Biblical Faith is a Radical Faith
0 Amens
Biblical Faith is a Radical Faith
Hebrews 11:11-16
August 3, 2008
Series 3 Sermon 51
11 By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. 12 Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. 13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
Introduction
First century Christianity was radical. These early disciples forsook all to live with feet on the ground and a heart set on eternity. There was such belief that the early disciples would sell off their belongings in order to ensure that all in the flock were cared for. They happily were thrown into prison for their faith. They quickly recognized that their new friendship with God made them the enemy of the world. To be beaten for proclaiming the Gospel to a world that is headed straight to hell was a badge of honor for the early disciples. This has been true of all God’s people throughout biblical history. God’s people live radical lives of trust in God that is always in opposition to the world around them. Read verses 13-16 with me again.
13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
Let me now give you the early 21st century reading of these verses. “These all sought to live longer lives, they claimed for themselves all the promises of God as if God were required to grant them in their time and not His own, and they only believed when they saw the promises fulfilled. They fully planted themselves in the world and lived as one of the people of their country. They were flag waving, patriot Americans. They seek no other homeland because Heaven could not possibly be better than what they already have here on earth. They were not at all tempted to return to the land from whence they came because in reality they never left. Even though God has prepared a city for them, an eternal one, in a better country, they like the purple mountain majesties and the fruited plains they now live on. Even though they claimed to know God through Christ they are no different than the atheist and for the most part are ashamed of the Gospel.”
The version of Christianity in
It is utterly disturbing to me that if you asked someone what a Christian was on the street more than likely an American Christian would be identified with a particular political stance. As we move closer to the election the volume will be turned up around the nation about who Christians ought to vote for.
The sad thing is we as Christians have traded our new birth right for a mess of pottage. I am all for being patriotic and I am thankful that I was born in this country. However, if you could only be a Christian in
No matter what country you live in whether you are free or slave, rich or poor, Jew or Greek your faith should be marked out by its radical commitment to Christ. This radical commitment to Christ shuns the lures of the world and causes us to live in a way that people just do not understand. Radically committed Christians are not chasing down the American dream. They are not so caught up in the world that they forget that they don’t really belong here.
There is great spiritual danger in loving the world. I want you to listen to Matthew 13:22.
22 "And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.
Now listen to Matthew 16:24-26.
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow
John 15:18-19 says,
"If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. 19 "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.
In this setting aside or choosing that Christ does, the Lord takes us from full friendship with the world and the things of the world to full and total enmity with the world. This is a radical shift in position that dare I say that most people who call themselves Christians have never experienced.
I want you to think about with me for a moment what we have studied thus far in Hebrews 11. Those whom the Lord called and granted saving faith were all radicals. Abel did not do what was in his own heart for worship but rather did what God required and was accepted. And he was killed for it. Enoch walked with God and God took him in the prime of his life. Noah walked with God and found favor in His sight and in obedience that was by far the most radical thing going at the time and that was building an ark.
The Lord called Noah to prepare for the future and promised that the future would indeed come. Abraham was called to uproot himself and follow the Lord which he did which was a radical departure from upbringing and the culture that surrounded him.
Do you know what the problem is with Christianity today? Instead of Christ being at the center of all that we do He usually gets added to the top of all we do just to make sure He is a part of it and we can still call ourselves Christians. There is great danger in never cutting the umbilical cord with the world and the things of the world. Listen to what Paul says about his former ministry partner in 2 Timothy 4:10.
