Christ-like by the power of the Spirit, in the pattern of the laws of God. And by this Gospel, that process is going to continue. You'll never be through with the Gospel, the good news that your Savior is Jesus, and he is saving you from your sins. So by this Gospel, you are saved.

And then comes this troubling word, "if”. “If." People don't like that, the "if" word, but there it is. "By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly [to the end, this gospel].” “…if you hold firmly the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain." Those of you that have been listening to the preaching in Hebrews, this is not a new theme to you. It's not those who begin the Christian race, dear friends, it's those who finish, but everyone who truly begins will certainly finish. And so you must continue to believe the Word. You must continue to hold fast to this Word. And if you are genuinely converted, you will. The God who gave you the faith to begin with will sustain it and nourish it until you no longer need it anymore. And you'll lay it down and your faith will become sight, and you will be in his presence, but he will continue to nourish and sustain that faith through the message of the Gospel. So you have to continue to believe this Word. This is not an independent salvation, we're talking about. You're not ever independent from Jesus. He will always be your vine and you the branch, and you will draw from him nourishing sap for the rest of your lives.

So, by this Gospel, you are saved if you finish it, if you go right to the end. Otherwise, if you don't finish, that means at some point, it's called apostasy, you stopped running the race. You turned your back on Jesus. You didn't go to church anymore. You didn't read the Bible anymore. You weren't interested anymore. You didn't call yourself a Christian anymore. Those things, the elements of apostasy prove that you never really believed. You believed in vain. Now you might say, "How can you believe in vain?" Well, the Bible teaches there are different kinds of faith friends. There're different kinds. There is a faith that justifies, and there are beliefs that don't. In John chapter 2, Jesus was there at the time of the feast in Jerusalem, a crowded city, doing all kinds of signs and wonders and miracles, and many believed in him, it says, because of the signs and wonders he was doing. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all men. And he did not need anyone to testify about what was inside a man because he knows what's inside. But it says that they believed. James 2 gives us more light on this. You believe that there is one God? Good, even the demons believe that and they shudder. So there's a kind of demon faith. There's a kind of the faith of John 2, where Jesus won't entrust himself to you. How can I know what my faith is? Is it genuine? Here's how you know. Keep running the race. Keep believing in Jesus. Keep walking with Him. Keep trusting in him. Go through trials and temptations, and afflictions and difficulties, your assurance grows, and grows, and grows, and you'll know, and there won't be any doubt.

So then, having given us that intro, he gets to the basic facts of the gospel. "For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance…” Now, he begins by his own personal experience with this Gospel message. This Gospel message, he said in Galatians 1, he did not receive from any man, nor was he taught it by any man, but he received it directly from Jesus. Now, this is a bit of a mystery, if you think about it. If you look at the experience of the Apostle Paul, it cannot be that before the road to Damascus, he knew none of the facts of the Gospel. How could you persecute Christians and not know what they believed? You had to know their heresy, so to speak, was, in order to persecute them. So I find it impossible that he didn't know the basic facts of the Gospel. 

I think he actually was probably among those that were in the Synagogue of the freedmen from Tarsus who were debating with Stephen and losing. Amen? No one could stand against Stephen or the wisdom by whom he spoke, or the Spirit by whom he spoke. No one could defeat Stephen. What an awesome man Stephen was. And I think he put some ideas inside Saul's mind. He put some thoughts in there, but still there's a truth here, and he says, “This gospel I received, I didn't get it from men, and I wasn't taught it by man. I received it directly from Jesus." In Acts 26, when Paul’s conversion story is given for the third time, there's a little phrase in Acts 26, in which Jesus says to him, "I'm going to teach you things by which you're going to turn the Gentiles from darkness to light." And if you put it all together, I think he went out into the desert and was alone, and that's when Jesus taught him the Gospel. Probably the clearest unfolding of Paul's Gospel is the Book of Romans. So there's a lot of stuff he wasn't taught by man, but directly by Jesus. This is a supernatural message coming directly from Almighty God. It's not a man-made message, and therefore it has power to save sinners like you and me. 

"And this is a message I received," he says, "and I passed it on to you." The heavenly relay race. First the apostles, those eye witnesses, and then they wrote it down and they have entrusted it to us. And so he said, "I passed it on to you as of first importance." Friends, everything in this book is important. Everything. There's no extra stuff in here. there may be stuff you're more excited about, and then other parts you're less excited about. You may be in a read through the Bible in a year program, and the time may come and you'll get to the genealogy of Dan or Issachar, and you'll say, "Okay, that's today's reading.” And you'll say, "Lord, why? Why is this in here?" You may wonder. But you're held in check from wondering too much afield by those thoughts, because it says in 2 Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. That the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." 

But there are some things that are of first importance. And this is it. "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised [from the dead] on the third day according to the Scriptures.” That's the first importance. It's the Gospel. And I passed it on to you. First part, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. First, it's about Christ, the Gospel is about Christ. Can I actually just say the Gospel is Christ? He uses a lot of I am statements in John's Gospel, “I am the bread of life.” “I am the door of the sheep.” “I am the Good Shepherd.” I never find it said here”, but I don't think he'd mind if we put it in his mouth saying, “I am the gospel.” Amen? “I am the gospel. I am the good news. I am.” Jesus Christ is the Gospel.

Now, the word “Christ” means “Anointed One”. And how it says in Acts Chapter 10, Peter preaching at Cornelius's house says that he was anointed with the Holy Spirit. So that the chrism, the anointing on Jesus was the Holy Spirit. He was filled with the Spirit and went around doing miracles, signs and wonders, and this anointing and this evidence, this voice that spoke at his baptism, and all of this evidence testifies to his deity, that he is God in the flesh, fully man, born of a virgin, son of Abraham, Son of David, but testified by the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead to be the Son of God. The Christ, this one, this Son of man, Son of God, this Jesus of Nazareth, died for our sins according to the Scriptures. This is the good news, the death of Jesus. And you may marvel over that and say, "How could death be good news?" Well, in one sense, death is the infinitely bad news of the story of the Bible. Death entered through the sin of one man. Adam was forbidden to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He disobeyed, and in him we all sinned. And we testified to that nature by our own voluntary disobedience to the laws of God. And with that sin came the death penalty.” The wages of sin is death…” Romans 6:23. 

And so the good news here is that Christ died for us, the substitutionary aspect of the gospel, that he died in our place. He took our death penalty on himself. He died for our sins. This is the fundamental mystery of the Gospel, the exchange, our guilt gone to Jesus, his righteousness imputed to us. But that is the good news of the Gospel. And you may wonder, how can that be? One noted theologian says that righteousness, the idea of God's righteousness being transferred to us is ridiculous. It's unintelligible. Makes no sense at all, he says. Well, it may make no sense at all to him, and it may be a mystery to me, but friends, if that can't happen, we're all going to Hell. But it can happen because God said so. Our sins imputed to Christ. His righteousness imputed to us. Christ died for our sins. 

And what do we mean by sins? Well, I don't think I'm sitting in the presence right now of anyone claiming to be sinless. You probably know what sins are. You certainly don't have a full understanding of it though. God knows how sinful you are. You don't. But you do have some sense of it. And the more you know the laws of God, the perfection of the law of God, the Ten Commandments, the two great commandments to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself, the more acutely you will feel your sinfulness. And don't be surprised, dear Christian, brother and sister, you've been walking with the Lord for decades, if you feel more sinful now than the day you were first saved. That just shows the work of the Spirit in you, convicting you. You should also feel more forgiven now than you did the first day you were saved.

But he died for our sins according to the Scriptures. And what does that mean? Well, we celebrated it on Friday, Good Friday. I chose one scripture to focus on, and that's Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" There in the midst of that Psalm, the psalmist David, living a thousand years before Jesus, clearly depicts and describes death by crucifixion. You have pierced my hands and feet. And so the hands and the feet of David, as far as I know were never pierced, not by his enemies, but Jesus's hands and feet were pierced, literally pierced. And so he died on the cross. He died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and Isaiah 53 tells us why. Psalm 22 describes how more than anything, but Isaiah 53 describes why. “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Christ died for our sins according to Psalm 22, and according to Isaiah 53, and according to every animal that was ever sacrificed in the old covenant, all of it, Scripture pointing to Jesus. He died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried.

Though Paul doesn't attach the phrase according to the Scriptures, this also is according to the Scriptures, because it says in Isaiah 53, in verse nine, he was with the rich in his death, and so he was buried in a rich man's tomb, a specific detail of how a rich man gave up his tomb, Joseph of Arimathea gave up his tomb, a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid, and he was buried. And what is the significance of that burial? Well, according to John 19, he was buried according to Jewish burial custom with strips of linen wrapped up with spices, with sticky resin wrapped up and laid in the tomb. And why is that important? Because it served as the first physical evidence of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. In John 20, when Peter and John go to the empty tomb and the stone is rolled back, and they look in and they see the linens lying there, and the Greek implies wholly undisturbed in their original position. They're just there as though he just somehow came through them, and then the head cloth folded up separate by itself. John said of himself that he saw and believed. He still didn't understand from scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. Oh, but it's in the scripture. That physical evidence was there because he was buried in a known tomb, in a known place, under the providence of God. 

And then it says, on the third day, he was raised. He was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures. These things go together. I never separate the death and the resurrection. They absolutely go together. And so Christ was raised from the dead, and that's why we're here today celebrating. And that's why I will be here again next week celebrating, and the week after if he hasn't return yet, if we're still alive. We'll just keep on celebrating. Amen? Can we just extend this? You know, sometimes they extended feasts. Let's just extend the celebration beyond merely Resurrection Day. Let's make everyday Resurrection Day. Amen? Let's consider every day sacred and holy concerning this issue. And he was raised from the dead. Death has been destroyed; it's been defeated. And we no longer need fear it. To some degree, we should welcome it and look forward to it and yearn for it as the passageway, the final brush with pain and suffering and death, and then we go into a world where there'll be none of that.

And what does it mean that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures? Well, Jesus gave us the third day. I don't know that we would have gotten it any other way, but Jesus said, "Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a large fish, so the son of man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." So that three-day burial predicted, and the resurrection itself predicted in many places, but most clearly in Psalm 16, and there David again writing a thousand years before Jesus, said, "You will not let your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the path of life. You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. You will not let your Holy One see decay.” Psalm 22 “Pierced”, a specific word. Psalm 16,” Decay,” specific word. Someone who dies but doesn't decay. Who is that but Jesus? It sure wasn't David. David, Peter says, died and was buried, and his body is here to this day, but Jesus was raised according to the Scriptures.

And after he was raised, he appeared to some people.” …he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.” This is your array of eyewitnesses, friends, and it's pretty prodigious if you look at it. And this isn't even a complete list. If you put it all together, there's Mary Magdalene, and then there's the women that are walking away from the tomb, and then there's the 10 in the upper room, without Thomas, and then there's the 11 the next week when Thomas was there. And then there's the seven that are fishing in Galilee. I mean, it’s just one after the other. There's lots of post-resurrection appearances in those 40 days. And these are the eyewitnesses. He appeared to Peter and what grace and what mercy to do so. This one who had been chosen for a special role, and who turned his back on it, willfully turned his back by denying that he even knew Jesus at all. How grievous is that?

He even called down curses on himself if he knew Jesus. God just took those curses away, “You're not gonna have those. I'll put them on Jesus. No, curses.” He knew Jesus, but he was a coward, he was afraid of death. And when the rooster crowed, he went outside and he wept bitterly, didn't he? And he appeared, Jesus appeared directly to Peter, to prove to him not only that He was God, not only that he had died for sinners, in general, not only that He had been raised from the dead, but that he still loved him, and that he had died for him and that he was his personal savior, and that he was welcomed and forgiven. He appeared to Peter and then to the 12, because they would be his eyewitnesses to the ends of the earth, and he gave them evidence. That's why Thomas got the special deal that none of us gets. Say, I wouldn't mind Thomas's deal. That was pretty good,” Unless I put my finger in the hands.” It's not gonna work friends. He's not gonna show himself physically to you, but he did to Thomas because Thomas was one of the 12, and Thomas was going to be an eyewitness of the resurrection, and so he allowed Thomas to do what I think he actually didn't do. Do any of you think he actually put his finger in the wounds? I think he fell down and worshipped him immediately.

He appeared to the 12 and after that he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers. Now, what is that? There's no record of it anywhere else except here. Some scholars put it at the mountain in Galilee where he told them to go, where he gave the great commission, in Matthew 28. That's probably the case 'cause there it says in Matthew 28:18, it says, "When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted." So I think my guess is that there's a huge number of people, and some people are struggling with what they're seeing. 500. Imagine a court trial in which 500 witnesses are paraded in one after the other, all testifying materially to the same thing. Would you be convinced? I don't think they'd get through all 500. They try to kind of speed it up a bit. "Now, what are you gonna say? What are you gonna say? Alright, let's lump you all together. You're all gonna say Jesus rose from the dead." Now, let's hear them one at a time. Amen? In the Scripture, it says on the testimony of two or three witnesses, everything is established. How about 500? God does things in a big way. Amen? 500 eyewitnesses, and what their ministry was like after this who can say. But they just spread out. It wasn't just the 120 in the upper room, but 500 spread out, filled with the Spirit, taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Some of them have fallen asleep by now. It's been a number of years. Some older saints or maybe some died in the providence of God a little bit early. Amen. They're gone. Free. No sorrow anymore for them. They know the glory of the resurrected Christ as none of us here in this room do right now. They have fallen asleep.

And he appeared to James, his brother, I assume the future leader, although he could be one of the Apostles, and then to all the Apostles. And last of all, says Paul, he appeared to me as to one abnormally born. I've already alluded to it; this is the Apostle Paul's private personal call to discipleship and to apostleship. How gracious was Jesus there? He could have just struck him dead. I marveled with you a few weeks ago at the fact that Paul wrote these words, “Anyone who destroys God's church, God will destroy him.” Well, he was destroying God's church and God saved him. How marvelous the grace.

And he says, I was an apostle. I am called to be apostle, but I just had a different way to get born into that, or born again into it, like one untimely born. I had an unusual birth. I was filled with murderous threats against the Lord's disciples, but I am a trophy of God's grace, and by the grace of God, I am what I am. Amen? And it is by His grace that you who are listening to me, who have heard this morning the Gospel, believe it, and are forgiven of your sins. By the grace of God, you are what you are.

So what application can we take from this? Well, simply, why don't you just believe these things that I've said to you. Believe that this is not merely a man's word. I can't take you with me on a tour of the empty tomb. I know that there are some empty places in Jerusalem claiming to be the empty tomb, but if I were your tour guide, I'd be a poor one, 'cause I wouldn't believe it. I can't take you there. It's done. The time for that physical artifact touching is over.

You will believe by the Word, or you will not believe at all, and I preached the Word to you today. I preached the Gospel. So, believe it. I plead with you. Believe it. Don't leave this place unconverted. Praise God for the friend that brought you here. Praise God for whatever interesting motives brought you here. It doesn't matter to me how you got here. What matters to me is how you leave here. Don't leave unconverted. Leave filled with the Spirit, filled with joy that your sins are forgiven. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to walk anywhere. You don't have to get up, sit down, kneel or do anything. You just have to believe what I've said is true, and if you believe this in your heart, you will be justified. And to you who believed years ago or weeks ago or some time ago, I'm bringing you back to it. I'm saying, believe it some more. Believe it again. Be refreshed. Be renewed. If you came in here flagging in your Christian walk, then get back to the Gospel, get back to Christ died for me, and Christ was buried and Christ was raised from the dead on the third day for me. Get back to that. 

And realize the ethical implications that Paul gives in Romans 6. Because Christ died for you, you were united with him. You died to sin. Amen? And because he was raised from the dead on the third day you are raised with him into a whole new life. Why don't you live it? Live that new life free from sin, filled with the glory of God, rejoicing, serving the brothers and sisters, using your spiritual gifts, happy in Jesus. Don't be sad today but be joyful in him. Rejoice that death has been destroyed and that life is yours to live as we sang. Rejoice in this gospel. And then finally, why don't you proclaim it this week. “So, I can't do it now, Easter is over.” Oh, you can do it. Go ahead and do it. Go speak the Word to people who didn't make it to church on Sunday. Go ahead and tell them this good news. Be unafraid. Be unashamed and proclaim this good news.   

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the good news of the Gospel. We thank you, oh Lord, for the simple truth that Paul has given us and laid out so plainly. God help us to live in faith believing these things. Strengthen us, I pray, oh Lord, that we might glorify you and that we might honor you. Lord, I pray one more time for the lost person. I pray that right now that there wouldn't be any such people in this room. I pray that everyone who might have come in here lost is now found by your grace, but if there's still work to be done, oh God, press this word into their hearts by your sovereign grace. In Jesus's name I pray. Amen.

Oh, what a delight to be part of this, this grand, glorious work of redemption that God is doing in the world. Isn't it incredible that God has included us in that? I just can't get over that. As Paul said, “By the grace of God, I am what I am. And His grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder. I was willing to suffer. And so I praise God.” We're in a pluralistic country, we're in a country that has lots of different convictions, lots of different ideas. People are willing to sacrifice for their convictions. They're willing to fly their sentiments and convictions up on the flagpole of their lives. Even if their ideologies are ultimately satanic and deceptive and damaging, still, they have strong convictions. And how sweet it is that we, by grace, have had our eyes open to know the truth. And Jesus Christ is the truth. And He is building His empire, His kingdom, and we are included in it.

How do I know that Christianity is true? So many ways I could answer that question, but one of them is just the explosive growth of the Christian faith over the last 20 centuries. The fact that Jesus and his 12 disciples were there in the upper room, the Holy Spirit was poured out, and the church just poured out into the streets and hasn't stopped. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you'll be My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.” That's already happened. The job is clearly not finished yet because the Lord hasn't returned, but He has made such incredible progress. To God be the glory. And joy and my desire is to continue to be part of that. And to know that, as Jesus said in Luke 19:10, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost,” and I want to be involved in that. I want us... Next week, we celebrate Resurrection Day, we celebrate the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And in the upper room, He said, “Peace, I leave with you.” And then he said, “As the Father has sent Me, even so, I am sending you.” And so the fact that we are included in this commission, this movement of the Gospel to the ends of the earth is such a great joy and privilege.

Now, church planning is in front of us, and ultimately, church planting is about evangelism, I think. It's about reaching out to those who are not presently going to church, the unchurched. The joy of that story being multiplied again and again. And church planning, I think, is essential because it's so easy for churches to become stagnant, to sit back on their achievements and accomplishments. You can reach a certain level of attendance on Sunday morning, a certain level of financial giving, where you lose the sense of urgency, and you can just run on the machinery, and you can forget why it is we're here, and we can become self-reliant and that's such a danger.

I praise God for all of the gifts there are in this church I benefit from, the spiritual gift ministries that are here. I'm grateful for it. Our church has characteristic tendencies, and some of them are very, very good, but some of them, I think, are worthy of warning and worthy of us taking seriously the call of God to examine ourselves and to see if we're being fruitful in certain areas, and I think evangelism is one of them. I think we have a delight for theology, a delight for the Word of God, a willingness to hear anything if it's faithfully and rightly taught from the word, but sometimes, I wonder if there could be a disconnect so that we can become hearers, but not doers of the Word. And so if the theology isn't resulting in evangelistic outreach and missions and church planning, we've gone badly astray and then, frankly, in the end, even worse if it was based on good teaching because then, you heard good teaching and it did not result in the fruit that God desired, and that's dangerous. It would be better not to hear, than to hear and not obey.

And so for us, our desire as elders, we want to be passionately, continually committed to church planting. This, we hope, is just the first of many church plants. I know that Adam desires that his church would also eventually be involved in church planting. We like to be a grandparent church, if there is such a thing, I don't know what that is. And then we coined a phrase or expression here today, I don't know. But I mean just that we would be the parent of a church that's a parent of other churches. We just want to see this area reached for Christ; 12th fastest-growing area in the country. In my sense, it's not growing with Evangelical Christians. They are pouring in here, 100% of them converted and thriving spiritually. I'm not sensing that. Are you? There are lots of unchurched people pouring into this area.

This is a mission field, and so our conviction as elders - when I say "our", I want to speak now as the elders - there are certain steps, spiritual steps that have led us to realize we need to be involved in church planning for the rest of our time here. We believe that the God-ordained vehicle for making mature disciples of lost people is the local church. That's what God has set up to do that whole job. I think a street preacher can bring someone to initial saving faith in Christ, but in terms of the whole journey of salvation, it's the local church.

Secondly, there are far more lost and unchurched people in the Triangle Region than all the presently existing churches can handle. There's a lot more people out there than the number of churches can handle. So therefore, thirdly, we need more churches in the Triangle Region. There just need to be more healthy churches. Therefore, someone must plant those churches. They won't pop up by themselves, but God will use people to plant those churches. The best planting agency in the Triangle Region is a healthy theologically-sound church. I'm not minimizing the impact of parachurch organizations like Baptist associations or church-planting clubs or any of the other things. I think those are fine. But I think in the end, the best agency for planning a church in terms of accountability and ongoing shepherding and all that is a healthy local church. By God's grace, I feel that our church has been made healthy, theologically-sound, eager to see people converted and to grow, and therefore, FBC should plant churches. That's our rationale. That's our reasoning.

Now, as we look at statistics about what's going on in local churches, the general press of these stats is the older a church gets, the less evangelistically fruitful it is. Just lots of data to show that the longer the church is, the less people, fewer people it leads to Christ. Our church was established in 1845, that's 167 years, so those stats are against us. But to God be the glory, it doesn't have to characterize us. Amen? We could be really, really old and still really, really fruitful. Even to old age, this church can be vibrant and fruitful, evangelistically. But that's the press. Another aspect, I'm just summarizing here, but the more theological training that a church or a people has, the less evangelistically fruitful they are. It's weird, but it just seems to be the case. It doesn't have to be that way. But think of it this way: What nation on earth has the best teaching ministries available? The most books printed, the most bookstores, the most radio, TV, on and on and on? And yet only in North America is the church of Jesus Christ declining numerically. That's amazing! Think about that.

Now, I don't think that we should therefore conclude we should have less and less good Bible teaching, that's not the right conclusion. But the right conclusion is to be aware and to not think that because you have good Bible teaching, that all is right with the world. We need to be careful and we need to be willing to sacrifice and be willing to suffer for the Gospel.

Now, what do we mean by our ongoing vision of church planting? What do the elders have in mind? Well, it's this: That FBC would intentionally develop a pattern of strategically planting and assisting in the planting of churches in the Triangle Region, churches whose DNA - spiritual DNA - meet our criteria and whose people would primarily come from those that are previously unchurched. So we're not sheep-stealing. Toward this end, we would seek to develop leaders and pioneering church members who are willing to go and populate those church plants. And develop strategies appropriate for each region that we're seeking to reach, there would be a culture or an atmosphere, an expectancy of personal growth, the internal journey; and evangelistic growth, the external journey at FBC; and a willingness not to stay comfortable year after year in the inward-focus ministries of a, really, in the end, stagnant church. People then would be expected, in an ongoing sense, to make sacrifices to see this goal attained. We are committed to these things for the rest of the time that we're here.

So what do we mean by our DNA? Well, our vision statement is that we exist to delight-in, display, and declare the glory of God, equipping His people to spread that delight to all nations through Jesus Christ. So we'd like churches that like that kinda thing. Write your own vision statement. We got that one. But something like that, something about the glory of God, something about Jesus, something about winning people, something like that. But a vision statement that characterizes the ministry, our core value is up on the wall: The glory of God, love for God and others, Christ's death, resurrection, and lordship being the centerpiece of the message we have for the world. Scripture, perfect and sufficient. Progressive sanctification and holiness, progressive disciple-making and evangelism and missions, and healthy body life, community life, spirit-filled families, and church.

The two infinite journeys, we think, must be equally emphasized. We can't choose one or the other. We need to continue to emphasize both internal growth and sanctification, and external growth and evangelism, and witnessing and missions. Both, you can't pick or choose; they have to go together. And the churches that would be planted would be self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating. So all that self is coming through next week, alright? And that's exciting. Praise God for that.

So now, what I want to do is just root this in Scripture, and I want to look at Acts 13, particularly one through four, but then, spread out a little bit more into these two chapters, Acts 13 and 14. And I've got 12 just lessons or principles of church planning from this section of Scripture. Obviously, don't have time to develop them, but they're really just suggested for future study, is what it is, but I just want to lay this out. And by this means, root the things I've already said so far, this conviction that we have to root it in Scripture, and to learn from the Scriptures what church planning ought to be.

So let's start with point one, and that is that church planting is the fruit of a healthy church. Look at verses one through four again, “In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ And so after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off. The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus.” So we see this church at Antioch and what a great church that was, how healthy was that church. And so the sending off of Barnabas and Paul was the fruit of the health of that church. It had developed a healthy root system. The City of Antioch, a very important Gentile city in the ancient near East, north of Judea, an economic crossroads, some different trading routes crossed in that city and grew and grew. It was a big city, an important city, culturally diverse, predominantly Gentile. And in due time, in the providence of God, people who have been scattered out of the Church of Jerusalem because of the persecution, in connection with Stephen, traveled as far, it says, in Acts 11, “As Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews.” So at that point, they're only thinking, “Only the Jews,” they're only reaching out to Jews. “Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news of the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.”

And so now, this is past the time of Cornelius and his conversion in Acts 10, this is now chapter 11. But here, we have a great ingathering of Gentiles, lots of Gentiles getting saved. And these were, it says, "Men from Cyprus," that little island in the Eastern part of the Mediterranean. We've already had Cyprus mentioned in the Book of Acts, in Acts 4 with Joseph, a Levite from that island. Joseph, a Levite, who owned a piece of property and sold it and put the money at the Apostles' feet and it was distributed to needy people, Joseph. Who's Joseph? Well, you know him better as Barnabas. And Barnabas was, that was just a nickname, Son of Encouragement. What a great man of God he was. An encourager, a godly man, but he was from Cyprus, a Levite, a Jew. And Barnabas was the church at Jerusalem's messenger to go to Antioch once all these new Gentile converts are coming in to assess the situation and to bring blessing to what was happening there.  And so in Acts 11:22-24, it says, “News of this,” these converts, “Reached the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. And when he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.” What a great ministry that was.

And now in Acts 13, it seems the Lord has laid on his heart and the hearts of some others an idea of going back to their home area, Cyprus, and spreading the Gospel there. So want to do some church planting there. And so we see the health of this church at Antioch, and later, centuries, Antioch would be a major center of healthy Biblical interpretation. The church at Antioch was a major player for centuries in that region of the world, blessed with Godly leadership, healthy teaching from all of these good teachers that are listed in verse one healthy life of worship, corporate expressions of love for God, and in the midst of all of this comes a calling to church planting and to missions. So it's just the fruitfulness of a healthy church. See? "Make a tree good," said Jesus, "And its fruit will be good." And so as the church is healthy, then just good fruit comes from it.

Secondly, church planting is led by the Spirit of God. Look at verses two, and then again, at verse four, "While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.'" And then verse four, "The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus." And so we have the Spirit's direct involvement, the sovereign third person of the Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit. We believe in one God in three persons. This is God the Spirit communicating His sovereign will to a local church. Powerful leadership of the Spirit. Spirit's direct leadership over the strategy and the various turns in the road of the advance of the Gospel is a major theme in the Book of Acts.

You're going to see it again in Acts 16, when Paul is on his second missionary journey, and Paul and his companions are there in Asia Minor, and they go throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, listen to this, "Having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the Word in the province of Asia." You might think there's nothing wrong with teaching the Word in the province of Asia, is there? No, there's nothing wrong with it, but the Spirit said no. The Spirit didn't want them to do that good thing. So one of the things is we rely on the Spirit to help us turn away from good things to what He has ordained. And so “…when they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.” The Spirit's blocking them. So then they're like, "Okay, what should we do?" And it was at that point, “During the night, that Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia pleading with them, ‘Come over and help us.’” And so they concluded that the Spirit was leading them westward toward Europe, toward Greece, and they went over to Macedonia. And so South Durham Church, may the Holy Spirit continue to lead you. May the Spirit guide you and give you wisdom. And FBC, may the Spirit lead us. And may we be listening to Him. May we not be hard-hearted and unable to hear as He guides us.

Thirdly, church planting is communicated through the Spirit by spiritual disciplines like good teaching and worship and fasting and prayer. The Sovereign Spirit can get his mind across any way that He chooses, but He chooses these means, what we call disciplines, by which we are able to hear Him speak. And so as we are saturating our minds in the Word of God with that good teaching that's implied in verse one, these great teachers that are there, teaching the Word of God, and as we're being transformed by the renewing of our minds, and then as we're gathered together in corporate worship, fasting is mentioned twice there, by which there's a tremendous spiritual focus, a desire saying, "God, we want to hear from You. We want to hear what You have to say. We're willing to sacrifice the usual blessings of life, or food and zero in on You so that we can hear what You're saying." And while they were praying, by this, Jesus says, "My sheep, listen to My voice; I know them and they follow Me, and I give them eternal life." And so by means of these disciplines, the Holy Spirit communicated His will.

Fourthly, church planting is commissioned by a local church.  In Verse 3, it says, “After they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.” Now, this is a very important gesture, and we're going to have an opportunity later to do this, the placing of hands on, we believe that this is a symbol of the blessing in the ministry of the Holy Spirit, that the commissioning is really a commission with the Spirit - with God the Spirit. And so the laying on of hands in the New Testament frequently is linked with the giving of the spirit, and initially it was when Peter and John laid their hands on the converts there in Samaria and the Spirit came, many times, there's that. You remember how Simon wanted to give money so that he could give the Spirit by the laying on of hands, but I'm just saying there's a link between the Spirit and the laying on of hands, and Paul also mentions this to Timothy that his gift came through the laying on of hands, by the elders, etcetera.

And so as I've been meditating about this laying on of hands, it brings me to my Wednesday night studies in John, and in John 15, and Verse 26, it says, “'When He, the counselor comes... '” Jesus says this, “'When the counselor comes, he will testify about me.'” That's verse 26. 15:27, “'And you also must testify.'” Friends, those aren't two separate things, it is by the Spirit that we testify to Jesus. That's what Acts 1:8 is all about, the Spirit comes upon us and we are His witnesses. And so the commissioning is the giving of the Spirit, but it's done in the context of this healthy local church. They prayed for them. They laid their hands on them and they sent them off. It's not an independent thing where individuals are off over here and the Spirit comes, etcetera, it's not that. I'm not saying the Spirit doesn't move in individual lives, he absolutely does, but this commissioning here in Acts 13 was done in the context of a healthy church, and that's the symbol I think, of the laying on of hands. The word church can either mean that universal body of Christ of all of those elects that have come to genuine faith in Christ, whether they're alive or dead, the invisible church, so to speak, but it's not the invisible church that does the works of God in the world, is it? It's the visible church, and that means local church, and so the local church is there to lay hands on and to commission and to send people out. Okay?

 Fifthly, church planting requires sacrifice. Again, in verse 2, they sent out Barnabas and Saul, the best they had. Look, I'm not down on Simeon and Lucius and Manaen and all those guys. I'm sure they were great, they're listed and they're good teachers, the two best, Barnabas and Paul, and what a sacrifice for the church in Antioch to make that. Think about these men. Barnabas was one in a million. Maybe one in a billion. A very, very special individual. Godly man already has a testimony in Acts 11, he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit in faith, and a great number of people who were brought to the Lord. He was the one that first put an arm around Saul after his experiences on the road to Damascus and introduced him and brought him into the church at Jerusalem when they were deadly afraid of him. And it was Barnabas that brought him in. What a good man he was. And they sent him off. And then the Apostle Paul, I think we would have to say that other than Jesus Christ, the greatest tool of God for the advancement of the church there has ever been. I mean, how many people do you think are in heaven now because of Romans? The Book of Romans. Just think about that.

Just reading this letter that Paul sat down and wrote. Has anyone ever articulated the doctrine of the gospel more clearly than Paul in Romans? That is the gospel, and that's what they were getting from Paul week after week. And the church in Antioch said, we're going to send you. We're going to send you to go. It's a sacrifice. It's a sacrifice. The best that they had to offer at that local church, the best, and the individuals had to make a sacrifice, Barnabas and Paul had to leave fruitful, exciting comforting ministries to go to uncharted waters into difficulties and suffering, and their sacrifices just continued to have to be made, they had to keep sacrificing, they had to keep being willing to suffer for Jesus. We'll get more to the suffering in a minute, but sacrifice.

Six, church planning requires going forth. Verse 3, “So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.” Verse 4, “The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed.” They're out of there. They're gone. So I think Adam, that kind of came down, you're not going to be here anymore on Sundays, we will be surprised to see you next Sunday, you won't be here, will you? No, you're going to be out there. And so you have to leave, but in a bigger sense, this church, people of this church has to go forth or go out to meet lost people. We can't stay in here to do it. The answer is not a better ad campaign. You understand that? Billboards. Look, I'm not against billboard. Well... Another time, alright? But billboards, yes or no, is not in front of us. What I'm saying is, going forth is what's in front of us. We need to be going and making disciples, and so basically, there's this Tributary or river of lost people out there, you have to go and intersect with it, you have to go and wade in that stream, because it's not coming here, and there's nothing wrong, there's everything right with inviting people to church on Sunday, I hope you do every single week, I commit to you before God to make the gospel plain to lost people, and I'll do it this morning again, even though it's a commissioning service, I will explain plainly what the gospel is, if there are any lost people, you will know how to be saved and not go to hell when you die, but this is not where the primary place is, it's out there. And so it is for South Durham Church as well. You guys have to go out, you have to keep doing the things you've been doing and meet that individual, meet more of them. So do we... And so we have to go out.

Seven, church planning is based on evangelism, as we've already said this, it's not rearranging the deck furniture on the Titanic. It's not sheep stealing. Look, there's not a lot of benefits in just continuing to work with the same people, and then there's a new flavor or a new approach or whatever, and then they go over there, etcetera. There's a great benefit to godly people going out on mission to plant a church, that's exactly what we're encouraging, we're all for that. But it's the lost people, that's what we're concerned about. The unchurched people, it's that this church will reach them better because they are an independent church focused on that area and concentrating on how to do it. And so there has to be evangelism. Verse, chapters 13 and 14 are filled with evangelism. You look at Verse 5, Acts 13:5, “When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaim the word of God. In the Jewish synagogues, they proclaimed the word of God.” Verse 7, “The proconsul [Sergius Paulus] sent for Barnabas and Saul, because he wanted to hear the word of God.”, so that's what they were doing. They were preaching, preaching, preaching the word of God, and Acts 13, later in the synagogue of the city in Antioch, Paul gave a very powerful gospel address, clearly explaining the gospel of Jesus Christ. Acts 14, in verse 3, “Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there speaking boldly for the Lord.” Acts 14:7, they continued to preach the good news, Acts 14, 20 and 21, “He and Barnabas the next day left for Derby and there they preached the good news and won a large number of disciples”, so just continual gospel ministry. Now, what do we mean by the Gospel? The Gospel, Romans 1:16 is “…the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” The gospel is the message that God is the creator of heaven and Earth. He is the King of all things, and because He made all things and created all things, He is the law-giver, and He has given us laws, the Ten Commandments, and the two great commandments to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves, and God as the law giver is also the judge. God.

We human beings created in the image of God have violated God's laws. We have broken His commandments, we have turned away. We have dishonored Him, we have worshipped and served, created things rather than the Creator. We have been idolaters, and we are lost, and we will be condemned to hell if we are not saved, but thanks be to God, there is a Savior, God sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, born of a virgin. Human being, fully God, fully man, incarnate, who lived in every respect an ordinary life, tempted in every way just as we are. Ate food, drank drink, walked on street, slept and woke, but a ministry testified to by the Holy Spirit by signs and wonders, and great miracles, feeding the 5000, walking on water, raising the dead, healing the sick, testifying all of these miracles that He was the Son of God, and that He had power to forgive sins. And this Jesus was betrayed, crucified, died on the cross, dying in our place, because God had ordained the transfer of guilt from us to Him, and He suffered under the wrath of God, so that we might not go to hell. But He did not leave Him dead. On the third day, He raised Him from the dead. And He appeared to many people, we'll talk exactly about this next week on Easter Sunday, bring lots of lost people, friends bring them. I think you'll hear about the same message next week. The same message, and that is, if you as a sinner, repent of your sins and turn to Jesus in simple faith in the abandon of faith, you will be forgiven of all of your sins, and when you die, you'll spend eternity with God in heaven. That's the message you need to preach. That message, God, man, Christ and response, that's what they need to hear, that's what South Durham needs to hear, that's what we need to speak to our neighbors and friends, and I don't know what brought each one of you here today. You may be lost, you may be here in this church, you may be at a commissioning service. What's that? Well, for you, that's beside the point. For you, the point is what I just said. This Jesus can save you from hell, and that salvation can happen right now. All you have to do is look to Him and believe in Him, and you'll have eternal life. Adam, South Durham Church, preach that. Preach it until the Lord returns or calls you home.

Number eight, church planting will encounter bitter opposition. If you preach that, Satan will fight you. You already said that Adam. I'll say it myself. They get there to Cyprus, they start preaching to Sergius Paulus. And this weird guy, Elymas, the sorcerer, starts to oppose them. A wicked man. Do you remember what Paul did? Filled with the Holy Spirit, said to Elymas the sorcerer, "You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that's right. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of God? Now, you are going to be blind and for a time unable to see the light of the sun," and instantly, he was struck blind. Wow, that's power evangelism right there. I'm not saying that God would be calling you to do that kind of thing, but I'm just telling you these people received opposition, and once they crossed over to Asia Minor and started going from synagogue to synagogue, it only escalated in every city, persecution and opposition. You just read about it, city after city.

Acts 13:45, in Pisidian Antioch, Jews “…were filled with jealousy…” and “…stirred the whole city against them, and they were expelled from that region.” In Iconium, same thing, “…they stirred up the gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.” In 14:19, “Jews came from Iconium and Antioch and won the crowd over and they stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city thinking he was dead.” I just think one of the greatest moments in church history is when Paul got up out of the pile of rubble and went to the next town and preached. How do you explain that? Other than the power of God through the Holy Spirit. The rest of us would be saying, I've done enough. I'm now retired. I'll give the work to the next generation. None of us has been pulled up out of a pile of stones and then went on to keep preaching the message that got you stoned to begin with. Supernatural perseverance and courage.

Ninth, for all of that, church blessing, church planting is blessed by God with fruit. There are lost people out there waiting to be saved, and they were chosen before the creation of the world for that salvation, and nothing's going to stop it. Now, it doesn't mean you'll be involved or we'll will be involved. God will raise up someone to take them to gospel.

But wouldn't it be sweet for us to be involved? Wouldn't it be awesome for us to be involved? Why do I say what I said? Well, look at Acts 13:48, it says there, “When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord, and all who were appointed for eternal life believed.” The appointment came first, then the faith. Not the other way around. I hate it when people say, mushy-headed weird things that say, the more people believe, the more elect there are. Where did you get that? The number of elect was set before the foundation of the world. Read about it in Ephesians 1 and many other places. Paul says, “I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.” That's who we're seeking, the elect, as many as were appointed for eternal life, that they believe and they will believe, they will believe. Praise God for it. Fruit, fruit, fruit, the Word of God spread through the whole region, Acts 13:49. Acts 14:1, “There they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Gentiles believed.” Acts 14:21, “They preached the good news in that city and won a large number of disciples, great number, whole region, large numbers. It's an awesome thing.”

Tenth, church planting moves from individual conversions to structured churches. In every place they went, they organized these disciples and brought them into organized churches. They didn't leave a trail of individuals, but they brought them together into churches, and I'm going to combine it with point 11, church planting results in local eldership, the supporting verse for both is Acts 14:23, “Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church, and with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord in whom they had put their trust.”

We also get the independence of those local churches in that, they committed to them to the Lord and left, so you have these local elders, plurality of Elders, which our church has come to believe in, we praise God for it. And the same pattern also in the South Durham Church. The idea is a plurality of elders, and those elders lead the church in the context of congregational polity as we believe, but it's healthy, well-organized churches that are left there.

Point 12, church planting results in the glory of God and the joy of those who did it. I mean, that's really why God does everything, God does everything for His own glory and for our joy. He gets the glory, we get the joy. Amen. Isn't that awesome? What a great deal. I think that's a great deal. We'll sign on for him getting all the glory, we get the joy. He gets joy too, by the way. He really delights in these things. It's your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. He enjoys it. But we get joy too. Look at Acts 13:52, “…the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” And then at the end of this section 13 and 14, look at 14:27. “On arriving back [in Antioch] back where it all started, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles, and they all rejoiced together in what God had done.” They celebrated, Acts 15, everywhere they went with the story, they celebrated the goodness of God.

South Durham Church, 10 years from now, when you're a healthy thriving church, you will look back with joy on what God has done. You need to see it ahead of time by faith, and then by sacrifice make it happen with the power of the Spirit, and then you'll look back with satisfaction, I want to look back at my ministry here with joy. I want each one of your individual Christians who are members of this church or South Durham Church to look back on your lives with joy, God led you to be fruitful, to Him be the glory, to Him be the glory. I want to close now briefly in prayer, and then we're going to have a prayer time for this church.

Father, thank You for this word that we've heard from Acts 13 and 14, thank You for these 12 points. Lord, help us to be faithful to them and to embrace them and to live them out, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

 Some time ago, I was reading about a Major League baseball player who was something of a flake, weird guy, strange in his thinking, but a tremendous hitter, and they'll pay good money for good hitters. And so, this guy had a contract paying him over 150 million dollars over a number of years to hit a baseball. At the end of the season, an orderly was cleaning out his locker and found at the bottom of his locker, multiple uncashed paychecks, tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars, just in the bottom of the locker, never cashed. He was doing fine financially, don't worry about him. All of his needs were met, but there were these checks uncashed. What a weirdo. [chuckle] Except that I've done it once, actually, thank God for our financial secretary, found one that I hadn't cashed and she re-cut the check. Praise God for Clarissa Bacon. [laughter] So, how weird is that? Beware, lest you be exposed as a hypocrite!

Scripture talks about the Holy Spirit as a deposit, a down payment guaranteeing our full inheritance. And it tells us that through the Spirit we are ministered some foretaste of heaven. Some, if you could put it this way, some checks out of a trust fund that's been set up until we come into our full inheritance in Heaven, and that these checks, so to speak, come to us by the ministry of the Word, by the power of the Spirit, and they give us a foretaste of heavenly life that is vital to our spiritual health. And by means of this, we are filled with hope and energy and joy and power in the Christian life, and we are able to serve Him, we're able, as we were just talking in Bible For Life, we're supposed to live so filled with hope that non-Christians ask us for a reason of the hope that we have. We're supposed to be so radiantly filled with hope that it's just so unnatural. It's supernatural.

And I think some of the Lord's checks are going uncashed when it comes to the Lord's Supper. I feel that in the evangelical world, we do not receive the full benefit of the Lord's Supper that we should. And I'm praising God that here at FBC, we do take the Lord's Supper seriously, I feel very refreshed. I come expecting to be blessed by the Spirit every time, and it never fails, and I think many of you do as well. But it could be that even some of you are leaving some of your checks uncashed, because you haven't really looked at 1 Corinthians 11, you haven't looked at the Scripture, you haven't attended to this topic, and therefore you underestimate the Lord's Supper and come, not really expecting much, except that you know you're gonna get let out of church late a little bit, which may not happen this week, I don't know, maybe, maybe not, doesn't matter. What would you do with the extra 11 minutes anyway dear friends?

But the fact of the matter is that because you don't come with that expectant heart, because you haven't attended throughout the week to say, "Hey, the Lord's Supper is coming up," you've underestimated and you don't receive the full benefit. You may receive some benefits, you don't have the full benefit. And I think there are other churches in the evangelical world that's even worse. This problem is even worse. Some churches, some mega churches I was reading about, have the Lord's Supper quarterly on Sunday evening. Now, you just must know as a pastor, you're only gonna get a percentage of your people back on Sunday evening, and to do it quarterly, I think you can go years in that church as a member in good standing, I think, I don't know, maybe they address it in their by-laws and never partake in the Lord's Supper. Those checks are going uncashed.

There are some advantages that could be flowing into their lives, and it's because the leadership of that church has minimized, has underestimated, the Lord's Supper. Why is that? Well, there's sadly a long history from the reformation on, of squabbling and fighting over the doctrine of the Lord's Supper among people who claim to be Christians. Some people that teach a doctrine called “real presence”, that the actual incarnation, the incarnate Lord is present in some mysterious way, in the actual bread and the wine or the juice that it becomes in some way the actual body of Christ, or as the Lutherans would put it, he is present in, with, by and under the actual elements of the... in the doctrine of “real presence”. Others, following the Reformed churches in Switzerland, Ulrich Zwingli said, "No, it's just a memorial," sometimes even add an adjective like a “bare” memorial.