10 for Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica
Let me ask you this morning; are you a radical? Do you have your eyes and your hearts focused on Christ or are you just like the rest of the world and desire wealth and leisure? Let me tell you how this plays out. In our culture it is materialism. We desire material wealth because it is fairly easy to acquire. We want a new car we go sign a piece of paper and we are driving. We want a new and bigger house we do the same thing. What about the way you raise and school your children? What is the main concern? Often it’s to make sure our kids can outscore the rest of the world so somehow we feel legitimate. Let me go ahead and tell you this morning that if you successfully teach your children the Gospel and a love for the Word of God, instilling in them the biblical command of “if you don’t work you do not eat” then your children will be light years ahead of everyone else. But instead of instilling in them a love and commitment for God and His Word often we become drawn away by worldly pursuits. We should be much more concerned with our children knowing redemptive history than knowing American history. They should know more about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John than Plato, Aristotle, or any other philosopher. They should know more about the six days of God’s creation than about what the scientists say today.
What about your finances this morning adults? Are you more concerned about your retirement accounts than you are your spiritual walk? Are you more concerned with building wealth rather than giving sacrificially to the work of the Gospel?
And here is where the rubber meets the road. What if you lost it all? What if your retirement accounts dried up and your job ended and there was no employment to be found? Could you still be a Christian? Or would your faith be so shaken that you would consider leaving the faith? Or could you say with Habakkuk in Habakkuk 3:17-19?
17 Though the fig tree should not blossom And there be no fruit on the vines,
Though the yield of the olive should fail And the fields produce no food,
Though the flock should be cut off from the fold And there be no cattle in the stalls, 18 Yet I will exult in the LORD, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. 19 The Lord GOD is my strength, And He has made my feet like hinds' feet, And makes me walk on my high places.
Or could you say with Job, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
You see that is radical faith. And that is the type of faith that is pleasing to the Lord. I want you to pay very close attention to verse 16.
16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
First century Christianity was a radical faith. And let me tell you that God expects no different from us than He expected from His first century children. The only thing that has changed is how people lived. The first century believers lived with an eye toward the fulfillment of the Kingdom. And that is how we must live as well. We must have a radical faith that is in direct opposition to the prevailing viewpoint of our day of comfort and security.
PNP
From our text this morning I want you to see two ways that biblical, saving faith is a radical faith.
1. Biblical, saving faith radically trusts in the unseen seemingly impossible promises of God. (11-12)
2. Biblical saving faith radically lives not as citizens of earth but as strangers and exiles. (13-16)
Purpose
My purpose for preaching these verses this morning is to infect you with the disease of Christian radicalness that defies the world, shuns materialism, lives contrary to the blatant degeneracy around us and ultimately causes God to be proud of us as His children.
Will you step up to the plate and live a radical Christian life or are you satisfied with mediocrity? Like Peter will you move from the safety of the boat to the uncertainty of the waves to follow Christ wherever He leads?
Listen, if you don’t have that type of desire to follow the Lord then this sermon will do you very little good. But my desire is that the Lord would raise up from among this congregation men on fire for the Gospel, women aflame to reach other women and to reach their children and grandchildren and other children. I pray that the Lord calls from our group of children here missionaries and elders and pastors. I want our congregation to be aflame with a burning passion and faith to follow the Lord.
RPNP
So look with me at these two ways that biblical, saving faith is a radical faith.
1. Biblical, saving faith radically trusts in the unseen seemingly impossible promises of God. (11-12)
Look with me at verse 11 and 12.
11 By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. 12 Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.
Look what is happening in the passage. Sarah, after the normal age of a woman and the duration that God allows for procreation was told she would have a son. Of course you are familiar with the story and at first Sarah laughed. The reason she laughed is because she knew all of the physical obstacles that stood in her way.
But she also understood something else. God made the promise. And if God made the promise then it would be God who would make it happen. Look again at verse 11.
11 By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.
When the deck was stacked against them, they were too old and the time for conception had past God promised them a son and Sarah and Abraham believed.
Now look at the results. Look at verse 12. I love the language here.
12 Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.
Now I know that Sarah and Abraham made a few mistakes here and the author is sure that you will have that in mind. But the focus is not really on Abraham and Sarah anyway. The focus is on God and His ability to see His plans ultimately through.
God can make a barren women fertile. He can make an atheist a believer. A leopard can’t change his spots but the Lord can give him a zebra coat if He so desires.