And if you run along that road long enough after a while, you're gonna have a quarterly in the evening, because it really isn't worth much in that view. And it's interesting, as we come to 1 Corinthians 11, we find that the Lord's Supper has always had controversy and misunderstanding and issues surrounding it, from the very beginning of church history. So, Satan seeks to rob us of our down payment checks. He doesn't want us to have that full joy and ministry that the Lord's Supper could be giving to us if we just came to it with understanding and with faith. And so, we come to 1 Corinthians 11 and I'm seeking to give a careful exposition of this text, to strengthen your faith, so that you may understand, and so that from this point on, again and again, the Lord's Supper may be just an avenue of blessing, a river of blessing to you as it should be. And so, in Verses 17-22, we see Paul addressing these abuses of the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Supper was being abused in Corinth.

Look at Verses 17 and following, in the following directives. He said, "I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent, I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God's approval. When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat. For as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else, one remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don't you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the Church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not." So clearly, big problems in the observance of the Lord's Supper at Corinth. Strong rebukes. He says, "I have no praise for you in this area," so that's a strong rebuke. He says, "When you gather together, your meetings actually are doing more harm than good." That's another very, very strong rebuke.

And he speaks of divisions in the church. If you know anything about 1 Corinthians, you know that that is one of the central problems they were facing. I follow Apollos, I follow Paul. There was just factionalism and different things. I follow Jesus. Those are my favorite people, the Jesus people. You can say, Well, aren't they... Yeah, it's when you say, I'm following Jesus and you're not, that's when there are problems. I don't know, but I guess that that was some of what was going on. So there are these factions, these divisions, he says in Verse 9, "No doubt there have to be differences or divisions among you to show which if you have God's approval." Hard verse to interpret. Some people think he's speaking plainly and saying, “There are reasonable distinctions in the body of Christ.” I actually don't think that's what's going on there. Paul frequently speaks sarcastically to the Corinthians, he does. In 1 Corinthians Chapter 4, he says, "Already, you have become rich. Already, you've become kings. You've become kings and that without us. I wish you really had become kings."

Okay, so you don't think they've become kings. No. Why did you say it? For effect. He's trying to shock them, and so he's saying, “Yeah, no doubt, there had to be these kinda divisions to show, which one of you God approves of, and he doesn't improve any of the others." Divisions, factions, and the divisions in the church were coming down to roost when it came time for the Lord's Supper. And there were selfish practices that he's rebuking here. For example, eating without waiting for anyone else, people just kinda came and ate right away, saying, “I'm all that matters, as long as I get mine, that's all it really matters,” without having any sensitivity of the body of Christ. And so, he really works on unity a lot of times with the Lord's Supper, one-loaf-for-all eating. At the end, he says, "Wait for each other." So “we all eat together” is a sense of unity. And along with that, allowing poor members to get completely shut out, it became kind of hierarchical by economic prosperity.

You know, the wealthy ones were getting advantaged and the others were not, and so, it was... There were divisions in that regard. It was a hierarchy based on material wealth and power, and even worse, the ultimate disgrace, drunkenness. They were drinking so much at the Lord's Supper, they were actually getting drunk. It's really shameful, if you think about it, it's really sad, and it's really disgusting. And in some way, they were despising the church of God, they were looking down on the church, they were underestimating the church. They didn't see the church rightly. The church, he says in another place, is the pillar and the foundation of the truth to a lost and watching the world. I like that statement, he says, "Don't you have homes to eat and drink in?" [chuckle] It's not what we're doing here at the church.

By the way, I find that an interesting statement, I don't know if I should go too far with it, but there's a lot of emphasis placed on there not being church buildings back then, and house churches... There clearly were house churches. This implies that maybe there was a place that they used to meet. And so, they would come there when they came there, he said, "Look, don't you have homes?" The home is where you're supposed to take care of those needs. When we come here, there's a different thing. I'm not gonna push the point too far. But at any rate, the church is the assembly of the people of God, and they were despising it by how they were behaving. And that's a big problem. And so, he gives them this rebuke in Verse 22, “What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not.”Well, what's the remedy? Well, the remedy to these excesses, the remedy to any problem in the Christian life is sound instruction pressed into the heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, bringing about repentance and a change of life.

But without the sound instruction, there cannot be the repentance and the change of life. We won't know an accurate diagnosis of our problem. We have to have that doctrine. And so, Paul gives them instructions, and at the end of this section, and when I come, I'll have further instructions for you, it's doctrine, he wants to give them solid doctrine. Now, I praise God again at FBC, I fully expect when we come for the Lord's Supper, that it's going to be a time of blessing. I don't see these kinds of excesses and these kinds of sins and divisions here in our church. I'm not preaching this sermon now, because I say that FBC has the exact same kinds of problems. Not at all. But my desire is that through the rightly dividing the Word through teaching and preaching and through the ministry of the Spirit, our experiences with the Lord's Supper will be greatly enhanced. That we'll have an intense experience of the living God through the ordinance without going off into false doctrine. And so, we have to have this right instruction.

And so, in Verses 23-25, he begins to give that instruction. "For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you. The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.'" So this doctrinal section begins with the word “for”, links it back. He says, “Shall I praise you? No. I'm not gonna praise you for”, etcetera. The reason I'm not gonna praise you is, I wanna set you straight on how you should think, and he goes back to the history of what actually happened, the institution of the Lord's Supper. “What I received from the Lord, that's what I passed on to you.” This is the apostolic ministry where the apostle takes directly from Jesus and then makes it known to the church, “what I received from the Lord.”

Now, Paul was no eyewitness of the Last Supper. He wasn't converted yet at that point, as you know. He says, he was as one untimely born. And so, what he was doing that night, he probably was in Jerusalem, maybe at the home of Gamaliel, his mentor, or maybe with the Synagogue, members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen. He was observing the Passover, not thinking a lot perhaps about Jesus at that point, although he probably was aware of the triumphal entry. I don't know what was going on in Saul's life, I just know he wasn't converted and he wasn't an eyewitness of the Last Supper. And neither were any of these Corinthian Christians, they weren't either, and neither are any of us. But Paul is an apostle and then the others who were the source of the information from Matthew, Mark, and Luke - they were eye witnesses, and they received from the Lord this thing that he did. Paul as an apostle, received this doctrine directly from heaven, directly from Christ.

As we'll talk about Easter Sunday, 1 Corinthians 15, the gospel, he said, "For what I received, I also passed on to you, the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. “So what I received, I passed on to you.” He said, I didn't make this up. The Lord's Supper wasn't something that man made up. It wasn't something that we thought would be a good idea. As he says of the Gospel in Galatians 1, "I want you to know, brothers, that the Gospel I preach is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ." So, he passed on these things he received it from the Lord, “I passed them on to you.” He's already instructed them, they were doing the Lord's Supper, but they had gotten into some problems.

So “what I received, then I passed on to you”, and now I'm trying to remind you of what it was. And so, also from us, if we wanna have a right understanding of the Lord's Supper, we have to go back to the apostolic teaching. We have to go back to the Scriptures and try to understand what the Lord intended in giving us this Last Supper. And then he immediately gets into the timing of the Last Supper, "For what I received from the Lord, I also passed on to you, the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed." So he brings us, in our minds, back to that night, the last night that Jesus was alive before he was betrayed, before he was killed, that Passover meal that he ate with His disciples, with His apostles in the upper room. You remember, and you've read about it, back to that night. And he's identifying it this way, “the night he was betrayed.” Actually the Greek word for “betrayed” here is the same word that's frequently translated “delivered, delivered over,” that kind of thing. And so, it's a powerful meditation to consider: who delivered Jesus over to death?

And let's go right to the heart of the matter: it was God the Father who delivered His Son for us. It's very powerful. Romans 8:32, "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also along with Him graciously give us all things?" So God the Father surrendered or delivered Jesus over to death for us. It's the same word. And then again in Romans 4:25, "He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification." This is the Gospel that Jesus was delivered over to death. But most of the translation, all of them, I don't actually know any translation that doesn't go with betrayal here, on the night that he was betrayed, and this word is translated sometimes betrayed, and I think that's what Paul had in mind. So it's speaking really of His betrayal by Judas Iscariot, one of the 12. Judas betrayed Him to His enemies, on the night he was betrayed. And so, Judas was one of the 12, he was one of Jesus' inner circle, he was in one of the Psalms prophetically, he was his friend, his close friend, whom he trusted.

Now, don't misunderstand about Jesus, he always knew who Judas was, it's not that. But he had given him a position of importance, he had entrusted some things to him, like the money bag, for example, and certain aspects of ministry, and he was in that circle of friends. And so, that Psalm, Psalm 41, which is quoted in John 13:18, to fulfill the Scripture, "He who shares my bread has lifted up his heel against me." There's a strong sense of betrayal, you can't betray a stranger. And so, there's got to be relationship, that trust, that friendship, in order for there to be betrayal, and there was. And I just meditate on this, this issue of betrayal, and I think about it, not everyone who sits at the table with Jesus is a true believer in him. Not everyone who partakes in the Lord's Supper is going to heaven. Not everyone has a genuine faith in Jesus Christ. And the people that don't, they're just in many ways indistinguishable from those that do. God knows the difference. But Judas... I mean, the other 11 didn't know he was the one. They didn't know who it was. But it was in receiving that actual piece of bread that Jesus dipped into the dish, it was by taking that he accepted the role of betrayer. Satan entered into him. It was betrayal, dear friends. There's a strong sense of betrayal.

So, as a result of this theme that I'm opening up for us, one of the big issues when it comes to the Lord's Supper is the theme of self-examination. Someone ought to examine himself. We should examine ourselves when we come to the Lord's Supper. We'll get more to that later on, but because of this issue of betrayal. So this is when it happened, the night he was betrayed, a certain specific night in history. Well, what did he do? Well, he took bread in his hands and he gave thanks for the bread, and he broke the bread, and he gave the bread to them all. And then he established the significance of these actions. "This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." And then in the same way, after the supper, he then took the cup, and he made a similar statement. He said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me." So we have a simple command, "Do this.

Do you see, by the way, the power of the Holy Spirit? The church has done this now for 2000 years, the church has done this. The Holy Spirit would not let this thing fall by the wayside. The Spirit does his work. Now, we don't always rightly understand it. We don't always get it right. We're always messed up, but we're doing it. But this was a command given by the Lord to do it. Now, what is the theological significance of this? This is clearly meant to be a significant thing. I wanna bring out four themes just right from the text here, there are many others we could get. The first four doctrinal themes, the first is the theme of thanksgiving. He took the bread and he gave thanks. He gave thanks. The Greek word for give thanks, eucharisteo, from which we get Eucharist, it just means to give thanks. And so we come to the table, we should, filled with thanksgiving. It is very sweetly others-centered to be a thankful man or woman. Amen? To just live your life filled with thankfulness, it's a happy occasion. When you come and you're able to say to God, "Thank you. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for all that you've done for me. Thank you for sending your only begotten Son for me. Thank you. And thank you for the good things that are yet to come," just to be filled with thankfulness.

Paul can't write an epistle without thanking God for the salvation of the people he's writing to, whether the Romans or the Corinthians. He's just thankful to God, always. My favorite verse on thankfulness, in that regard, Romans 6:17. I love that verse. "Thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed that form of teaching to which you were entrusted." I preached a whole sermon, the sermon title is... I love that title. It's one of my favorite titles. “Thank God, You Obeyed.” That will blow your theological circuits. You'd be thinking about that the rest of your life, and you'll never figure it out. Thank God, you obeyed the gospel. To God be the glory, that you're not sitting here as some atheist, some unbeliever, you're sitting here as a believer in Jesus. You obeyed the gospel. Thank him for it, 'cause he should get the credit. And not only that, but thank God your brothers and sisters obeyed too. Amen? 'Cause Paul's doing that in Romans 6:17, "I thank God that you obeyed." So thankfulness.

Secondly, the necessity of the incarnation. Very physical here. He took bread in his hands, and he broke it. I had the picture in my mind of little tiny bread crumbs falling as he breaks it. It's very physical. When I was an altar boy in the Roman Catholic Church, I was supposed to hold this polished brass patent kind of plate under the mouths of people so that if any crumbs would fall they would be caught. It was a way that they thought, I think, of giving reverence to what was going on there. But I'm just saying on the night of the first... I think there were crumbs that fell down on the table. I just think it was physical, it just happened. He had hands, there was a physical bread, and all of this points to the physicality of our salvation. We were saved by a body. We were saved by a dead body. You see what I'm saying? And we have to believe in the incarnation to believe the gospel. Colossians 1:22, "But now he, God, has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight without blemish and free from accusation." Trace it all back, because of the body, that's what you have. Because of the body of Jesus, given over to death, you are free from sin.

The physical nature of our salvation, physical. Jesus was really human, didn't merely appear to be human. It was foundation, the foundation of the gospel the apostles preached. 1 John 1:1, he says, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim to you concerning the word of life." But this does not mean I espouse a doctrine of real presence, still less of transubstantiation. I don't think that the words, "This is my body" or, "This is my blood," mean that we as Christians have to believe in real presence, that that's literally the body or literally the blood, or that if I had priestly skills laid on me by the archbishop that I would be able to transubstantiate it into such. I don't believe in that. I don't think it's required. And I actually think it's not what the Bible teaches, that the incarnation was centered on Jesus' body. His hands were touching bread that night, not his body that night. And so those words themselves would have been incomprehensible to the apostles that night. Real presence would have meant nothing. Now, I know that there are many that believe it. I don't wanna get into that debate, I just don't think that's what it means.

Thirdly, doctrinal theme, the necessity of substitutionary atonement. He said, "This is my body, which is for you." Do you see that? "This is my body, which is for you." I took on a body for you, I am going to lay down my body for your sake. Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." He gave himself in my place, he stood in my place. As the hymn put it, "In my place, condemned, he stood." Took our place. So this is my body, which is given for you. Isaiah 53, "He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." Substitutionary atonement. Jesus took on a body, and that body was nailed to the cross in our place. And that if we trust in him, if we believe in him, the transfer of guilt moves from us to him, and he is our savior by his physical body. This atonement is especially spoken of as having been done in his blood. There's a focus on His blood, the blood atonement, through faith in his blood. So “without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.” Hebrews 9:22.

And so that brings me to the fourth, final theme I wanna bring out doctrinally, the establishment of a new covenant in his blood. A new covenant was established. The old covenant was in the blood of bulls and goats, animals. It never took away any sin, symbolic only, covered that in Hebrews. But now there is this new covenant, and it was also established in blood, once for all time, never to be repeated. That's part of the problem with the Mass, is the repetition of the sacrifice given again and again. It's not needed. Once for all offered in his blood. And through that, we have a new covenant. And we talked in Hebrews 8 about the elements of the new covenant. “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time,” declares the Lord. “I'll put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts.” That's a transformed nature; heart of stone removed, the heart of flesh given; regeneration. “I will be their God and they will be my people.” That's adoption through faith in Jesus. “No longer will the man teach his neighbor, a man, his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” perfect knowledge. “Now, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God.” We'll have intimate knowledge. “For I'll forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more. Complete forgiveness of sins, it's always been by this eternal covenant, the blood of Jesus. And this reminds us of all of that. And so the theology of the Lord's Supper: It's a meal of thanksgiving. It's a meal focused on the incarnation, not in any way believing in real presence or transubstantiation, but remembering that Jesus took on a body for us and that it was necessary for our salvation. Substitutionary atonement, that's why the body was given, bringing about a new covenant in his blood.

All right, so why do we do it? Well, the first purpose that Paul mentions is proclamation for remembrance. Look at verse 26. "For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." It also says, "This is my body, which is for you, do this in remembrance of me. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me." So we come to this issue of remembrance. In a way, it's astonishing that we would need to be reminded of Jesus. Isn't that a bit strange? It's like, "Oh yeah, Jesus." But you know, how many of us, being honest, don't have "Oh yeah, Jesus" moments every day? It's really a tragedy of the flesh that we are just constantly forgetting the things that God wanted us to remember. He said it would happen to the Jews when they entered the Promised Land. "When you enter this land," Deuteronomy 8, "Be careful that you don't forget all that God has commanded you and all that he's done in view of you." When you get in that Promised Land, and you start eating all of those crops you didn't plant, you live in fine houses you didn't build, and you drink from grapes you didn't plant, when all of that happens your hearts are gonna become proud and you'll forget me.

Well, the Lord instituted this so that we would not forget him, that we would not forget him, that we would remember what he did, and that it would be intense, that remembrance. And not only would we remember, but we would by doing this, proclaim, proclaim. The word is used 11 times in the Book of Acts for the proclamation of the Gospel. So, in some way, the death of Jesus is being proclaimed by this. We are proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes. So we're proclaiming a past history and a future reality that we're looking forward to by faith, filled with hope, the second coming of Christ. And so we are proclaiming the Lord's death, and we're gonna keep doing it until he comes, looking ahead. So this proclamation looks backward, and it looks forward, the past and the future. That's the first purpose.

The second purpose of the Lord's Supper, the reason we do it, is for self-examination. I already mentioned this, but look at verses 27 through 32. "Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord." "A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world." These are serious words of spiritual warning centered around the Lord's Supper, very serious. And the press of all of them, all, if we could boil it all down to one thing, it's "examine yourselves." That's what it's all about. So we proclaim the Lord's death, but we also examine ourselves. We look inward to see, "How does it stand with me and God?" It says that if we eat or drink without recognizing the body of the Lord, we will eat and drink judgment on ourselves. What does it mean then to recognize the body of the Lord? I don't think, again, it means real presence, that by looking at the bread, you say, "That's the body of the Lord." I think instead, the same word is used in verse 31, same Greek word, if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.

So recognize, truly, Jesus, recognize that he is the only begotten Son of God. That means have a saving faith in Jesus, recognize him, assess it properly by sober judgment, by faith, a serious, weighty, joyful thing. It is for this reason that we believe that only baptized believers in Jesus should partake in the Lord's Supper. We do not open it to anyone from the community to come and take, but you have to have believed in Jesus, trusted in him as your Lord and Savior, and testified to that by water baptism. Because I think that an unbeliever could only possibly be eating and drinking judgment on themselves, 'cause they cannot recognize the body and blood of Jesus. They're not believers yet. If they become a believer, as I prayed this morning that some would become believers as a result of listening to this sermon, if that is happening to you, the first thing you need to do by ordinance is water baptism, not the Lord's Supper. And that way you're standing in front of the world and saying, "I am a believer in Jesus. I'm a believer in Jesus," and you're willing to be baptized, then the Lord's Supper comes.

I don't think simply being an unbeliever is the only way, however, to not recognize the body and blood of Jesus. Clearly, these Corinthian people were being disciplined by God because they were eating in an unworthy manner. So remember what they were doing. They were coming, it's a raucous thing, eating quickly, not looking to anybody else, getting drunk. And as a result of that, God was disciplining them. Pretty soon, in Hebrews 12, we're gonna talk about the Lord's discipline. God has power to discipline his children. And here it says the discipline's linked to the Lord's Supper. If you don't see the Lord's Supper properly, you don't come with a referential attitude by faith, you're open to the Lord's discipline. And that's why he says, "A number of you are weak." Think about that, your weakness comes because you haven't recognized the Lord's Supper properly. A number of you are sick, you have a sickness in your life. There are some sicknesses that come from sin, they are disciplines of God. And a number of you have fallen asleep, that means they've died because they did not recognize properly the Lord's Supper. It's very serious, if you think about that. So these are serious words of warning, and there's a need for faith. So as we come to this, we come by faith.

Remember how Jesus said to the two blind men by the side of the road, "Lord, we want our sight." He said, "All right, according to your faith, it will be done to you." So it is with the Lord's Supper. So it is as you come here, according to your faith, it will be done. If by hearing this sermon, your faith is expanded, it's stronger, you have a sense of the body and blood of Jesus, according to your faith, it will be done to you. If not, it will be bare memorial, to use that language. Maybe not even that. But if you have a strong, vivid faith through the ministry of the Holy Spirit as he's moving through this sanctuary even now convicting, strengthening, working in your hearts, then this will be a very powerful and meaningful time. And therefore, this is a time, verse 28, to examine yourselves before you eat and drink. Ask, number one, “Am I truly a Christian? Am I born again, really?” It says in 2 Corinthians 13:5, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith." Test yourselves. It's not a wrong thing to do. Do that, test yourselves. Don't you realize that Christ Jesus is in you, unless of course you fail the test? So do you believe that Jesus is God in the flesh and that he died on the cross in your place for sin?

Are you trusting in Christ's death, in his death alone, for the forgiveness of all of your sins? Not your own righteousness. Do you see evidence of the Holy Spirit's ministry in your life? Is the Spirit testifying with your spirit regularly that you are a child of God? Does God pour out his love into your heart by the Holy Spirit whom he has given you? Does that love, through the Spirit, extend to other brothers and sisters in Christ? You're loving the brothers and sisters because they're Christians. Do you see a principle of spiritual vitality in your life so that you are by the power of the Spirit putting sin to death, the deeds of the body, regularly? I'm not talking about sinless perfection. Do you hunger and thirst for the things of God? Do you yearn for God's word? Do you yearn for heaven? Do you yearn for righteousness? Are these the desires of your heart? Do you see spiritual warfare going on in you and around you as the devil battles what you're trying to do? Do you yearn for heaven and to see God face-to-face? Well, listen, all of these questions really should be in front of you every day, but at the Lord's Supper, especially so. You should come and ask those kind of questions.

Secondly though, not just Am I a Christian, but, Am I healthy? Am I doing well in my Christian life? Am I growing? Am I actually growing? Am I more like Jesus than I was a year ago? Five years ago? Is there a principle of growth in my life? Or are there increasing patterns of idolatry, entrenched sin that's taking root in my life, and I need to fight better? Are there broken relationships horizontally? Do I have some unforgiveness in my heart, some bitterness toward another brother or sister in Christ? You know, is there brokenness? Am I drifting spiritually? Am I drifting? Am I not so sharp in my spiritual disciplines as I used to be, not reading the Bible like I used to be or praying like I used to be, or memorizing Scripture? Am I drifting or am I getting stronger? Am I healthy? Am I growing? And so the Lord's Supper is a time to examine yourself. And he says, "If you will discipline yourself," God's saying, "I won't have to do it." Isn't that what he's saying? If we discipline ourselves, if we judge ourselves, we will not come under judgment. So you take care of it, and I won't have to.

So what he does is he gives you time, he gives you time to repent. If you won't, he will act. We'll talk more about that in a few weeks on discipline, but he'll act. And you saw what happened in the Corinthian church: Weak, sick, some had fallen asleep. You don't want that to happen. And so head it off at the pass and bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance, that's what he's urging. Examine yourself. If something comes up, address it, deal with it. He'll give you time, and then you won't have to come under judgement. But even if you are judged by the Lord, keep in mind it's still different than the non-Christians. He's doing that so that you will not be condemned with them. So even when he brings strong smitings on you, he's doing it so that he can save your soul. Does that makes sense? So there's still love even if there is discipline. So in sum, the Lord's Supper is a powerful time to reflect on Christ, past, future, present. It's a time to give God thanks for our salvation. It's a time for the unity of the body, a time for serious soul-searching and killing of sin.

In a few minutes, you'll have a chance to partake. I'm gonna pray now for the blessing. We're gonna hear a song, and then we'll be able to come to the table. Father, thank you for the Word of God. We thank you for the things that we've learned. Father, I ask that you would take your Word now and press it home to our hearts. Help us to understand this incredible gift you've given us in the Lord's Supper. Bless now this song. And Lord, as we come to the table, we pray for your blessing, in Jesus name. Amen.

Well, this morning, I am in awe. I continue to be in awe of the sovereign plan of God, God's ways are deep and rich and full beyond our tracing out as Paul celebrated in Romans Chapter 11. "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom of the knowledge of God, how unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay Him? For from him, and through him, and to him are all things, to him be glory forever and ever, amen." And so, we stand at the end of Hebrews 11, finishing the Chapter today. What a journey it's been as we have looked back in the past, back to the Old Testament saints, brothers and sisters who served Christ before we were born, and who ran their race. And the very next passage that we're going to look at, not today, but I'm going to quote from it a little bit. Verse 1 of Chapter 12, it says that "we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses," and because we are surrounded, "let us run with perseverance [endurance] the race marked out before us."

And so, we are in a very mysterious and powerful way surrounded now by unseen witnesses, by people who have run their race before us and who are now waiting for us to finish. But this text that we're looking at today now, not Hebrews 12:1, but Hebrews 11:39-40 says something amazing about them. In a very amazing way, the more you meditate on this, the more amazing it is. They're not really finished being saved yet. They're not perfect yet, though they are perfect. And it's a mystery. You look at it and say, "How could it be that they're not yet perfect, and yet they're perfect?" But I believe that they are not fully saved yet, because they are not yet in their resurrection bodies. There, I just lay out my cards on the table. I think that... I think this is what the text is saying, that all of these Old Testament saints were commended for their faith, every one of them. We're going to talk about that briefly. But they're all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what was promised.

Verse 40, they're really... The key to understanding that. "God had planned something better for us, so that only together with us would they be made perfect." That's the text that's in front of us. And so, we have in mind this great cloud of witnesses that the next verse refers to. And if this text speaks to our hearts, we understand its mysteries, it's saying that they are not yet perfect, and they're waiting for us in order that they may be perfect. So we have to understand what this perfection is, understand what the author means by perfect, to try to dig into this. But it's a marvelous thing. And so, in effect then, our brothers and sisters are up there waiting for us to finish, and it's not a disinterested waiting. They're waiting with great passion for us, for all of us to finish our race. Because then at last they can come into their full inheritance, namely the resurrection of the body, and of the perfect world to come.

That city with foundations, already mentioned earlier in this Chapter that they died waiting for. That country of their own that they had not yet come into and they ran their whole Christian race, they ran their whole life race by faith, and they finished their earthly life not having received the promises. And it goes beyond that, saying that only together with us would they be made perfect, teaching that they're waiting still. So we're going to understand all of that, God willing, today. They're up there waiting for us. The idea of waiting saints in heaven is Biblical. In Revelation Chapter 6, we're told that when He opened the fifth seal, "I saw under the altar the souls of those who have been slain, because of the Word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, 'How long, sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the Earth and avenge our blood?' Then each of them was given a white robe and they were told to wait a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and brothers, who were to be killed, as they had been was completed." So there you have a clear indication of saints up in heaven waiting for something on Earth to finish. This Verse just goes beyond that and it says that all of the Old Testament saints are waiting for all of the elect of God to finish their race. And only then will they be made perfect. So also, in Romans Chapter 8, we're told that the creation is waiting for this too. The universe as a whole is waiting for us. Romans 8:19-21, "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed." Now for me, I'm reading revealed to be revealed in glory, then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father. The creation's waiting for us to be unleashed as glorious. That's the resurrection is what that is. The creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the sons of God.

So dear friends, we the elect, the people of God, we are the center of attention. Now, that may make you a little uncomfortable to have a cloud of witnesses around you all the time, watching what you're doing, observing how you're running your race, but don't let that cloud of witnesses disturb you,  because the real deal is, the one with eyes of flaming fire is watching everything you do, and he's what really matters, amen. And there are no secrets before him, everything's uncovered and laid bare. But they're watching and waiting for us to finish our race, so they can be perfected in the end, and receive the gifts.

So we come to Verse 39, it says of these Old Testament saints, that they were all commended for their faith. And so, there's a kind of a bracketing in this Chapter 11 of the idea of commendation. Hebrews 11:1-2 says, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." This is what the ancients were commended for. So we have in verse 2, and then in Verse 39, the topic of commendation. To be commended means to be praised. And the idea here clearly is to be praised by Almighty God. If that doesn't take your breath away, think again on it. Think again, that Almighty God, the perfect God would actually praise you that He would commend you. But the Scripture teaches it again and again, that we can be, we will be commended by Almighty God. "Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share in your master’s happiness."

So, that commendation, it comes by faith, it comes by faith alone. And so, this drama, this marvelous Chapter Hebrews 11 unfolding in three main sections Act 1, pre-flood, you have all the way back to Abel mentioned, Enoch and Noah, all of these pre-flood saints, all of them commended for their faith, yet they didn't receive what was promised. And then Act 2, you have the patriarchs listed. Abraham with his wife Sarah and Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. All of these were commended for their faith, yet none of them received what was promised. And then Act 3, Exodus, the time of the Exodus and beyond Moses and Rahab, and the judges, and David and the Prophets, all of those mentioned in quick fashion. All of them also commended for their faith. Yet, none of them also received what was promised.

Now true commendation comes from God himself. 1 Corinthians 4:5 says, "At that time, each will receive his praise from God," praise from God. Jesus criticized his enemies because they sought the praise of men, and not the praise that comes from the only God. There's nothing wrong with yearning for praise for yourself, I mean. As long as you're yearning for it from God Almighty, from God himself, that God would be pleased with you, that God would commend you, that God would say well done to you. There's nothing wrong, and everything right with living for that. Verse 6 of this Chapter says that we must believe that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. And so, part of that reward is his expression of pleasure, and there might even be tokens of that, symbols of His pleasure on how you lived. And so these were all commended for their faith.

Commendation of simply being allowed into heaven, Amen. Just to have the Master say, "Enter," just to have the Master say, "Enter into the joy of heaven." What commendation is that? You have gained what there was to gain in this world. You have gained your souls and you have gained heaven. And so, to be commended by a rich welcome as it says, 2 Peter 1:11, a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom." So just to be warmly richly welcomed by God, how sweet is that?

So all of these were separated from their bodies, they were absent from the body and present with the Lord commended for faith and yet it says, none of them received what had been promised. Now, some lesser promises had been received, there were some lesser issues that had been promised and those things had in fact been given.

Remember how Abraham and Sarah were waiting for a son, an heir. God made them a promise that from their own bodies, from Abraham's own body and from Sarah's own body, they would have an heir, not Eliezer of Damascus, this man wouldn't be your heir, but a son coming from your own body. And he clarified even after the whole Ishmael, the birth of Ishmael, he clarified. No, no, from Sarah, your wife, from her body will come your heir. So it says in Hebrews 6:15. And so, after waiting patiently Abraham received what was promised. Now friends, don't bring that back and tell me there's a contradiction in the Bible. Clearly, there are lesser promises that we can receive and do receive in this life and greater promises, maybe the great promise that we don't receive in this life.

And the lesser promises give us faith to trust for the final great promise, and the final great promise is salvation in every respect, from everything that sin has done to us. Complete total perfection, salvation, that's the promise. And they didn't receive that. None of them. So, when Abraham died, he was looking ahead to an unfulfilled promise, a city with foundations it says, whose architect and builder is God, hadn't received it yet, died in faith believing. These were all longing, it says in Verse 16, for a better country, a heavenly one. Longing for it, dying in that longing, dying by faith, still looking ahead, even at their death looking ahead and doesn't that just scream resurrection to you? When you are dying and you're still looking ahead, I'm looking forward, that just screams out resurrection. It screams out faith.

Frankly, that's exactly why the author wrote this Chapter. So that we who came along and would read it, that we would die in faith believing too, and know that our best things were yet to come. They're all still in the future, and we will die in hope. Because death has been conquered. Christ died and him who held the power of death has been crushed by Jesus' death. And so, we don't need to be afraid of death, we're looking forward to it, we're looking beyond it to things yet to be given to us, that have been promised to us. And so, these Old Testament saints were faith-filled and faithful, they were justified by their faith, I believe fully. Talk more about that in a moment. But they had received full forgiveness of their sins, they had received this justifying righteousness, but they had not received the whole promise and they died in faith.

So it says in Verse 40, "God had planned [or provided would be a better translation] something better for us, so that only together with us would they be made perfect." And so, we come to the plan of God, the provision of God. God is looking ahead, that's what the Greek word means here, it's God seeing ahead of time. And so, I think at this point, almost like an artistic or creative vision, God had a vision ahead of time of something better. But God's visions, they are realized, you understand that? That God has a plan and He is going to realize it. And so, there is this overarching eternal unchangeable plan and everything's going according to schedule, everything is right on schedule. Everything that God had planned is happening, it's all being unfolded. Isaiah 14:26-27 says, "This is the plan determined for the whole world. This is the hand stretched out over all nations for the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart Him? His hand is stretched out and who is able to turn it back?" There is a plan.

And the Scripture tells us, that that plan was crafted before the foundation of the world, before time began, 2 Timothy 1, before time began. Ephesians 1 says we were also chosen, " having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything after the counsel of His will." So there is this incredible plan, and so, God has planned something. And it says in Verse 40, He planned something better. God planned something better for us, He is able to weigh things out and say, I have looked at all the possibilities, of all the potential universes there could be, and all the potential outcomes there could be, and I have planned something better than you can possibly ask or imagine.

And so we, throughout this book have been bumping into this idea of something better, something superior, something better is coming along. We, in the New Covenant, we have been given a better hope, Hebrews 7:19, a better covenant, Hebrew 7:22, founded on better promises, Hebrews 8:6, Christ himself a better sacrifice than those Old Testament sacrifices. We've been bumping into this again and again, something better.

Now, here's where it gets tricky. It really has to do with the word "us." Trying to figure out the word "us." Now you may think, you just think too much Pastor, just read the verse and be happy. Talks about good things, better things, just read the Verse and be happy. Hey look, I've got to think these thoughts, got to try to work it out. Let me just lay it on the table, what the two exegetical options are here, okay?

The something better is the New Covenant for us New Testament believers. Or the something better is for us who have not yet died, and it ultimately refers to all of us together. He's planned a better plan for the whole family of God, then... Okay, so in each case you have a different then. If it's God planned something better, the something better is the New Covenant and it's better than the Old Covenant. Friends, we already knew that, and that is true. But there's a problem with it, because in effect it says, the reason that they didn't receive what was promised is that God had planned something better and so, they died not having received it, and they died imperfect in that sense. If you understand it that way, waiting for us to come into the New Covenant.

Now in one sense, I totally agree that the New Covenant's better. I hope you do too. And we've had something like 7,500 sermons in the Book of Hebrews, and most of them have even been about this theme, Christ is better. Christ is better than the Old Covenant, he's better in every way, superior to the Old Testament prophets, superior to the angels, superior to Joshua and to Moses, and Melchizedek, superior in every way. And I would readily assent to the fact that we New Covenant believers have a superior experience with Christ than the Old Testament believers did. They saw and welcomed it at a distance without the clarity that we have, because we Christians are historical people. It matters whether something's happened in space and time. We study history, a lot of the Bible is about history. And so, it matters to me that Jesus actually was born of a virgin now.

He lived the life that's traced out for us in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, we can read about it in four different Gospels, he actually has been nailed to the cross. It's done, it's finished once for all, and on the third day, He has been raised from the dead, the tomb was in fact empty. It's a matter of history and more than that, the day of Pentecost has come and gone, the Holy Spirit has been poured out on the church and He will never leave us or forsake us, and we have a superior experience based on better promises, more clear teaching, with the Book of Romans and the other Epistles that explain the significance of Christ. It's better, it's just better. It's a better experience of God through Christ, now that we're in the New Covenant era. I agree. But that's not what the author is talking about here, in Verse 39-40.

No, because it says that only together with us would they be made perfect, and this... The something better being the New Covenant thing doesn't work. The more you try it, it doesn't fit here. It's that all together, we will be made perfect, that's the idea. All together, we are going to be made perfect. So, it's a perfection yet to come. And the more you just step back from Hebrews 11 and just look at the big picture, you start to realize how obvious this is. The penalty for sin in the Garden of Eden was what friends? It was death. Abel died at the hands of his brother. Death is the enemy here. Death has not yet been defeated, finally. And so, the something better is when death is clearly trounced forever, and that must be the resurrection. Do you see that? And so, these all died not having been made perfect yet. God had planned something better for all of us, so that only together with us, us being the elect in the second half of the sentence at least, only together, that all of the elect together will get it at the same time. We all get perfected at the same time.

Now, what is the perfection that we're all waiting for? I've told you seven times already. I was trying to keep it a secret, but I just kept... It keeps bleeding out. It's the resurrection of the body, that's the perfection we're all waiting for, and I would add the resurrection of the universe too. Because the world especially was cursed and we're waiting for a new heavens and a new earth, the home of righteousness. And so, when we are raised and it is raised in that sense, then we have reached at last, the finish line of the Gospel. Everything Jesus came to do will have been achieved, it will have been perfected. Now, what do we mean by perfect? Now, this is where we have to really try to understand the word. It says earlier in the same book, somewhat mysteriously, if you don't understand the word perfect or perfected here properly, you'll misstep. But it says that Jesus was made perfect by what He suffered. See?

And so, I think the best way to understand it here is the plan of God sets out parameters for what he is doing, and when all of those parameters have been fulfilled, the thing is made perfect, it's complete, it's finished, it's done, everything's done. Do you see? And so, if Jesus hadn't suffered, he would not have perfected the plan of God. He had to shed his blood, does that make sense? And so, by shedding His blood, He didn't go from moral imperfection, like moral defilement to being cleaned up, and now he's been made perfect. He certainly didn't improve or get better, it wasn't that thing, it's that there was a plan of God with certain boxes that had to be checked and certain things that had to be done and until all of them were checked and done, it was not perfect yet. Does that make sense? And so in that way and not in the other way, are the Old Testament saying, still not yet perfect, because there's still a big box that hasn't been checked yet.

They are disembodied spirits, they are absent from the body, and they are present with the Lord, and that's not perfect yet, in the sense of this Verse. We are to be made perfect, that means conformed to Christ, conformed to the image of his Son, so that we might be made like Him in every way. Romans 8:29, "Those whom God foreknew He predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the first born among many brothers." And so, perfect means completely conformed to Christ like him in every way. Friends, that has to include the resurrection of the body. Do you not see it? He is in a resurrected body now, and so for us to be perfected, we have to be in resurrection bodies too. Now, the Old Testament saints and our own condition, once we have come to faith in Christ, we have been justified. We are at that moment positionally perfect, complete, no boxes left to check, friends.

We are seen to be flawless, blameless in God's sight, perfectly obedient to His law. By the imputation of Christ's righteousness we have been made perfect, by faith, not by works. That's justification. And yet, you know you're not perfect, in the normal way that we use that expression, right? No one's perfect, I'm not perfect. Do you expect perfection? That kind of thing. Well, yes. God has spoken to us in Matthew 5:48, "you must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." And He wants you perfect and yet, for all of that, Romans 7:18-21 speaks for you every day. Paul wrote there, deeply from the heart he said, "I know that nothing good lives in me that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do. Nor, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it's no longer I who'd do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me." And so, at the end of that Chapter in Verse 24, he says, "What a wretched man I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Okay, so justification perfects you in your position before God, nothing more to be done. Perfectly righteous in God's sight by the imputation of Christ's righteousness, He declares you not guilty, he imputes Christ's righteousness, cannot be improved upon, but you're still not perfect. Meanwhile, you have this ongoing battle with the flesh every day. You're in this body of sin or this body of death and so, you're not perfect. Now, the Old Testament saints, they're not having that problem anymore, they died. They were separated, they were delivered from this body of death, they were delivered. Romans 6:7, "because anyone who has died has been freed from sin." Hallelujah!

Glorification stage number one, separated from the body, not yet resurrected. They are righteous already by faith in Christ, but now made perfect by death. Does that make sense? Their spirits, so look over in Hebrews 12. Just go over maybe on that same page, with Hebrews 12:22-23 says, "you have not come to a mountain that can be touched…" Mount Sinai and all that. No, you've come to a spiritual mountain, you've come to a spiritual thing now, something you can't see. We walk by faith, not by sight. I know you're looking for this, I'm just saying other Verses as you're looking for the place. But it's Hebrews 12:22-23, "You have come to Mount Zion to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God." You've come there by faith. "You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all men. To the spirits of righteous men made perfect.

There's that word perfect again. But what's perfect? What's made perfect? Their spirits. See that? Their spirits. So that's glorification number one, stage one, their spirits are made perfect. Is that big? Oh, that's big. Oh, that's huge. Romans 7, isn't true of them anymore, they don't wrestle, they don't struggle, they don't have sin living in them anymore, they're not divided in their minds. The flesh isn't battling against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, they are free from all that, free forever, and so are all our brothers and sisters who have gone before us, who've died. They're free. The instant they died, they're done with that struggle. And they're just made perfect spiritually, you see, glorified. Partially glorified. They perfectly love God, they perfectly desire his glory, they perfectly worship God, they perfectly hate sin and all evil. They perfectly obey God, whatever He would ask of them.

They perfectly love one another with perfect humility and other centeredness. They have perfect fellowship with each other and with God. They're perfect, but they're just spirits. You see that? They're waiting for the glorification, which Romans 8 says is the redemption of the body. That hasn't happened yet. To prove the resurrection of the body, Jesus... And this is a hard argument to follow, and I don't pretend to fully understand it. But remember the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, came and they said there's no resurrection. There's no resurrection of the body. You're separated from the body, that's it, you're done. He said, but about the resurrection of the body, haven't you read in the passage about the burning bush what God says to you? I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, you are greatly mistaken.

Alright, how does that prove resurrection? That's a real tough question. But here's how it goes. God loves Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and has a relationship with them. Not had a relationship, he has a relationship with them. And he gave them a body to begin with and he's not finished yet, he's going to give them another one. And so, the relationship and the love that he has for them points to the certainty of a future of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They haven't been annihilated when they die, they're just waiting for the body. Now, you keep working on how that burning bush passage proves resurrection. But that's the best I can do with it.

But it's all about love relationship and commitment and the fact that God had an original intention, an original intention. And that intention was that we be in bodies, that we be physical. That we have hands and feet and eyes, that we be in bodies. Created us originally that way, he created his only begotten Son as a human that way. He resurrected his son in a body, and so, we will be in bodies. Now, it says none of them received what had been promised.

When Did God Promise His People a Resurrection Body?

So if what I'm arguing here is that we're talking about the Resurrection, was the resurrection promised? I would say yes, increasingly so. Again, you have to go back to Genesis 2 to find that the curse was all about death anyway. Death is the separation of the body, for the soul from the body. If in Chapter 3, it's the serpent that brings about that, for him to be crushed means that it must be reversed. It's by implication.

So also Enoch being taken up implies it. But then as time goes on, he starts to say it plainly, no doubt about it, such as Isaiah 26:19, "But your dead will live their bodies will rise."  How is that? Is that good enough? That sounds pretty plain to me. "You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning, the earth will give birth to her dead." That's pretty strong, isn't it? Isaiah 26:19. Job 19:26 says, after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. Ezekiel 37 gives a very plain example of it, that's the valley of dry bones, very dry. And he's asked, can these bones live? And he says, "You know." That's a good answer by the way, when you don't know, say you must know, since you're the one asking the question. Yes, they can live. And what's so beautiful is that that's a picture of the implication of the Verse we're studying now, Verse 40. They all lived together instantaneously at the same time, they received their resurrection, so that non-preceded the other. This body is an astonishing gift of God, fearfully and wonderfully made, astonishing things about what you can do.

I have all these facts, I'm not going to share them. If you want to know them, come afterwards (see the notes). All kinds of incredible facts about the human body. Let me just set all this biology aside, wonderful and amazing though it is, and just let's go with the Scripture that says, "I praise you, Lord, because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made." God intended to give you a resurrection body, and that it do wonders and amazing things. Sin leading to death is eating at it every moment of your lives. It's chewing at it, it's chewing at it down to the genetic level, so that you don't replicate your cells exactly like they were. And so, you age and you lose capabilities and it's just not the same. God would not have it so.

He intended that you humans live in bodies forever. And so, absent from the body is imperfect in the sense I mean here. We're just not done yet. We're not done. God intends to make us done. And so, He raised Jesus from the dead, the first fruits of those who sleep. What does first fruit imply? Doesn't it imply we will all be raised, likewise, conformed to Him, in His glorious resurrection body, this incredible thing? And why did he not let the Old Testament saints go on ahead into their resurrection bodies? It's all about unity. We are one, we are one family, we are one church, like the Father and the Son are one, and it's just bad manners to run on ahead and eat when no one else has been served yet. I mean, you teach your kids this, and next week, we're going to have a special service on the Lord's Supper, we're going to focus on the Lord's Supper and I'll preach on the Lord's Supper, and get away from Hebrews.

And one of the interesting things that was going on in the church of Corinth, we'll mention it more next week, is that they were just going on ahead and eating the Lord's Supper, before everyone had arrived. First Corinthians you know, it says, wait for each other. You know, when you come, wait for each other. Don't go on ahead. He said, "Don't you have homes to eat in? That's not what it's for. We're supposed to be doing this together." So, for the sake of unity, He has not let us go on ahead, because he wants the universe to be united under one head, God, and so, he would not let Abraham get His resurrection body yet until you do. Does that not elevate us all on an equal plane? We all get it at the same time. Some have done great things for God, far greater than any of us will do, but they get their resurrection body when you do and not before. It's for the sake of unity. That's why he did it.

Final Perfection

And the final perfection, all of the elect together, not one of them missing. John 6:39-40, "this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that He has given me, but I will raise them up on the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him will have eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day." So that's the time of when this happens, at the last day. All of the elect will be raised, not one will be missing. Everyone there. And all of the elect will be in resurrection bodies. That's what raised means, they will come into their resurrection bodies, and they will celebrate in those resurrection bodies. And it's described in 1 Corinthians 15, the body that is sown is perishable, be raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it's raised in glory, it's sown in weakness, it's raised in power, it's sown a natural body, it's raised a spiritual body.

So you take all the positive aspects. The resurrection body then is a powerful, incorruptible, eternal glorious thing that you're going to get, and we all get it at the same time. Isn't that awesome? So that only together with us would they be made perfect.

Well, what applications can we take from this? Well, you can't get any of this apart from faith in Christ. I don't know your spiritual state, I don't know all of you. Some of you may be here for the first time. A friend may have invited you. You can't have this resurrection of the body, this glorious resurrection without faith in Christ. You must trust in him. Your sins will sink you to eternity apart from God. It's a horrifying thing to contemplate hell and Jesus came to deliver you from it by suffering it on the cross. He stood in your place, just trust in him, turn away from your works, there's nothing, you just look to Him and you will be made perfect immediately, positionally.

And then you'll be working out your salvation the rest of your life, and so the rest of your life, dear friends, you'll need the faith that Hebrews 11 talks about. We're leaving the Chapter now, but you'll need this faith the rest of your life and that's why the author wrote. It's like, you'll need this, you'll need this right to the end of your race, keep running, keep believing right to your deathbed, you'll need it, because the best stuff is still in the future. So come to Christ and embrace your faith and feed it, feed it by faith, feed it by the word of God. Prepare your hearts also brothers and sisters for the Lord's Supper, prepare your hearts. I just think we tend not so much FBC Durham, but the church tends to underestimate the impact of the Lord's Supper. I suggest to you that if you set yourselves apart to the Lord's Supper by faith this week, you'll be powerfully blessed next Sunday.

Set yourself apart for it. Be holy, because He is holy, set yourself apart, and God will bless in a very powerful way. And because unity is so obviously important that he won't let any of the... Even the great figures of the Old Testament get the resurrection bodies apart from us, do you realize how important our unity is, that we should make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace? And we should readily forgive one another, and bear whatever grievances. We should love one another, whether in your family or in the church. Embrace it. Isn't God good? Isn't this awesome? Aren't God's plans wonderful? Isn't it good that no one has a resurrection body now, except Jesus and he has that because he might be preeminent in everything and have it alone for thousands of years, but then in the end we made like Him. Let's praise God.

So toward the end of his ministry on earth, Jesus was thinking as he thought every day, but as he was nearing the end of his life, he thought more and more about his death on the cross, what he was about to do. And in John's gospel in John 12:24 he said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself a single seed, but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit." And in giving us this, he was speaking not only of his own death and all of the eternal fruit that would come from it, but also giving to his church, a lasting pattern of the advance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is by following the same principle, that the church has advanced for 2,000 years as individual brothers and sisters, did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death but were willing to deny themselves, and take up their crosses and follow Jesus and to bear much fruit, and in each of those fruits that are born are more seeds. And so the process just continues on and on of self-denial and death for life, just patterned after Jesus.

And as I come to this text today Hebrews 11:35B-38 as we try to understand this movement from success to suffering, my prayer for all of us has been to come face-to-face with this issue of persecution to try to understand it, to celebrate what was suffered for us, so that we would have the Gospel to believe, to understand; the scripture to read in our own language, to cherish the history, the chain of events, the chain of brothers and sisters that brought all these good things to us and thank God for their sacrifices and rejoice in them, but also that we would lay down our lives for the gospel too, that we would be willing to die when the time comes. Maybe physically though, the percentages are small but certainly spiritually that we would be willing to die to ourselves for the benefit of others. That's what my desire is here.

About three centuries after Jesus said that, about three centuries after Jesus was put to death by Pontius Pilate on a Roman cross, against all odds, if we could even use that language, the Roman Emperor declared himself to be a Christian. Constantine declared himself to be a Christian, and in the 300 plus years that intervened, there was a trail of blood of brothers and sisters that literally died for the faith, that suffered for the Gospel of Christ. Christian apologist Tertullian said, "The blood of martyrs is seed for the church. It's defending the Christian church." And that trail of blood continued through the centuries, as Satan persecuted the true church as he persecuted people who are standing up for Jesus and made them pay for their testimony with their blood.

I went through the time of the reformation, and the staff, we've been studying various biographies in the series, "Men of whom the world was not worthy," taken right from the text we're looking at today. Studying biographies of great servants of God and we studied William Tyndale, who was a Bible translator during the same time as Martin Luther lived. He lived during the era of Henry VIII. He was English and his one passion in life, his one desire... "he was a singer of one note," someone said. Every time you talk to him, all you got was that one note, "Oh God, give my people the Bible in their own language." Yearning to have the Bible in English so we could just simply read it. But there were violent forces against him including the King himself, King Henry VIII.

So he fled for his life, he was in Holland. In May 1531, a messenger was sent from the King saying that he was in a gracious and merciful frame of mind but that was Henry VIII, who knew it would continue the rest of that day, but he was willing to be merciful. And so, this messenger came. He was, Tyndale was hiding in Holland. The King was saying, "I'm willing to be merciful to you." Tyndale responded back in effect these words saying, "I will promise you, if you O king would consent to have the Bible published in English and spread throughout the realm without any explanatory notes, nothing. Just the text of the Bible in English. I will promise first, never to write another word." Henry didn't like his writings. "I promise I will never write another word. I promise that I will surrender myself immediately and within days I will throw myself at the feet of the King and I will gladly suffer any tortures and even death if you would just make that commitment. Get the Bible into the hands of the people in their own language." The king refused.

I'm not so interested in the king's refusal. I'm interested in Tyndale's willingness to die for this. His willingness to die so that we could read these words. And he did die for that. He died by strangulation right before he was burned at the stake. Right before he died, he said famously, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes." his dying prayer.

1563, John Foxe, wrote his famous acts and monuments of the Christian church commonly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs goes back to the beginning of history and talks about the martyrs, those who are willing to shed their blood for Christ, tracing out that river of blood that's brought the gospel right up there. By the time he was writing, it was Queen Elizabeth's reign, the reign of Bloody Mary, was over, but Protestants had paid for their witness with their blood.

And it travels right up to this present day, many of us following the suffering of pastor Youcef Nadarkhani in Iran. I received, I think, a faulty message that he had been hanged for his faith. This is a man who never embraced the Muslim faith. I spoke about him a number of weeks ago, from this pulpit, never was a Muslim, is a Christian. The logic of the Iranian court, is that he has because he is Iranian, and had Muslim parents, he has renounced the faith and is under the death penalty, not so he said "I'd never embraced Islam" but in their logic, it's impossible. Muslim parents must have Muslim children.

And so he's on trial, he's under the death sentence. And he's referred to at least his commitment is referred to in the text, others were tortured and refused to be released. My understanding of his case at least early on, was he would be released if all he would say is that Muhammad was a prophet of God, if he would just make that confession, they would have released him to his family. "That I cannot do" he said. No, he's a Christian, cannot make that confession. And so the text says, others were tortured and refused to be released so that they might gain a better resurrection, goes on right to this present day, cover story of World magazine showed one of our brothers from the country of Nigeria, having been blooded by some Muslim fanatic, bandaged up in a very rough way, right there in the cover of World magazine.

Talking about the sufferings of our brothers and sisters in Nigeria, reading about an orphanage in Bangladesh. Nathan is in Bangladesh, we prayed for him, in January of this year, they surrounded this orphanage and were chanting and demonstrating against it because they assumed that this Christian orphanage were stealing Muslim babies and trafficking in babies and doing wicked things. These were children that no one was caring for before this ministry started, and one of the workers there was bashed in the head and nobody died, but there was this kind of hatred going on in Bangladesh. And so as we come to this text, today we come to somewhat of a, I don't know, a continental divide in the flow of the chapter, we've been following success stories for the most part.

I mean, Moses was willing to suffer, with God's people. But for the most part, it's just been one success after another and definitely right immediately before this verse, if you look at verses 32 through 35 as the author is trying to describe very plainly the life of faith, he's telling us what faith is, what faith does, how the life of faith works out in every day life, how it has in the Bible times and he's listing out these figures from the scripture. "Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets, [we talked about them last week] who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, gained what was promised to shut the mouths of lions. Quenched the fury of the flames, escaped the edge of the sword, whose weakness was turned into strength. And who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again…" just a series of successes, right up until halfway through verse 35.

Then suddenly it turns like a continental divide, you know what that is? We're on a mountain ridge and all the water on one side flows to the Pacific and all the water on the other side flows to the Atlantic, that kind of thing, that's a divide. And so we just come right in the middle of verse 35, and you go from success to suffering and we're still in the faith chapter, so it's by faith they suffered. That's what the author is telling us, is because of their faith. And this is a vital message for us. Now to set the context in general, here in Hebrews, the author is writing this letter to first century Jewish people who had made an outward profession of faith in Christ. But who are under pressure from their neighbors, and family and religious authorities and governmental authorities to forsake Jesus and go back to Old Covenant Judaism, to turn their backs on Jesus. And so this whole epistle has been an epistle of warning and of exhortation, and encouragement to people facing persecution that they would not turn their backs on Jesus.

And so, in chapter 10, if you just go back a little bit to chapter 10 and verse 32, and following, just to set up the chapter. It's all about persecution. Remember those earlier days when after you'd received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering sometimes you were publicly exposed to insults and persecution, at other times, you stood side by side with those who were so treated. "You sympathize with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property. Because you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and a lasting one. So do not throw away your confidence, it will be richly rewarded, you need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised for in just a very little while he who is coming will come. And will not delay, but my righteous one will live by faith and if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him, but we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed but of those who believe and are saved."

Now, Hebrews 11:1, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Right on into that, do you see it? It's in the seedbed of persecution and suffering, the author is giving us this whole chapter. And now we come to this point in the middle of the verse 35. It's not always going to be success, dear friends.

Heroic Achievements of Faith vs. Heroic Suffering for the Faith

Sometimes it's going to be suffering. And so we have the movement here, the movement of sanctification, of helping us to grow up out of babyhood, helping us to grow up out of being little children in the faith, so that we can face, what really is happening, why Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with suffering, why Jesus faced constant opposition from sinful men, wicked men, why he faced constant opposition from the true power behind that throne and that's Satan. That we would grow up into that and be no longer babies, but be grown up and move from needing all the time, success and seeing how it all works and cause and effect and all that, that everything's going really great, to being willing to suffer for Jesus.

Now in verse 35, we do have the mention of these women who received back their dead raised to life again, story of... Clearly, I think Elijah and Elisha, great stories, very similar to one another. In both cases, a woman who had a son... In one of the cases, in Elisha's case, she didn't ask for a son, she wasn't looking for that, and God blessed her with a son and then some time later, he had a severe headache and died in her lap, tremendous suffering and a great deal of pain and the same thing with Elijah, in her case, both of them upbraided the prophet.

The widow of Zarephath saying "Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?" Now, my son has died and you remember how he prayed and stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried out to the Lord, and God gave him life. This is the first recorded resurrection, in the Bible. I know that Isaac was figuratively resurrected and Abraham was ready for it, but it didn't need to happen, you know that.

So, here's the story of God's power over death. God can raise the dead, the same thing with Elisha, same kind of thing. And so Hebrews 11 gives us a faith that conquers death. I don't need to fear death, our God raised Jesus from the dead, what's there to be afraid of? Death is a portal, a doorway into eternity and that eternity is infinitely better than this. There's nothing to be afraid of. Jesus has destroyed him, who held the power of death, and freed us from fear of death, he said in Hebrews Chapter two. And so God calls his people into Christ's sufferings, to fellowship with Jesus in his suffering, to become like him in his death, in the language of Philippians. To share with his sufferings. Or to fill up what is still lacking, in regard to the afflictions of Christ, a mysterious expression in Colossians. It doesn't mean anything lacking for atonement, but just Jesus has more suffering to go through because he's connected to his people and we have to suffer, too.

So God calls faith-filled people. There's nothing wrong with them, there's no hidden sins, there's none of that, they're just serving God and he calls them to suffer greatly because of their faith. We have to grow up and face that and embrace it. And why does he do it? Well, we can think of many reasons, biblical reasons why God would do it.

To put the character and courage of the faith-filled hero or heroine on display. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bowl, they put it up on a stand and sometimes the stand is persecution and even martyrdom. And even more than that, to put the truth of the gospel on display, to give the Gospel a chance to shine with such a great setting that the gospel can shine in the mouth of the ones' suffering and the strength in the faith of weaker Christians, as weaker Christians watch the faith-filled brother and sister suffer, then others get stronger. Paul talks about that in Philippians 1, "Because of my chains, most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged, to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly. And because of this I rejoice." And to give evidence of the sufferings that Christ endured.

To remind us of the sufferings that Christ endured, more on that at the end of the sermon. Also to help the church understand the ultimate sufferings of hell that we must realize that there is no pain on earth that remotely compares to the pains of hell and all of this suffering is good suffering because it's delivering people from Hell as the Gospel advances. So those are various reasons why. And you may struggle with this. Some people theologically struggle with this. I'm thinking of the prosperity gospel people. People who think that the more faith you have, the better your life on earth will be. Your best life now, dear friends, I'm promising you, your best life now and your most favorite parking place in every crowded parking lot. What will happen is, as you pull in, that car will pull out and make way for you, if you have enough faith.

Really? How do you explain that to our brothers and sisters in the Muslim countries and in China and other places? It's all about getting the best parking place? Maybe you need a little more exercise. The best parking place for you is a mile away from the door. Maybe that's what you need. That is your best place now. Because you're going in there to go to the food court, that's why you're going.

And you need to walk it off, a little before you get there and afterwards. It's ridiculous. Do you see it? It's un-Christian. It's a false gospel, the prosperity gospel and I know that God makes lavish promises in Deuteronomy 28: 1-6. You'll be blessed when you sit and blessed when you rise, you'd be blessed when you go out and when you come in and the fruit of your womb will be blessed. You crops will be blessed. Everything would be blessed, all the time blessed, Deuteronomy 28:6, if you only, if you'll only fully obey the Lord and carefully follow all his commands.

Well, what about when that doesn't happen, what do you do if you're arrested for your faith, you're getting beaten, how does the prosperity gospel help you then? It doesn't, it kills you, it hurts you, makes you think you didn't have enough faith. It's a lie from Satan. It's not true. But the question does remain "Why isn't God blessing all of his people in this world with those kind of Deuteronomy 28 blessings??

I think there are two reasons why God would do it, negatively he withholds blessings to discipline us from our sins, so sometimes it's because we have sinned, and so we are disciplined and so some blessings are withheld but the press of this sermon is another aspect, that God withholds blessing sometimes to put faith and the gospel on display, and to show other worldly people who are not living for this world but they're living for Heaven and they could just see it and they're living for it, and there's nothing you can give them here that remotely compares. They're kind of already there by faith. He wants to put that on display and so this is the pinnacle of faith, suffering because of Christ, it's the greatest trial that Satan can bring on you. We are wired for self-preservation. It's not a bad thing. We look both ways before we cross the street, when we're hungry, we eat, when we're in pain, we try to alleviate the pain that's normal, it's normal, normal, normal. It's normal life. The Satan uses that to push us to forsake Christ and that's what we're dealing with here, that's the nature of the press of persecution, that's what he's about.

He's trying to get people to denigrate Christ and to look on him as not sufficient and not glorious, and not attractive, he's not enough. I got to have my freedom, I've got to have enough to eat, a comfortable home, and some pleasures and if I don't have that, I'm going to turn my back on Jesus. And God is saying in effect over those martyrs, those suffering ones, "Have you considered my servant so and so, they're living for heaven, they're living for me, they're not living for the things that you would have me take from them." So, it's a terrible trial. Two good things pitted against each other, the health and comfort of your body and your faith in Jesus, two precious things and you're being forced to choose, and that's a tough trial. And again, with these afflictions I'm not talking about general sufferings that are common to all, I'm not. I'm not talking about the afflictions of medical sufferings, that's not what this sermon's about, there are other passages, I can talk about. That's not what we're talking about here.

Disease and pain and accidents, things like that. And I'm not talking about financial troubles, like layoffs and unemployment and bankruptcy and things like that. That's not the press here, not talking about natural disasters either earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and all of the damage and destruction that comes from that, that's suffering but that's not what I'm talking about today. I'm not talking about every day providential accidents and suffering that come upon us. Neither am I talking about Islamic martyrdom. People who'll strap bombs in their bodies because of their commitment to Allah and blow themselves up and other people on a bus to bits. I'm not talking about that either. I'm talking about suffering that comes specifically because of our faith in Jesus, at the hands of human persecutors. That's what we're talking about here. That's what's in view.

Faith’s Greatest Triumph

And this is faith's greatest triumph, it's not just Satan's greatest trial, it's the pinnacle of faith, as I've said, this is the greatest triumph of faith. This is how these people know that they're Christians. Remember in the parable, they're seeding the soils, the farmer goes out to sow his seed and as he scatters it falls on different types of soil. The path comes, the bird comes and eat up and then you have that rocky soil, you remember that? Shallow soil, springs up quickly, but when the sun comes up, remember the sun, withers them and they die because they have no root, then Jesus interprets this, the one that fell on the rocky soil, is the one who hears the word and not once receives it with joy. But since he has no root he last only a short time when trouble or persecution, that's the sun beating down on it, comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Alright, well, what happens then to turn it around is when you don't quickly fall away despite the fact the world is beating on you, there's a joy and a hope that comes in the middle of that.

I'm real, I'm genuine, I'm really a Christian, it's all true, and the Spirit of glory and of grace rests on those people and God pours resources into them and their faith, just get stronger and you get that beautiful cycle in Romans 5:3-4, "not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint."

So real hope, they're going to heaven. It's genuine. I'm a real Christian. I didn't give up when I got beaten on, when I got rejected, or insulted. I'm still here. I love Jesus and it's all real. I'm not a stony ground here. Praise God. And so faith is vindicated. And so, as I said, these faith-filled people in the midst of suffering, they're almost already gone. Like Stephen's the best example of this, you know, he finishes his "How To Win Friends and Influence People" speech. "You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears, you're just like your forefathers, you always resist the Holy Spirit. Was there ever a prophet your forefathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous one. And now you have betrayed and murdered him. You, who received the law that was put into effect by angels but have not obeyed it."

Well, they didn't like that. I wasn't their favorite sermon and they were extremely angry, but Stephen knew he was on his way out, and at that moment he had a theophany, a revelation of God and of Jesus Christ, heaven was open and the people were already coming at him. But he said, "Look. I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of the God." And they couldn't hear that and they blocked their ears and they drag him out of the city and they stone him to death, and he's already gone. But he's still alive, because he's talking and he's saying things. "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." So Christ-like. And then again, Christ-like, "Lord, don't hold this sin against them."

But let me get specific. "Would you please forgive Saul of Tarsus for consenting to my death, would you forgive him?" "Yes, I'll forgive him, I'll take all of his sins away. Not just that one, all of them." It's an awesome thing. The blood of martyrs seed for the church. And so by this, the perspective of Hebrews 11 is most clearly put on display. Heaven... Earth is not my home Heaven is my home, I'm moving through here. This is a corridor, I'm not going to sit down cross-legged and just eat my dinner in a corridor in a hotel. It's weird, it's a passageway to the place I'm getting, it's all it is, it's a corridor, it's weird to sit cross-legged in a corridor and it's weird for us to settle down here. And so these people knew that, they were just by faith, they just were moving on, they just weren't there yet. The world was beating on them and causing them to bleed and they thought like this. This is how they reckoned, how they weighed things, how they considered things. "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." Romans 8:18. 2 Corinthians 4:17. "For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal glory beyond all comparison."

Just as I weigh the suffering and the beatings and the blood and all that, as I weigh that with heaven, it's just not even close. They don't even compare. And so, it's light and momentary. Spoken by the 2 Corinthians 12 guy who got beaten, or 11, beaten and shipwrecked and beaten with rods and flogged and all that. They have come to that conclusion. And my yearning is that we would too. I would like to live for Heaven more than I do. I would like to be bolder in my faith.

I would like you to be bolder in your faith. That's why I'm preaching today, that's my purpose.

And so, he lists these sufferings here. There are two categories, those who are killed for their faith, by various means, and then those who fleeing from death suffered deprivations in deserts and caves and all that. So you've got people who were killed and tortured and all that, and then those who fled from all of that so that they wouldn't have to go through it, but lost other things like security and homes and things like that. And so, tortured. What does torture mean? I think there is no more miserable, earthly circumstance than to be held by a wicked human who is thinking today how to hurt you, I think it's worse than cancer, AIDS, it's worse than... It's a horrible situation; to have some demonic twisted individual, think of ways to inflict pain on you that won't kill you, and you're dragged out of some cell and tortured, some more. These people are tortured and it says that they refused to be released.

They refused release, are they crazy? They insane, well the price tag was too high. They had to renounce Jesus. They had to turn their backs on Christ and they wouldn't do it. And so, pastor Youcef will not do that. He's not going to confess that Muhammad is the prophet of Allah, he's not going to say that, he's not going to confess Muhammad. So he refuses to be released. I don't know, if it's even an option for him at this point. I think about John Bunyan, he's a good example of this refusal. He wrote Pilgrim's Progress, he was a non-conformist preacher, which meant in his day, he was an illegal preacher, he did not have the certificate of preaching from the Anglican church, therefore he was not allowed to preach. And so he preached at illegal conventicles, they were called, gatherings, congregations.

He was basically a congregational or even Baptist pastor probably one of the most gifted preachers of all church history, just an astonishing gift with language, and a passion for Christ, and just an awesome thing. He was arrested and put in the Bedford jail and he was told... Because this is right toward the end of England's active persecution for religion. After this, they stopped entirely, they never did it again, but toward the end. So it's already tapering off. They said, "You can go free, all you have to do is promise never to preach again." So the whole time, I think it was 13 years, he was in the Bedford jail on and off, whole time, he had the key right there in his pocket to get out. Every day, every hour, morning, noon, night, just pledge "I will not preach again." What did he say instead, he said, "if you release me, today, I will preach tomorrow." You're not getting out with that confession. And he said "the separation from my wife and my blind daughter and my other children has been to me as the plucking of the flesh from my bones," but he refused to be released, it was a choice he made.

I was reading about another pastor, a communist... During the communist era in Romania, pastor Vasile. He had been in prison several times, every time he was there, he had a vibrant fruitful ministry to other believers. Strengthening them, sustaining them and evangelistic as well. At this point in the story, he was free, he and his wife prayed, every day, something like this, "Lord if You know some prisoner being held right now, who needs my help, please send me back to jail." And so God answered that prayer and he got arrested and sent back to jail and he would go continue his ministry there.

Another story from, again, from Romania. A man who consistently took the beatings of other prisoners. What would happen is they would just have weekly beatings, just to tell everyone "we beat people here in this prison" and keep everyone in line. And so, some infraction would happened on a Thursday, beating day was Monday, this guy would stand up and take that person's beating because the guards didn't know who it was, they didn't care, it was just to keep everyone in line anyway, so again and again, this Christian man took non-Christian people's beatings and then would lead them to Christ. And obviously his health was getting broken, he was bleeding, he was suffering, he was dying.

And another believer said, "Very soon, you'll be free from all this, and you'll go to heaven." he said "actually, if I could, I would rather stay here because in Heaven, though I have everything I could ever want, I could not, cannot suffer for anyone else and I'd rather stay here." They were mocked. They were flogged. Just imagine these things, they were chained, and in prison, they lost their freedom, they were stoned to death.

Sawed in two. Apparently that was Isaiah, the prophet put inside some hollow log. That's a slow way to die. It's horrible if you think about it, so maybe you shouldn't think about it or maybe you should, it's listed here, "put to death with the sword" Apostle Paul, apparently, decapitated." That's how they did it, because he was a Roman citizen, they wouldn't crucify him as they did Peter according to the tradition, so they just beheaded him with a sword. They wandered about, that phrase has been on my mind wandering around, toward the end it says they were in deserts, mountains, caves and holes in the ground. So, that's homelessness, they're fleeing from their homes, they're not able to go home, they're running for their lives, they don't know where they're going to sleep that night.

Like Jesus said, "Son of man has no place to lay his head" and so that's what they're like. Their life was like that, they were homeless. And they were in poverty, because it mentions that they were in sheep skins and goat skins, so, that's pointing toward poverty, they lost material benefits persecuted, destitute, persecuted, mistreated. And all of it because of their faith. By faith, these things happen, you say, "Well where is the power of God? Why won't God intervene? Can't God do something? Can't God stop it?" yes, he can stop it any time, by various means, he can just change their minds, he has that power.

He can keep people from thinking certain things. Genesis Chapter 20 verse 6, you remember the story about Abraham and Abimelech? You remember that? Abimelech thought, "Here's a good-looking woman" and all that, took Sarah, hadn't done anything to her yet. Planning to. And God came to Abimelech in a dream. Remember that? "You're a dead man" "What did I do? What did I do? I'm innocent. I didn't know." he said "Sister, I didn't what... What did I do." Listen to this. Genesis 20:6. "yes I know you did this with a clear conscience. And so, listen, I have kept you from sinning against me." Ponder that one dear friends. "I stopped you from sinning against me." Can God do that with a persecutor? Oh yes. This is coming from God, this is God doing it. Do you not see that? This is God not stopping the persecutor, when he can easily do so. He could cause the persecutor to drop dead mid-persecution.

Look what happened to King Herod, when he wouldn't give the glory to God, you remember? He was immediately struck down by an angel and eaten by worms and died. God could do that. The problem with that, you need to know is that some of those persecutors are elect, they just hadn't come to faith yet. Like Saul of Tarsus, right? But God could do that, he could strike them dead and not all... God knows the difference who, say, "Well just take out the non-elect ones", [chuckle] but God could do that.

Reading stories in Bangladesh, again, there was an assassin hired by the Muslims, to take out a fruitful evangelist, he hunted the guy down, found him, raised the gun but couldn't pull the trigger, physically couldn't do it, and the guy was frustrated and having trouble, finally he runs away. The evangelist later that day, gets a phone call from the assassin saying, "I have a problem." I'm putting this in every day language, but "I have a problem." But he identified himself. "Okay, what's your problem?" "I can't move my arm, I can't move it at all. And I want you to pray for me." he didn't just pray for him, he led him to Christ, God stopped the man from pulling the trigger. God doesn't always do that, you see. That's what I'm saying. He doesn't always do that, sometimes he allows the assassin to pull the trigger.

In Laos, there was a pastor who was arrested and they were beating on him, trying to get him to divulge other Christians names and all that, just torturing him, and suddenly tragedy struck the police. The officer who was conducting it, he had two sons, one of them had both their legs broken, in a serious accident and the other one fell seriously ill with a severe fever, on the same day. Also on that day, another officer that was directly doing the persecuting died in the middle of it, by a heart attack, they released the pastor later that day.

They connected the dots. And you look at that and you say, "Well God, why don't you do that?" And we pray, don't we? "God do that, kind of thing, set them free." Sometimes God hears the prayers and says "No, it's my will to cause them to suffer for a while, and then bring them home."

The reason given here in this text is these people were seeking a better resurrection. What does that mean, that they were seeking a better resurrection? One of two possibilities, they were seeking the resurrection of the righteous, as a believer in Jesus or they were seeking greater rewards on Judgment Day. Hey, you pick and choose. Either one is okay with me. Both of them valid, both of them fine.

I'm going with the first because in the context here, he's saying, "We are not of those who shrink back to the destruction of our souls. We are those who finish the race to the salvation of our souls and we want the better resurrection." Better than what? Well, better than the resurrection of the wicked. What happens at the resurrection of the wicked? They go to hell. We want the better resurrection, going to Heaven. That's fine, or you could say better resurrection means better rewards. Blessed are you as Ashok read when people insult you, persecute you, mistreat you, rejoice and be glad because great is your award in heaven for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

The final assessment of these, the world was not worthy of them. World didn't deserve them. This wicked world. This persecuting world, this Christ-hating world didn't deserve these people. And if you read in the Book of Revelation, when God is pouring out wrath on the Earth, one of the things he consistently remembers as he speaks and the angels talk about is, is how they treated his people, and so when the angel is pouring out his bowl and all the water is turned to blood, the angel says, "You are right to do this, oh Lord because you have so judged, because they killed your people and they shed their blood and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve." The world wasn't worthy of them, didn't deserve them, instead they got Stephen falling to his knees and praying, "God don't count this sin against them. Lord, open the King of England's eyes." That's what the world got. World didn't deserve them.

Application. First Christ, aren't you glad that Christ refused to be released so that you could gain a better resurrection. In the garden he faced it, he embraced it, he said, "I'll drink it right to the bottom, I will not run away, I will drink their wrath." he's the real hero of Hebrews 11, all of 'em would say so. These people are just imitating Jesus. Jesus, the Son of God, came into the world to save sinners like you and me, and by his blood, by the blood of Jesus shed on the cross we are saved, all you have to do is believe in him. You don't have to do anything. And let me tell you something, you don't have to be a hero in time of persecution either, you're not saved by how heroically you handle persecution. It's not, you have to go accumulate a certain amount of persecution, then they let you into heaven. We are justified by faith in Jesus, it's because Jesus suffered on the cross.

It's so important that you understand that. Because now I want to face this one question that's plagued me, it's been working on me. "Alright, God I see, I know the history, I love history, been reading it, been reading Extreme Devotion. Jesus Freaks and the devotions that come from it, all of those testimonies. I read Voice of the Martyrs, I read these things and I'm convicted by it. I'm encouraged but also convicted. I look at my life and say, "Lord I don't really suffer like that, I don't."

Some of us can feel guilty. It's like the survivor's guilt, to some degree or something, I don't know, but then there's some genuine conviction that could be mixed in there, "God, am I really living openly for you like I should. Maybe I would have more persecution in my life if I were just bolder in evangelism and bold in standing up for unpopular issues of justice in this age." So I faced it and I just want to ask, okay, these verbs don't seem to apply to us. Flogged, sawed in two, even imprisoned. I'm talking about us, here, the ones who are here, you guys, me. So you've got these verbs and we face it. What do I do with that? Alright, I came up with some answers. Bear with me, I just want to give them to you quickly.

First, understand every generation of Christians has been tempted to shrink back and not face the persecution. It's true of everyone, they're not super men and super women that we're talking about here. They faced it too. God helped them. He will help you. These Hebrew Christians faced the same things I do in shrinking back. They faced it. And the author is again and again... Hebrews 12:4, "In your struggle against sin, you've not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” Don't get discouraged, keep running. Jesus suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us go out to him and bear the disgrace he bore. He's exhorting them to live and don't be afraid. So every generation has faced it. Second, some American Christians are persecuted for their faith very openly. Think about athletes or movie stars or other people who are Evangelical Christians and who speak up, boldly for their faith, and then just find out what the world thinks about them in the internet. Just read the comments, friends. Tim Tebow, Adrian Gonzalez. He got pounded for saying that it was God's will that the Red Sox not make the playoffs. He got pounded for it.

But what I don't understand about Adrian Gonzalez as he wrote Psalm 27:1, "The Lord is my light and my salvation" on his bat. Everything he does he does for Jesus and he said it openly. So there are some Christians being persecuted. World Magazine every year does a Daniel of the Year, Daniel in the lions' den, that kind of thing. And these are men and women who stand firm in very tough situations. This year's Daniel of the Year is Alan Chambers who does Exodus International Ministry to homosexuals, very unpopular, persecuted. 2009, Stephen C. Meyer, Director of Discovery Institute, Center for Science and Culture, asserting that DNA evidence in itself proves there's a creator. Not very popular in the academic world. Wanda Cone, pregnancy care center in 2007. She was the Daniel of the Year then, and again, pro-life, standing firm for the rights of the pre-born to life.

So that doesn't mean that I've been persecuted though. They have been persecuted. So persecution does happen here in America, it does happen. Thirdly, I think we should give thanks for religious freedom. We shouldn't feel guilty that we live in a country where other people suffered so greatly, whether soldiers or political scientists or Baptists or others that said, separation of church and state, make no law respecting religion, we're not going to have government forcing us to worship in a way, we don't want, as you have in a Muslim country. Definitely there. Okay? We're not going to have that here. Praise God for it, thank God, for it. We don't have to feel guilty, we should thank God for it and cherish it because it might not be around forever.

Because some people think Freedom for Religion means freedom from religion and as we Evangelicals keep preaching the Gospel, we're going to start getting persecuted. And they might even start making laws and so it may end up morphing on us.

Fourth, recognize smaller ways that normal Christians are persecuted. Jesus mentioned insults. Even in this list, there's mocking. Insults are not nothing. Family struggles because of Christ. Jesus said in Matthew 10 that he has come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, a man's enemies will be the members of his own household. All of you who have come to faith in Christ, and you don't have nothing but non-Christian parents and brothers and sisters, I'm sure you've been persecuted at some level. You've been shunned or excluded or spoken against by your own siblings and by your own parents, perhaps, or children. But let's be realistic about that. Our cost has been far less than these people's cost. Greater love has no one than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends, we haven't had to lay down our life for Jesus.

Fifth, be willing to evangelize more boldly, be willing to stand for unpopular causes more boldly. You will be persecuted. And you know it. And so face up to as Ashok was talking about, face up to ways that you have shrunk back from being a witness for Jesus and repent, and be willing to step up with brothers and sisters who have paid the price to share the gospel. You'll pay a less price here in the US at least, at this present time, and stand up for unpopular things, like the marriage protection amendment that's coming in this state, May 8th. I'll tell you what, if you get really, really active in that you will be persecuted, you will be persecuted. I'm wondering where all that's heading with the whole weird definitions of marriage. Will we be able to marry ourselves? I mean that's weird. Can we marry a pet? I mean, do we have any lasting definition of marriage? Yes, we do. It's in the Bible, one man one woman for life. "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother, and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." There's a definition. If you get away from the Bible, you have no definition, and it just gets weird. So I think if you stand up for the marriage protection amendment, you will get persecuted. You should at least be involved at some level in that issue and find out more. Ask Andy when there's others that are getting involved in that. I'm seeing signs all around the street, another family against the Amendment, another family against the Amendment, it's interesting. It's not just interesting, it's a call to action for us.

Now, of course, desiring to be persecuted is not a good motive for evangelism, you know that, alright. I'm here to get my daily quotient of persecution. You're the top choice on my list. Okay. So I'm going to share with you until you finally do something mean to me. That's terrible. It's just a by-product of love because you love them and you love Jesus, they're going to hurt you.

Sixth, be aware of Christians around the world who are being persecuted, pray for them and do what you can to aid them. Read Persecution Project, read Voice of the Martyrs, pray for them, act as if you were in prison with them. We'll talk about that when we get to that text, just send money, just be aware and educate yourself, pray for them. Paul said, "join with me in my struggle by praying to God for me."

And then finally, prepare yourselves for the future. What's it going to look like in the US in 50 years? Is there going to be a religious freedom in this country? So get yourself, your children and your grandchildren ready for the coming antichrist. When the price of salvation will be martyrdom, beheading, shedding of blood, horrible, it's coming, read about it in Revelation 20:4, Revelation 12:11, "They overcame him by the blood of the lamb, by the word of their testimony, they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death." Learn, prepare, grow and may it be said of you, the world was not worthy of them. Close with me in prayer.

What a gift is time, amen. This opportunity that we have week by week to come together for corporate worship, that we can join together with the body of Christ Sunday mornings, one day in seven. The gift of time, every minute, every hour, every day, every year is a gift from Jesus, amen, and we are called on in Scripture to redeem the time, to make the most of it. What a great gift of grace is the gift of time, and how much greater a gift is eternity, amen. We labor under the restrictions of time in this world. The time is never what we want it to be. It just flies by. I feel like it's accelerating. My grandmother warned me this, she told me when she was 95, she said, "The second half of my life, I hardly remember, it just flew by." And it's just accelerating to some degree. It's incredible how rapidly it goes. I don't regret it, though. Every day brings me closer to seeing Jesus face-to-face. I look forward to... I'm not trying to retard the process of aging or of what's coming to me, I'm looking forward to my inheritance in Christ.

But you know, it's funny how the author to Hebrews labored in reference to time, even in the verses that we're looking at. There's just a limited amount of time, we can't do everything we would like to do in this world, so we have to be wise in how we spend our time. And so in verse 32, the author comes to this point, he says, "What more shall I say, for time would fail me to tell" fully of each of these individuals. I don't have enough time to go into all the details I would like to go into. This is the rub of our earthly life. What is your life? It is a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Psalm 39:5, the psalmist there says, "You have made my days a mere handbreadth, the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath." Even the Apostle John, as he was finishing up his work in the Gospel of John, bumped into the same reality that the author to Hebrews is facing in verse 32, [chuckle] he said this in John 21:25, "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose even the whole world would not have room for all the books that would be written."

Heavenly Leisure: Becoming Experts in Church History... and Theology

We can't tell all the stories we would like to tell. Well, that's our problem here on earth, we will not have that problem in heaven, amen. We will have leisure in heaven, to listen to all the stories in great detail. When we've been there 10,000 years, bright, shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first began. Now, I don't think it's just because I went to seminary that I think there's going to be seminary aspects up in heaven. And you'll be free to enjoy them, you actually will enjoy them. You'll look forward to getting a full lesson on church history up in heaven, and you're going to get full theology lessons up in heaven, you're going to study theology and church history in heaven. And you're thinking, "Oh, no, I thought I was done with all that studying." No, we're going to learn each other, we're going to learn our brothers and sisters in Christ, what God did in and through them. Amen.

We're going to study how God was gracious to each one. We belong to a royal lineage of brothers and sisters in Christ who have gone before us, 1 Peter 2:9 says, "You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God." Friends, that is your true genealogy, it's a spiritual one. We're part of an incredible family of God, brothers and sisters who've gone before us and acted with great valor by faith. And we're going to be able to sit at table, at banquet table, with these and talk to them and find out what God did in and through them for his glory by faith. And we won't be pressed for time as the author was in verse 32. We don't be pressed. It says in Matthew 8:11, Jesus said, "I tell you that many will come from the east and the west and will take their places at the feast at the banquet table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven."

We're going to sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And there I extend it out to the heroes of the faith that go beyond the Scriptural time. We're going to be able to sit down with Martin Luther. No translator needed. And we're going to talk to him about what it was like to stand by faith at the Diet of Worms and defend justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law. On peril of his life, what it was like. Or with William Tyndale to say, "Brother, what was it like to translate the Scripture into English for generations and generations of people who followed, to read in that beautiful clear English, that's mostly captured in the KJV, the King James version, what was it like?" This is a man who paid for it with his life, burned at the stake for that translation. Be able to walk through the meadows and valleys of the new earth with an explorer missionary like David Livingston, just talk to him about his experiences when he went through the heart of Africa or to be with the blind hymn writer, Fanny Crosby.

I've often wondered what was her quiet time like that led to her writing the words to Blessed Assurance. What happened, Fanny? I mean, were you just praying one day, and the heavens were opened, and you just saw angels descending, your heart was filled with his love. There were whispers of mercy. What were you seeing? Whatever it was she was seeing that day she sees it better now, amen. And be able to just share with her experiences of a life lived for the glory of God. To talk to Chinese brothers and sisters in Christ who lived through the communist crackdown during the Cultural Revolution, who stood with great courage for the faith. Or those that were persecuted back in the Roman days, like Polycarp, who stood at Smyrna, the Bishop of Smyrna, and said with great courage, "For 86 years, I've served him, he's never done me wrong. How can I deny him now?"

Or Perpetua and Felicitas, who stood for the glory of God, even at the risk of their lives. Perpetua willing to give up her status as a noblewoman, a Roman citizen, and die for Jesus. I want to talk to them. I want to share with them. And so, we come to this list in which the author basically says, "I wish I had more time, I just don't. I can't go into all the great details that I would." And there are mysteries of this list that he makes at this point.

There are some mysteries here. Why does he shorten the list? Well, he's kind of already told you that, he said, time would fail me. I have some other things to do. I need to write Hebrews 12 and 13, and if I don't move on then Andy Davis will never get out of Hebrews 11.  You'll be with it... In it for the next 20 years. And there's just more good things to say. So, I've got Hebrews 12 and 13 to write and I need to move on. But I've basically made my point. You need to live an other worldly life by faith, you need to know that you are an alien and a stranger here just passing through. You need to live for that new heaven and new earth that's coming, that kingdom, that glorious city with foundations whose architect and builder is God.

You need to live for that. You're just passing through, you need to effectively live in a tent, even if you don't physically live in one, in your heart you need to. And you need to be willing to live a life filled with faith for the glory of God, energetic, courageous, doing acts of valor. That's what you need. And so, I don't really need much more... Many more examples. Time would fail me if I went into great detail. So I think that's why the author shortened his list at this point. Why these particular heroes are chosen? I'm not sure. Some of them make more sense than others, but some of them, you know, seem like head-scratchers, like Jephthah, why was he chosen or not, for example, Jonathan? You know, why Barak chosen and not Deborah? Why was Samson chosen?  I mean, he seems to be a weak man beset by lusts. What about Gideon? Given the frailty, the flickering nature of his faith at the beginning of it all, why was he a chosen? We'll talk more about Gideon in a few moments.

But why no one beyond David? Why weren't some of the prophets listed out? For example, Elijah, who by faith courageously stood on Mount Carmel, against the prophets of Baal, or Elisha, who by faith saw the chariots of fire surrounding that were coming when the Arameans were coming to arrest him. Or Isaiah, who by faith saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple, and in my opinion, saw Jesus Christ more clearly than any Old Covenant saint and wrote of it in his incredible prophecies. Or Jeremiah, who by faith stood against the people of his own generation, and predicted very plainly the coming destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and urged the people that the only way that they could survive is to go out and surrender, and therefore he was hated by the people of his own generation, and persecuted and yet, he said, "His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot." it's Jeremiah. Incredible men and women of God that are not listed here. Why these?

Why These Heroes are Listed in This Order?

And why were these heroes listed in this particular order? For example, why was Gideon whose story is told in Judges 6-8 listed before Barak, whose story is told in Judges 2-4? My answer is, I don't know. There you go, there's the answer. I don't know why the order is given here, I don't know why. I know this, that the Holy Spirit does everything for a reason. And that this ordering and these words were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and he had his reasons. The real question in front of us is none of these mysteries. The real question is how do these heroes display faith? The same faith that we must have to run our race with endurance right to the finish line. That's the question in front of us, as it's been throughout this chapter. Remember at the end of Hebrews 10:38, the key verse that launched us into this whole meditation.

There it says, "My righteous one will live by faith." The justified are justified by faith and we live by faith. "My righteous one will live by faith and if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved." So those are the key verses that launched us into this meditation on examples of faith, heroes of faith.

How Did These Heroes Display Saving Faith?

And so, we're asking this question, "How do these heroes display the faith we must have to be saved?" The faith-filled life we must live that only that life leads to heaven. At the end of this, the beginning of the next chapter, we have mentioned this cloud of witnesses, therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. These are those that make up the cloud of witnesses in the author's mind and they are testifying to a life of faith.

Now, I'm going to divide the list of the triumphant... Of the heroes and their actions in two parts. We're going to look at one part of it this week. These are what I call the triumphant heroes. And that would be 32-35A, so half way through verse 35. And the next week, the suffering heroes, 35B-38, God willing, next week. So the triumphant heroes are those whose lives led to outward clear victories that people could joyfully celebrate in this world and see God's hand and rejoice in. And then the suffering heroes next week, those who were willing to die and to suffer persecution for Christ. And we'll talk about them next week. So, as I look at this list, as I look at this list of names, and I look at this quick list of actions of what they did, one particular phrase came out to me and I want to meditate on it with you. Now, I think many phrases could come out. There are lots of angles you could take toward this summary list, because there's so many things involved.

Frankly, I look at this list of names, and this list of actions similar to a big box of keepsakes that an elderly man or woman, let's say, toward the end of their life, could open up and then take out a photograph or a piece of jewelry, a family heirloom, or a family Bible tattered with little notes on it or a piece of artwork that they received decades ago from their toddler. And each one of these items pulls out with it a whole bunch of memories and relationship and all kinds of circumstances that bring up emotions, tears, joy, happiness, whatever. And I think that's in effect what's happening here. The Lord is saying, I know each of these people, I know all their lives. I can remember all of them.

That's what I do with the genealogy, it's also in 1 Chronicles. These names may mean nothing to you, but these people mean everything to me. And I remember what they did, but we just don't have time to go into the details.

But as I was looking over these verses, one phrase in particular came out to me and that's in verse 34, "whose weakness was turned into strength." I want to meditate on that phrase with you. Whose weakness was turned into strength.

Gideon

And it came out for me personally, first and foremost, from studying the case of Gideon. So I'm going to give undue attention to the phrase, "whose weakness was turned into strength," and undo attention to Gideon and not so much to any of the others. And that's how I'm going to preach this section.

But Gideon was a man who lived in a very bad time in Israel's history, the time of the judges. And as a matter of fact, most of these names cover the period of the judges. And I'll talk more about that period in a few moments, but there was a cycle of sin that was going on at that point, Israel having conquered the Promised Land, did not completely drive out all of the Canaanites, and they remained to be a torment to the people and to afflict them with temptations toward Baal worship and other things. And so, from time to time, as a matter of fact, regularly, the people of Israel would go in for idolatry and start worshipping and serving created things more than the Creator, who's forever praised, amen. They would give in to that Canaanite-ish idolatry, and God would have to judge them and he would judge them always the same way, by sending some invading Gentile power to afflict them and then they would cry out to the Lord in the midst of this affliction, and God would send them a deliverer who would throw off these invading Gentiles militarily and give Israel a time of peace and prosperity and fruitfulness through repentance.

That's the cycle of the Book of Judges, and then when that was over, another generation would come along who didn't remember the lessons and they'd go right back at it again. And in Gideon's era, the Gentile power that came in were the Midianites and the power of the Midianites, we're told, in Judges 6 is so oppressive that the people of Israel had to hide in caves and in cracks in the rocks and all that. These were vicious people who came in and basically took everything of value and left and murdered anyone they could find. And so they had to go flee up into mountain clefts and caves and strongholds. We're told Midian has so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help, and God sent them Gideon. Now, when we meet Gideon, he is threshing in a wine press, one of the odder moments. I did some threshing last summer in Nepal. And the basic idea is, you need at least somewhat of a breeze for it to work. You're supposed to kind of beat the thing with the flail and then take the threshing fork and throw it up. And then the lighter chaff blows away and then the grain falls down. You do that enough, and you have mostly grain after that process.

Well, he's doing it down in a wine press where there really can't be much of a breeze. I would think if there is a breeze that's going to swirl around in there, like some kind of a vortex. And so, the threshing in the wine press was a mark of both Gideon's and Israel's weakness, their frailty in the face of this overwhelming military power, the power of the Midianites. And so, the angel of the Lord comes and appears to Gideon while he's threshing in this wine press, and he says, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior." What an odd greeting, kind of like Mary pondering over the greeting that Gabriel gave to her. He's saying this greeting doesn't make much sense at many levels.

Let's take them one at a time. First of all, "If the Lord is actually with us, then why has all this happened to us?" I don't get it, "The Lord is with you." "Where are all his wonders that our fathers told about when they said, 'Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?' But now the Lord has abandoned us and put us in the hand of Midian." Well, the Lord answered very surprisingly at that point. "Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you?"

And here's the second question that Gideon has. "'But, Lord,' Gideon asked, 'How can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my family.'" That was his strength. What was his strength? He looked inward and did not see the resources there, and by faith turned that weakness up to Almighty God in prayer. There's your central lesson for today. Do you have the qualifying weakness? When you look inward, do you find inside yourself the resources you need to fight your battles? Yes or no? If your answer is yes, I don't know if you even know the Gospel, and I don't know if you really actually know the enemies that are arrayed against you. More on that later. But Gideon knew that he did not have the resources within him and so therefore, he knew he was weak. And so, Gideon's greatest strength was his sense of weakness, turned upward to God in faith. The Lord answered him at that point. "I will be with you and I will strike down, or you will strike down all the Midianites together."

And so, Gideon had faith. But as I mentioned a moment ago, Gideon's initial faith was a flickering thing. I think often of that passage in Matthew 5, quoting Isaiah, speaking of Jesus, "A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out." Okay, that's a picture of Jesus' incredible gentleness in dealing with broken reeds like us. The bruised reeds like us and smoldering wicks.

 So we'll take the second image. Gideon's faith was a smoldering wick about to go out. It wasn't any mighty bonfire at this point. He asked for one sign after another. The first one is the whole offering thing. He wants to make an offering to the Angel of the Lord. And so, he asked the Angel of the Lord to wait, he goes and gets an offering, he comes back and the Angel of the Lord consumes the offering and goes up with it, disappears entirely. I think that's a pretty good sign, amen. Powerful sign, the Lord is with me. I've never seen anything like that, that's an awesome thing, but it wasn't enough for him. No, pretty soon he's doing the whole fleece thing. He wants to put out a fleece before the Lord. You know that story, don't you, Gideon's fleece? Maybe you even spread a fleece. Probably not a literal one. Do you know what a fleece is? It's a piece of cloth made of wool, I guess. And so, he wants to put out this towel or cloth before God on the ground, he put... He wants to put it out on the ground. And the idea here is, if the fleece the next morning is wet with dew, but all of the ground around it is dry, then what? Then you'll do what you're supposed to do? Then you'll obey, is that it? Well, we'll get to that. But then at least I'll have that sign. And so the next morning, he takes... He picks up that fleece, that cloth and just wrings it out and it is just saturated with water, but the whole ground is dry. God never does things half way. There's a huge amount of water.

Is that enough for him? No, he needs another sign. If, possibly, I think he's kind of a scientist, a sign giver here, he's going one way and the other. We're going to do an experiment. It's like a controlled experiment, and it just might be by chance. Okay, so we're going to do the opposite thing the next day. It's the beginning of the scientific method here, okay? So the next day, what I'd like to see is the ground wet and the fleece completely dry. One hymn says, stoop to our weakness, mighty as thou art. And doesn't God just stoop to his weakness at this point, and do for him what he asked? He doesn't have to do it. He could say, "Look, I've done enough for you already." But he doesn't, he does that, he gives the second fleece. And then, as if those weren't enough, then he gives them the whole barley loaf dream, where just as he's about to engage the Midianites, basically saying, "If you're still frail in your heart, why don't you go down and I've got something I want you to hear."

And so, he goes down into the camp of the Midianites and one of them is relating a story to another and says, last night I had a dream, and all of us were here arrayed in battle strength, and this huge barley loaf came rolling and knocked us all down. What an odd dream. And the answer is even odder. Well, this can be none other than Gideon, Gideon is the barley loaf. And Gideon's like, "Well, I've heard enough, that's good enough for me." I am the barley loaf, you know? And you remember the whole story of how God tells him, you have too many men, you have too many men, you have too many men, and he weeds his army down to 300 men who don't even have a sword in their hands, they have nothing, just a trumpet and then a lantern, and all that. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon and he blew a trumpet and he summoned them and those 300 men conquered the Midianites without a sword in their hands, because they turned on themselves and like Satan's wicked kingdom imploding on itself he destroyed himself.

And so, the Midianites destroyed themselves and they're all dead and they didn't have to do anything, the Israelites, it was something God did. A picture of the cross, as we're told in Isaiah 9, as in the day of Midian’s defeat you have destroyed, O Jesus, you have destroyed our enemies, with his own sword you pierced his head, the sword of death. Jesus uses death to destroy him, who held the power of death. How beautiful is that? Now, this whole story is the story of weakness turned into strength. "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." There's your strength, bring your weakness to God in prayer. By faith say, "I can't do this, I can't finish the journey set in front of me, I can't. I don't know that I can run another step. I am so weak. My enemies are so strong."

I think about what the Apostle Paul gave to us in 2 Corinthians 12, when he had the thorn in the flesh, you remember? And three times he sought the Lord in prayer that the thorn be removed. Three times he asked that the thorn be removed from his flesh. And the answer is the same every time, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power or my strength is made perfect in weakness." What an incredible lesson that is. God's grace, his strength, is made perfect in our weakness, not in our strength. And therefore, Paul says, "Alright, this is my conclusion, I've learned my lesson."  "Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me. And that is why for Christ's sake I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, and persecutions and difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." Isn't the opposite true? When you are strong, then you are weak? Because when you are strong, it means you think you don't need Jesus anymore, and that will never be the case.

And so, God's power was made perfect in weakness, that was the strength that Gideon had, go in the strength you have, go in that weakness of yours and watch me deliver you. We must turn away from self-reliance, we are so addicted to it. And I believe every trial God brings in your life and mine, every trial, the central lesson is to teach us to no longer rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead, that's the lesson every time. Stop relying on yourself, trust in Christ. Trust in me.

And so, that's the lesson of Gideon. Other than that, we have these heroes listed quickly, one after the other. Book of Judges, a bewildering time. Frankly, as I've meditated on the Book of Judges I think that the central lesson there and the warning, and it's a very poignant warning for me, is what happens to the people of God when the word of God is no longer taught to them?

This is what happens, they become no better than pagans, no better than animals. Frankly, by the end of the Book of Judges, the Levites have so completely failed in their mission that the people of Israel are no better than the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. There's an incredible parallel at the end of Judges with the whole Sodom and Gomorrah story. They're just the same, we're meant to think of them as the same. And the Levites show up, one Levite is there who ends up being a Levite for hire, and he's somebody's personal family priest for money. And then there's this other Levite with his concubine, and the whole thing is ugly and a mess, and at the beginning of the whole book, that generation, the next generation didn't remember all the mighty acts of God, and all of the great things that God had done. But the priests should have taught them.

Malachi 2:7, "For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction, because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty." And so from his mouth should be the word of the living God. But the Levites didn't do their job. And so, there was a famine of hearing the word of God and so they drifted into wickedness. Because they didn't hear and they didn't believe the Word of God. Now, in the midst of all of that, God had a remnant, didn't he? In every generation God has a remnant. Gideon said, "Where are all those mighty acts we've heard about?" And so, he had heard and he had faith, because he had heard and believed the word of God. So we have in Romans 11, "I have reserved for myself 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal. And so too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace." In every generation, there's some remnant of people who will hear God's word, God will get his word to them, they will hear and believe.

Barak

And so we have these heroes of faith teaching us these lessons. Gideon already mentioned Barak, who was a man who trusted God's word, spoken by a prophetess, by Deborah, but who needed his hand held to go into the battle. And so, he was deprived in some way of the glory of just a strong faith. But he's in the list. Then there is Samson, who did mighty acts of physical strength, but who seemed to be a very weak man when it came to women, in particular. He just could not curb his lusts, and so, he is very weak, and it ends up costing him huge in his life. This is a man who ripped a young lion to shreds with his bare hands. You know, I don't actually think that he was, if I can use the vernacular, ripped or cut, you know what I'm saying? I think every child art... Depiction of Samson shows him that way, but he did things that I don't care how big your biceps and triceps are, you can't do that. Like lifting up the city gates and throwing them over a hill.

Can I quote another Scripture to you from Zechariah 4:6, "Not by power, nor by might, but by my spirit says the Lord Almighty." Wouldn't it be cool if his arms were like pencils actually, wouldn't that be really cool?  It's like, I don't know what the secret of your great strength is. What could it be?  Look at you, you know? But it never says that, but she is wondering, I don't understand the secret of your great strength. But again and again in Judges we have this phrase, "The Spirit of the Lord came upon so and so." The Spirit of the Lord came upon Othniel in Judges 3:10. Or "The Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon." That we've already mentioned in 6:34 and 11:29, "The Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah." "The Spirit of the Lord came upon Samson…" in 14:6, 14:19, and 15, 14 and 15. The Spirit of the Lord comes upon him again and again, and he picks up the jaw bone of a donkey and kills a thousand men.

With the jaw bone of a donkey, because the Spirit of God came upon him. Only by faith and by the power of the Spirit can we win these kinds of victories.

Jephthah

Jephthah, I think the most surprising guy in the list. He's an odd guy. I don't fully understand his story, I know that the spirit of God came upon him, but a few verses later he's making a vow that if God will give him the victory, he will sacrifice as a burnt offering whatever comes across his threshold to greet him. That's odd. Turned out to be his virgin daughter. I don't think that Hebrews is celebrating Jephthah's vow, just Jephthah's faith. And I think that's probably why men like Samson and Jephthah are chosen, it's because they're not perfect people. They're not perfect, they just had faith. God justifies the wicked, he justifies the ungodly by faith. And then a genuine faith results in heroic acts of valor.

David and Samuel

David, Samuel, no surprise that these great men are in the list. But the author just wants you to know, whatever David did, he did by faith. Whatever he did, he did by faith. He faced Goliath by faith. He patiently waited on God for the promised kingdom by faith. He didn't kill Saul in the cave by faith. He dealt, he administered justice in his kingdom by faith when Ish-Bosheth's murderers came to him and told him that they had murdered him, and he now had the whole kingdom to himself, he executed them because they killed an innocent man in his bed. He administered justice by faith, because he wanted his kingdom established by righteousness and not by wickedness, by faith. You have to see his life that way. And the same thing, Samuel, who came before David, but is listed after him, but he heard God's word by faith, even as a little boy, God spoke to him and by faith, he learned to say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening," and he never let any of God's words fall to the ground.

But he spoke them honestly, even if they caused pain to someone he loved, like Eli. And then the Prophets, as I said, mentioned a summary of them one after the other, by faith, Elijah, by faith, Elisha, by faith, Isaiah, by faith, Jeremiah. That's how you ought to see them, but they're not listed here, they're just understood. You can read their stories.

And what had faith achieved? Verse 33-34, "Who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies."  Now, you can play the game, a Bible trivia game and go through and say, "What does each one of these refer to?" And it's a joy to do that, but I'm not going to do that now. You know these stories, but it is by faith that these heroes of faith did these great things.

The Supremacy of Christ: Jesus Does it All

What I want to do is I want to apply this list now to you and I want to start by applying it first and foremost to Jesus. Let me tell you something, any attribute or great action done by any hero of the faith, Jesus did it better. He did it better, he was a greater hero than any of these. And so, if you look at this list, is it true that Jesus conquered a kingdom? Yeah, it is. Satan's kingdom was crushed by Jesus. Is it true that Jesus by the greatness of his reign administers justice? Oh, absolutely. All judgment has been entrusted to Jesus. Is it true that Jesus gained what was promised? Yes, in Jesus, all the promises of God are yes and amen. He gained what was promised for you. He went out and won the victories for you so that you could have the Promised Land. Promised eternal life. Did Jesus shut the mouth of a lion? If you see Satan as a lion, absolutely, he shut his mouth.

And he is likened to that, he is like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who goes out between us and the lion and says, "You're not going to touch any of my sheep," and he is the mighty Good Shepherd who protects us from this lion. Quenched the fury of the flames? You tell me. Do you fear the flames of hell? It depends what you mean. Do you believe you're going there? I don't believe I'm going there. And when it comes to me, then, he has quenched the fury of the flames. Though I deserve to burn in hell, I will not, because Jesus died for me. Escaped the edge of the sword. Did Jesus escape? Well, he was resurrected, he wasn't killed by a sword. But I've been thinking about that sword. I think that Satan wields, metaphorically, a double-edged sword in our lives. I know that the word of God is a double-edged sword, but Satan wields this double-edged sword, cuts you both ways, temptation and accusation. Temptation and accusation. That's his double-edged sword.

He drags you and entices you and tricks you and deceives you to sin, and then he turns and accuses you of that sin before God. And Jesus answers it, by his atoning death, by shedding his blood on the cross, under the righteous judgment of God, he stands in the way, and he removes the written code against you by satisfying its demands. And now who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies, it's Jesus who died for them, who will condemn? Christ Jesus who died, more than that was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is interceding for us, whose weakness was turned into strength. Was Jesus weak? No one was ever weaker. I'm telling you, he was under the wrath of God, he was poured out on the cross, he was... Great drops of blood coming on the ground in Gethsemane, and out of his weakness or, as Michael Card put it, the frailty of the son, out of the frailty of Jesus, we have eternal life. Our strength is in his weakness that he was willing to die.

They thought because he's on the cross… "If you're the Son of God, come down off the cross." He's so weak, he can't save himself, he's weak, he's unable. No, no, no, that weakness was his power and his strength, but it's given to us. His weakness was turned into strength who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. You know something, he's been doing that now for 20 centuries through weak people like you and me. He has designed this whole thing to defeat little by little Satan's kingdom in this world through us. Now, what I want you to do, I've applied it to Jesus. What I want you to do is now apply it to you. I want you to see your own weakness turned into strength. Maybe you came here lost, you came here outside of Christ. Friend, the Scripture doesn't just call you weak, although it does. When we were powerless, Christ died for us. Okay. But it calls you dead.

But today you may live. If you can just hear the words of the Gospel, if you can just hear this word, this Gospel message and believe, you will have eternal life. You've heard everything you need. God sent his son, he died in our place; at the cross, an exchange was made, our sins laid on him, his righteousness given to us, we have eternal life. Trust in him. Let your weakness be turned into strength through faith in Christ. Now, if you're already a Christian, go to the cross again, go to Jesus again for your weakness to be turned into strength and for you to put foreign armies to flight. How do you do that? Well, you have an army arrayed against you. I was thinking about this this very day, it was a thought I'd never had before. Do you remember the story of Elisha? Do you remember how the Arameans are surrounding the city, and his servant goes out and he says, "We're done for, we're surrounded." And then Elisha said, "No, there's more on our side than on theirs."

Saw the physical army of the Arameans, they looked out on the... The servant looked out with natural eyes on this physical army, and was terrified by it. And then, Elisha prayed, "O Lord, open his eyes." By faith then he could see chariot, horsemen of fire, an angelic army surrounding. Well, I pushed it a little bit this morning. I was just thinking, you know what, most of us need to see the enemy army by faith. But we're not surrounded by physical soldiers, Arameans coming physically to arrest us, but we are in a war zone. Do you know it? Do you know that you have an enemy, the Devil? Do you know that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms? Are you aware of that? Do you know you have an army arrayed against you that wants your destruction?

Do you know that the army that's fighting for you is infinitely more powerful than it is? But God wants you to know that you must put on your spiritual armor, that you must put on the belt of truth, that you must put on the helmet of salvation, the breast plate of righteousness, you must lift up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. You must fight this battle. There's so much military imagery in the Old Testament and very few of us are actually physical soldiers. But we are all at war and you have to see that warfare by faith, and see your triumph in it by faith as well. Because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. So I'm just urging you on the basis of these heroes, and all of their great achievements, to fight the good fight of faith until the day you die. Close with me in prayer.

What an incredible night that was. We talked about a week ago, the Red Sea crossing as God led Israel through the Red Sea on dry land, how the pillar of fire lit their way, and how it kept Pharaoh's mighty army, and the chariots, and the horsemen from devouring the Israelites as they intended. "By faith, the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land," with the water walling up to the left and to the right. A night that could have been fraught with terror and bloodshed and death instead for them meant life and a picture of salvation. And by doing that awesome thing, God established a name for himself and a testimony that lives to this very day. And the reason for that is what I just prayed a moment ago, God never changes. The same God who did that at the Red Sea is alive today. And though he may do and will do different things in our generation than he did in their generation, still he's the same.

Almost a thousand years after the Red Sea crossing, Daniel in exile in Babylon prayed concerning the restoration of the Jews back to the Promised Land; they had been deported because of their sin, their violation of the covenant of God. And Daniel prayed in this way, in Daniel 9:15, "Now O Lord our God, who brought your people out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and who made for yourself a name that endures to this day, we have sinned, we have done wrong." You see, he's going back in his mind almost a thousand years to the Red Sea crossing, and he says that God made a name for himself that day. From that moment on, the moment of the Red Sea crossing on, the Red Sea crossing would live and shape Israel's identity as a nation. It would never be forgotten.

Later on in the Exodus, right before they entered the Promised Land, in Deuteronomy 11, God reminded them of what he had done at the Red Sea crossing. And then again at the end of Joshua's life, as he's reestablishing the covenant, he reminded them of the Red Sea crossing. In the Psalms, the Psalmists can't get enough of talking about the Red Sea crossing. Psalm 66:5-7, "Come and see what God has done. He turned the sea into dry land." Psalm 77:19, "Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters. Though your footprints were not seen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron." Psalm 78:13, "He divided the sea and led them through, he made the water stand firm like a wall." They just can't get enough of talking about the Red Sea crossing. So also the prophets, Isaiah 43, "This is what the Lord says, he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together, and there they lay, never to rise again, extinguished, snuffed out like a wick." Isaiah 43.

After the exile, Nehemiah returned back to it again. Nehemiah 9:10-11, "You made a name for yourself which remains to this day, you divided the sea before them so that they pass through it on dry ground. But you hurled their pursuers into the depths like a stone into the mighty waters." Even on into the new covenant era, Stephen, as he stands on trial for his life before the Sanhedrin, returns to the Red Sea crossing. In Acts 7:36, "He led them out of Egypt, and did wonders and miraculous signs in Egypt at the Red Sea, and for 40 years in the desert." This became part of Israel's manner of speaking. God led us through the waters. Because God led us through the waters, don't be afraid now of whatever trial you're facing. Again, Isaiah 43, in verse 2, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you."

Later in Isaiah they return to the Red Sea crossing as if to say, God, you led us then, why aren't you leading us now? You were mighty and powerful then, why not now? Isaiah 63, "Where is he who set his Holy Spirit among them, who sent his glorious arm of power to be at Moses' right hand, who divided the waters before them to gain for himself everlasting renown." Who led them through the depths…Where are your zeal and your might? Your tenderness and your compassion are withheld from us." God, what you did at the Red Sea crossing, do something like that for me now. The future restoration of Israel likened again to the Red Sea crossing in Zechariah 10: "Though I scatter them among the peoples, yet in distant lands, they will remember me. They and their children will survive, and they will return. I will bring them back from Egypt and gather them from Assyria. I will bring them to Gilead and Lebanon. And there will not be enough room for them. They will pass through the sea of trouble, the surging sea will be subdued, and all the depths of the Nile will dry up." And so their restoration will be as a Red Sea crossing through the sea, the surging sea of trouble, God would restore them to the Promised Land.

And so the Red Sea crossing was a major part of Israel's self-identity as a nation, but it was far more than that. As we have already said, it was by this that God glorified himself. It was by this that God made a name for himself that endures to this day. Three times in Exodus 14 he says his motive for the Red Sea crossing. He says, "I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them, but I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and all the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord." Again. Exodus 14-17, "I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them, and I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army through these chariots and horsemen." Exodus 14-18, "The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I gain glory through Pharaoh and his chariots and horsemen."

So the point of the Red Sea crossing, ultimately, was that God would gain glory for himself and make a name for himself; why that? It's so someone like Rahab would call on that name and be saved. It's really that simple. That sinners to the ends of the earth would hear of these kinds of stories, and look to the God who did them, and trust in him for the salvation of their souls, that's why.

Now, not everyone who passed through the sea as on dry ground was ultimately saved. Korah and Dathan and Abiram passed through the Red Sea as on dry land, they were not saved. Nadab and Abihu passed through the Red Sea as on dry ground, and they were not saved. And the 10 spies who came back and brought a bad report about the land and led Israel in rebellion against God, they were not saved. They passed through the Red Sea as on dry ground. Isn't it amazing? Aren't God's ways strange, that in the cases of those men that I just listed, the actual physical experience of walking through the Red Sea as on dry ground did not save them, but an Amorite woman, a prostitute living in the Wall of Jericho, hears about the report, and by that she is saved. She's not even there, just heard the report years later, believed it and was saved. Aren't God's ways marvelous? Isn't the sovereignty of God and salvation a marvelous thing to behold?

And so, in our study in Hebrews 11, we come to beyond the Red Sea crossing to the city of Jericho at last. Now, you may wonder what happened from the Red Sea crossing to Jericho, and what happened was rebellion; the 40-year gap. We already covered this in the Book of Hebrews, we discussed it in Hebrews chapter 3, how he quotes psalm 95 and says, "So, as the Holy Spirit says: 'Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.' So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.'"

Forty years, 40 lost years through unbelief, through unbelief. They weren't converted by passing through the Red Sea as on dry ground. They get to the other side, and they soon complain about food and water. And they murmur and complain against God.

And they defied God, they defied the Lord at Mount Sinai by crafting a golden calf, which they bowed down and worshiped, despite the fact that they had heard the voice of almighty God forbidding them to do it, they did it anyway because their hearts were going astray. And then, as I mentioned, when the 10 spies came back, and there were 12 that went out, but 10 of them brought a negative report about the land, and said that the land devours its people. And we saw mighty warriors there, the Anakites, and we saw vast cities with walls that reach up to the sky. And "We seemed like grasshoppers in our own wyes, and we looked the same to them." And they led Israel to rebel against God and to not trust in him, to not trust in his promises. And they led Israel to talk of stoning Moses, and to go back to Egypt and serve as slaves there. And so their punishment was 40 years of wandering.

But now the time has come, that's over, that generation's dead. They're dead, all of them dead. Their bodies were scattered through the desert. Some of them died right away, some of them died over decades, but they were all dead except for Joshua and Caleb. But they're all dead. Now, the time has come for their children to believe God and to trust in him and to take the Promised Land as God had promised. But there are some major obstacles that were facing them. The Jordan River was in front of them at flood stage, and on the other side of the Jordan was the awesome city of Jericho, of which it is said we saw city walls there that went up to the sky. They had no siege weapons to destroy those walls. Gunpowder hadn't been invented yet. There were terrible obstacles, and they couldn't just bypass the city, they couldn't leave it in their rear militarily, and besides which it would dishonor God to leave any part of the Promised Land not conquered. It was part of what God had promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it was going to be conquered. And so the city had to be taken, and so the city was taken, but it was done by faith. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell after the people had marched around it for seven days.

Now, Jericho was prepared for a siege, it says in Joshua 6:1. "Now, Jericho was tightly shut up because of the Israelites, no one went out and no one came in." So they were ready for a siege. God commanded the people what to do, step by step he told them what he wanted done. Day one, first day, they were to march around the city in total silence. An armed guard would lead the way, the Ark of the Covenant would come next, seven priests carrying trumpets would come next, and then the people after that. And they would march around the city and not say a word. They would not raise up a war cry, they wouldn't do anything, they would just march around the city and then go back to their camp. And so they would do the same thing on the second day, and the third, and the fourth, right up through the sixth day. Same thing every day. Finally, on day seven, they were to march around the city in the same pattern seven times, and then they were to shout to the Lord, for God would give them the city and they were to go, each man, straight into the city and conquer it. And by faith, Israel obeyed those strange commands, and by faith the walls of Jericho fell, and the people obeyed and by faith Jericho was conquered. What an awesome story, what an incredible thing, and again, unpredictable.

What Does the Unique Siege Teach Us about God?

Well, what does this teach us about God and his ways? Well, first, God's ways are radically different than ours, aren't they? "'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord. 'As the heavens are higher than the Earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.'" You know what the direct corollary of that is? "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and let him direct your paths." His thoughts are better than yours; they're not just different than yours, they're better. And so we just have to trust in him, stop relying on our own wisdom, and our own patterns, and our own ways.

Has anything like this ever happened since? Had anything like this ever happened before that? It's an incredible thing. God has an endlessly creative list of different things to do in every generation. It's just amazing, every generation something new and different. A baby born under a ban, put in a basket, and set afloat in a river grows up to lead God's people in a mighty way, that'll never happen again, not like that it won't. A young shepherd boy goes out with a stone, five smooth stones, one stone and a sling against a nine-foot giant, the two of them representing their armies, they fight and he kills him without a sword in his hand. Friends, that'll never happen again. It was just that one time. It's incredible. A prophet ascends to heaven in chariots of fire while his successor watches on, and a cloak falls to the ground. It's never going to happen again. God has lots of different things to do. He's so creative. In every generation there's something different. A Gentile general covered with leprosy comes and bathes seven times in a river, comes up clean. Incredible. Every generation, something different. So God tells his people do some strange things, to do them by faith, and he does different things in every generation.

Now, when they come to Jericho, they come to a walled fortress, a city with thick walls, no one going out, no one coming in. What do you do? You have to conquer it. Well, you have four options, at least that's how it looks to military science. You can go over the walls by means of siege towers or siege ramps, you can go through the walls by means of siege engines; like I said, there wasn't gunpowder, which kind of put an end to walled fortresses at that point. But there were catapults and battering rams, things like that. You could tunnel under the walls, or you could surround the walls and wait, and that would be a siege, and eventually running out of food and water, they would have to come out. Those were your four strategies. God said, in effect, none of the above. None of the above, we're not doing any of those four options. Carnal wisdom will avail you nothing at all. We don't have time for the siege, we've got other plans, we've got other people to conquer. And you don't need any siege engines, just watch what happens to the walls. There's no need to go over them because you can walk right on top of them when they come down. God's ways are better than our ways. And so God does unusual, different things in every generation, this we learned from Jericho.

Secondly, we also learned that God is independent of all laws of nature. He created them, he set them up, but he is not bound by them. And we thank God for them. The sun rises in the east, it sets in the west, there's a certain rhythm that God set up to the seasons, which he said would never fail after the flood. God set up that rhythm of the seasons. Gravity always takes objects in the same direction, and you know what that direction is. You count on friction every day; you may not think you do, but you count on it. I know that, because when our floors are incredibly slick, down we go. We've cleaned them with polish before, and that's... It's been exciting. It's like walking on ice, you're never sure what's going to happen. So we rely on these things, though you may not have studied them, and you may not appreciate them the way some engineers or scientists do, but they're just part of the physical world in which we live.

More in everyday life, if it were not so, we couldn't learn by experience, because every day would be something weird and new, it'd be like we'd be learning the universe new every day. But God hasn't done that. God sets up things, and we use the term laws of nature, or physical laws because of their constancy. It is the basis of science, it's why it's even worth studying, because God is so consistent. I'm just telling you, God is not bound by any of them. He's not bound by any of them, he can do what he wants. And there are no visible means for that wall, those walls to come falling down, but that didn't mean that they couldn't come falling down, because God can do anything that power can do. That is the nature of God. God is independent of all laws of nature.

Thirdly, God loves to raise up mighty obstacles before his faith-filled people, and then conquer those obstacles by the faith of his people; he loves to do it. He loves to raise up difficult tests, and challenges, and obstacles so that he can gain glory for himself when his people trust him enough to get through them.

And fourthly, Satan can't stop God. He can't stop him. Satan's powerful, far more powerful than any person in this room, or all of us put together. He is powerful, he is the God of this age, so called, but he is nothing compared to Almighty God and that Jericho, that was a walled satanic fortress of might, that Canaanite religion was wicked. It was wicked and it was evil. And God had given them time to repent. In the days of Abraham, in Genesis 15, he said, "The sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure." But you know what? This is just maybe a little allegorical, I don't know, but I see with the 13 times that they traveled around that walled fortress, that satanic fortress, 13 times, that was the death knell of their Amorite religion. It was the final tolling of the bell when God would crush it for good. The time had run out, 400 years had run out. The time had run out, the time had come to repent, and it was done, and Satan can't stop it. Now, you look at that Jericho like a walled armed satanic camp, a fortress.

Jesus Will Build His Kingdom

And Jesus said it this way. He said speaking of Satan and his kingdom, he said, "When a strong man fully armed guards his own house, his possessions are safe, but when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils." Amen, Jesus is someone stronger than the strong man. Satan's a strong man, Jesus is stronger. And Jericho could not withstand the power of Almighty God, Satan can't stop God. And throughout history God has in his sovereign way, in his sovereign... For his sovereign glory and purposes allowed mighty walled fortresses to be erected by Satan himself against the advance of the people of God. And they've stood in our way, these walls. Jesus said these walls would be there. He said it, "I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." He knew about those walls, he just said those walls are coming down. So look at the walls of the Roman Empire, that pagan, luxurious, militarily unconquerable it seemed Roman Empire. The one that put Jesus to death through Pontius Pilate, with all of its mighty roads and all of its economic infrastructure and all that sort of stuff.

Mighty walls, but they came down into the steady onslaught of the Gospel. So that at some point, one of their emperors declared himself to be a Christian, Constantine. I mean, whether he was or wasn't, matters to him a lot. But we cannot judge from the outside. All I'm saying is, look at the progress of the Gospel, by the blood of the martyrs it advanced. And so also, hundreds and hundreds of years later, the walls of false doctrine by the Medieval Roman Catholic Church were erected against the Gospel, all kinds of additions and subtractions from the Word of God, and human wisdom, and perversions, and traditions of men came in. But they could not stop the reclamation of the Gospel and the reformation of the church, those walls came down. Just how about the walls of paganism, of godlessness that have come down under the steady advance of the Great Commission in the last 100 years? Hasn't it been beautiful to watch?

Really since the days of William Carey, and Adoniram Judson, and then, Hudson Taylor in China and Robert Moffat in Africa, Jim Elliot and the others in Ecuador, and Don Richardson in Irian Jaya. Just one missionary hero, after another, those walls of unbelief coming down, the Gospel advancing, fewer and fewer unreached people groups. God is awesome. And so, he erects these mighty walls and then by his sovereign power brings them down. Islam is such a wall. A walled satanic fortress with people who are held by a false view of God and they're getting liberated every single day by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and they are our brothers and sisters, isn't it sweet? And God has that kind of power in your life as well, by faith, though. All of these victories are won by faith. After the people had marched around the wall for seven days, it was by faith the walls of Jericho fell. So what do we learn about faith and its ways?

Well, first the daring of their faith, how daring were they? They were on the other side of the Jordan River, back at flood stage now, with it behind them, they're in Palestine, they're in the Promised Land on the side of the... With their enemies, but they don't have any walls. They don't have any city, they're there on their own with only God to protect them, but isn't that enough. One commentator, AW Pink, talks about the courage, the daring of their faith. He said there are three types, there are three degrees of faith. I thought this was insightful. There's a faith which receives, like a beggar you go to King Jesus and you say, I have nothing. And like a beggar you receive what he has to give you, by faith you receive salvation, forgiveness, simply like a beggar, a faith that receives. There is secondly a faith, which relies or counts on God to fulfill his promises, by that you move out in your Christian life. But thirdly, there's a faith that risks. A faith that risks, which dares something for the Lord, it puts earthly resources, earthly pleasure, earthly comfort on the line for Jesus.

I fear that many of us stop after the second. We've got that faith that receives and the faith that relies, but we don't have that faith that risks. We're set here in Durham, we're set here in the Triangle area. We've got people to reach with the Gospel, but they will not be reached if we don't risk. And so, look at the daring of their faith. Look at the obedience also of their faith. Did not God's commands appear strange? What would walking around the city in total silence do? What would walking around it 13 times do? But they just obey, they simply did what they were told. How rebellious we are. How much we think our ways are better than his ways. But they were obedient. We see also the discipline of their faith. They were like well-trained soldiers, they did what they were told, they didn't argue with Joshua saying, "Hey, you know, we built high ramps when we were building the pyramids, we could build a ramp up to the walls of Jericho, we could do that." Carnal wisdom, carnal knowledge, they didn't do that. They just disciplined themselves under their commanding officer. We see the patience of their faith.

Day after day after day, walking around the walls, the seventh day 13 times, and the wall still didn't fall. 13 times of walking, the wall's still intact. Then they gave that war cry, and then the wall came down. They praised the Lord, and that wall came down. But they had to be patient. God exercises our faith so that we may develop perseverance, that we may develop patience. And we see also the anticipation of their faith. I love how they shout the victory before the walls come down. Isn't that cool? They shout the victory, before the walls even show any indication of coming down. Trusting in him, that God's going to act, he's going to be faithful.

Reading about the missionary, Robert Moffat, early 19th century Scottish pioneer missionary in South Africa, the Bechuanas, he was reaching out to them. He labored for years without a single convert among that people. Some friends from England wrote to him and asked, they knew about his trials, his difficulties and they wanted to brighten his day. So they said, "We'd like to buy you a gift and send it to you. What can we buy for you?" They were thinking maybe a book or something that would bring some comfort or a consolation to him. He said, "Would you please send me a communion set? I have no set with which I may share communion with the converts." He didn't have a single convert when he wrote that letter. Before the communion set returned, he had 12 of them. Isn't that a great story? The anticipation of faith. Mark 11:24, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours." So it was with the Jews at Jericho.

But now let's focus on a single individual. There was living in the walls of Jericho a woman. And her name was Rahab. Verse 31, "By faith, the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies was not killed along with those who are disobedient." How did Rahab get in here? I mean, do you ever wonder that? This is the Hall of Faith. I mean, you have Abel and you have Enoch and you have Noah and you have Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Jacob, and Joseph, and Moses, and Rahab? How did she get into the Hall of Faith?

I tell you, the salvation of Rahab is one of the four greatest salvations in the Bible. I'm just going to go on, you're going to come ask me, what are the other three, aren't you?  You're interested, what are they? One of the four greatest trophies, shocking trophies of God's grace. Nebuchadnezzar, Saul of Tarsus, thief on the cross, each for different reasons. Nebuchadnezzar filled with arrogance, the dictator, tyrant, murderer, animal for seven years and then lifted his eyes to Heaven and God restored his sanity and he wrote one of the most beautiful praises to the sovereignty of God you'll find anywhere in Scripture. Saul of Tarsus, you know well, the morning breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples, converted by the evening, by display of the resurrected Christ in his glory. Thief on the cross, the most surprising to me, because Jesus had so little time to work with.

And at the beginning of the time on the cross, he's reviling Jesus, by the end, he's saying, "Remember Me, Lord, when you come in your kingdom." And then there's Rahab. And when you come to Rahab, you realize all of the obstacles. Again, we're talking about obstacles. She was a Gentile, not a Jew, worse than that, she was an Amorite, about which I've already spoken. And they were under the wrath of God. They were set to be exterminated, to be condemned, every one of them. The Amorites had had 400 years to repent and they had not redeemed the time and now the wrath of God was about to fall. Not only that, but she was a notorious sinner, she was a prostitute. And there was a logistical problem, her house was in the wall, [chuckle] God intended those walls to come down. And you see in all of that, that God is no respecter of persons whatsoever. He chooses sinners who will most glorify him for his grace. What did Rahab have to offer? All of that mess by which she could glorify God for eternity for his grace to her.

There was nothing whatsoever in this woman that could have commended her to be chosen by God for eternal salvation, it was by the sovereign pleasure of God alone that she escaped the wrath for which the rest of her countrymen were destined. Amazing grace. And yet there were no visible means of grace. There were no Sabbaths, there were no reading of the Scriptures, there were no prophets, there was none of that. What there was, was a report from the Red Sea crossing, and then the killing of Sihon, king of the Amorites and Og, king of Bashan, that's what they had, that's what she had. Everybody had that, there in the city of Jericho. And evidently she was regenerated before the spies even came there. Before the spies even came there. Again, what was the point of the Red Sea crossing? It was that God would make a name for himself.

Why Did God Want to Make a Name for Himself?

Why did God want to make a name for himself? Is he likes some praise-craving fading star in Hollywood that needs people around him, sycophants to say, "Oh, you're so wonderful. Oh, you're so great. Oh, you're so amazing."

No, God is very well-secured within himself, he has no needs like that, he's fine, he's not suffering from self-esteem problems, not at all. No, he makes a glorious name for himself that sinners like you and me will call on that name and be saved, for everyone who calls in the name of the Lord will be saved. And so, he makes much of his name so that we will call on that name and be saved. It's for salvation of Rahab that the Red Sea crossing happened and others too. And faith comes by hearing the message, and so, some messengers came to say what the God of... The Jews had done to the Egyptians. Rahab, living in the walls, as a prostitute was there, and she heard and believed, then Joshua was sent out two spies to scout out the land and this is what Rahab said to them, when they came to her house. "We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites East of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed, when we heard of it, our hearts melted, and everyone's courage failed because of you, for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the Earth below" Do you hear the faith in that?

Here is the true God. I know it's true. Now, then please swear to me by the Lord, that you will show kindness to my family. All of Jericho was terrified of the Israelites, but only Rahab cried out for mercy. And frankly, she's the only one that got the chance to do it. God sovereignly orchestrates both ends of that. And she had that faith established before they came, despise, it says in James 2:25, "In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute justified or considered righteous, [the NIV has] for what she did, listen, when she gave lodging to the spies?" You see, she had faith before they came, so that she opened her home to them and took them in, that was a display of her faith at that point and then sent them off in a different direction. And her faith worked in her a hope. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. She actually has a hope that the God of Israel might spare her and provide a place for her. There might be life for her. Salvation for her, she has a hope based on that.

I notice the breadth of her faith as well. She's concerned not just for herself, but her family. And so, her family is extended grace because of her faith, they are blessed. I don't know if they were saved. I know that they were safe from the sword at that time, I don't know if they were spiritually saved. I have no idea. So, what was the effect of Rahab's faith? Well, James' point, James 2, is genuine faith always produces works, and so good works came from that genuine faith. She welcomed the spies. She sent them off in a different direction to protect them from their pursuers. She hung the little red cord in the window to identify her house as her own house, she did what she was told. In a minor way, I want to say we see the imperfection also of Rahab's faith. Faith doesn't make you a perfect person. She lied to the king of Jericho about the spies who she was hiding among the flat stalks on her roof. Now some of you are going to come to me and say, "Hey, what could she have done? What could she have done?" She could have told the truth, that's what she could have done. Well then, she and they would have been killed. Maybe, I don't know that.

But I just want to ask you a question, can you imagine Jesus lying to save his life? Can you imagine Jesus lying to save someone else's life? Can you imagine that? So, she's imperfect. But so are you, and yet you believe in Jesus, amen. And Hebrews 11 and James 2 doesn't touch on those things. It's in the Old Testament, we know about it, but it's not a major feature. By faith, our sins are forgiven. By faith, our sins are covered. Now, if you want to come after it and talk to me about Corrie ten Boom, and all of that and what they could have or should have done, let's have a lively discussion. I'm just saying the Scripture says it's better to die than to lie. And not one of us has that commitment to truth, not the way Jesus did. Jesus, when he was charged on trial for his life, under oath by the high priest, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the living God?" He said, "I am." He made the good confession. I am. And in the future you will see the son of man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven and then the high priest tore his robe, and condemned Jesus to death.

It's Jesus' way of thinking, he would rather die than sin. And what was the outcome of Rahab's faith? Her life was saved, and I say to you, not merely her life, but her soul was saved too. For God, a genuine faith came into her life, turned her away from wickedness, sanctified her, made her yearn for holiness, she gave up the life of a prostitute. She was accepted into the congregation of Israel, she married Salmon of the tribe of Judah, and she gave birth to Boaz, whose story you can read about in the Book of Ruth, what a godly man Boaz was. King David's grandmother. And amazingly then, this prostitute made it not only into the Hall of Faith, but into the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew chapter 1. Incredible, by faith.

So what? So come to Jesus. Come to Jesus, God has made a far greater name for himself at the cross and the empty tomb than he ever made at the Red Sea. By sending his son, a descendant of Rahab, by sending his son in the flesh to die on the cross in our place, he has made the only way through condemnation you will ever find. It's the only way of salvation, faith in Jesus.

That's why the author wrote Hebrews 11, that we would hear and believe and be saved through Jesus. Trust in him. And if you say to me, "Well, I have trusted him," I say, "Keep trusting in him." Keep believing in Jesus, feed on Christ, go to the cross again and again, you're still a sinner, you still need cleansing. The cleansing is still the same way. There's a fountain open in the House of David to cleanse you of all your sins, trust in him and maybe you've never trusted in Jesus. Maybe you were invited here today by a friend, maybe you had not yet made a commitment to Christ. Don't leave this place unconverted, the rest of the sinners, the Amorites in Jericho they all died under the righteous judgment of God, all of us deserve it. But by faith, God calls out his chosen ones to believe. You say, how can I know if I'm chosen? Come to Jesus, it's the only way you can do it. If God chooses you, you will come and I say come. It's not hard. Just look to Jesus with eyes of faith, trust that God gave him for you, that his blood shed on the cross is to forgive you of your sins, look to Christ resurrected for your eternal life, your resurrection, trust in him.

And second of all, can I just urge you, stand in awe of God and the Red Sea crossing. Let's talk about it, why not? Say, wasn't God awesome at the Red Sea crossing? Like, well, that's old news. It's alright. It was old for the psalmists that were writing about it. God's the same yesterday, today and forever, to say, "My God can make a way through the Red Sea." And Zechariah 10 implies that we can kind of allegorize it to some degree. Don't go wild, now, Bible teachers, don't do it. But God can make a way through a sea of trouble for you. He can do it. He does the same thing in Isaiah 43. He said, "Look, I made a way through the Red Sea at that time. I'm going to make a new way, a better way in the future," uses that kind of way of speaking. Walk through your troubles and don't expect an easy life. Are you shocked by the trials that you're going through? Medical trials, financial trials, are you struggling? God delights to raise up obstacles, and then have you by faith conquer them and overcome them. He's set before us two infinite journeys. The internal journey of growth and holiness, Christ's likeness. You cannot do it without suffering. You can't do it without facing obstacles, you'll only bypass them or conquer them by faith. And neither can we make any progress in the external journey, except by courage and faith. We've got to risk things, brothers and sisters, we will not make progress. Close with me if you would in prayer.