Here is what we need to get surgically implanted into our hearts this morning. God is the God of the impossible and He is seeking those who are interested in the impossible.
“Hey Abraham, hey Sarah. How about I give you a son and through him your descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand by the seashore?” “Sure but we are too old.” Nothing is impossible with God.
I want you to really get this right now. I want you to walk out of here this morning knowing that we serve the God who calls people who are not capable or gifted enough to a task that is in reality impossible for them to do. And God wants people of faith to do those impossible tasks.
God does not need to look for ability. He is not looking to spot the most talent or the greatest ability or even the one with the most resources. What God is looking for is someone who will step out of the boat onto the insecurity of the waves so that they can learn to trust in Christ for all their provisions.
The problem is we have too much common sense and not enough faith. You see common sense laughs when God tells a barren old woman she is going to have a son. Common sense says you can’t get out of boat and walk on top of the water. Common sense looks at all available resources and decides based on that whether or not something can be done. But common sense is not real faith.
Real faith hears the call of God and responds in spite of available resources. That is what the call of God is.
Listen to me. The call of God is doing what you are not capable of doing with resources that you do not have available to you. When Nehemiah rebuilt
When God put it into the heart of George Mueller to build an orphanage Mueller did not have the money to do so. But in miraculous ways God provided for him and the orphans over and over.
God does things in very strange ways. Why pick an old worn out couple to have a son through whose line the Lord Jesus would be born? The simple answer to that question is because He can. Why would the Lord call George Mueller to build an orphanage with no available resources to finish? Because the Lord has all the resources and He can funnel the necessary resources to get the job done.
And in our heads we know this already but this is the most difficult truth to bore a whole in our hearts. You see, when its time to step out on faith and do what God has called us to do we get timid. We become unsure of ourselves. We start coaching ourselves. Well, I need this and I don’t have it yet and I have to get this accomplished before I can do that when all God wants you to do is have a little faith and get going.
And just as a side note, its okay to fail. God may lead you down a road that ends up in difficulty and what some may deem as disaster but it will ultimately end up for God’s glory and for your benefit.
Listen to Psalm 37:23-24.
23 The steps of a man are established by the LORD,
And He delights in his way. 24 When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong,
Because the LORD is the One who holds his hand.
God is just as glorified in our failure as He is in our success because His desire is to make us like Christ and sometimes it takes failure to do that. The celebration is not here.
Let me tell you this morning that doing what God calls you to do is often overwhelming and most days difficult. To war against your flesh that thinks things should be one way when in reality they are another is an all consuming battle. We often wonder when God takes us through dry places and allows us to be spiritually parched why He does not just fill us with His Spirit afresh and allow us to soar on eagle’s wings. But He lets us struggle. He lets us war with our flesh and shows us over and over that the flesh must be put to death.
If you don’t mind some personal illustrations this morning I will see if I can shed some light on this. There are times in preaching that I feel that I have soared into the heavens and got so close to the face of God and I am sure that those who heard me have had the same experience only to realize later that no one said a word about the sermon or if made a dimes worth of difference for them. Then there are times where I have labored through preaching wondering if I was even remotely clear in my presentation and even if I truly understood the text and asking the Lord to please let me hurry and get this over with only to later get a word of encouragement from someone either in person or via email. And I always laugh and think how God used a donkey to speak before.
You see, seminary is great but it does not prepare you for ministry. Get that first call to do a funeral and see how much seminary will help you. Get that call from that couple who is getting ready to divorce and see how much it will help you. Have a rebellious child or a suicidal teenager and you will soon realize you have nothing to offer.
And that is the point. One of the greatest lessons about serving the Lord I ever learned was at a crisis pregnancy workshop that Dani and I attended back about 8 years ago and this is the only thing I remember about the whole time. A man named Bruce Sigler gave a workshop on a particular topic that I can’t remember and said this, “The only ability that God is looking for in a person is availability.”
Now Bruce was not a seminary professor. He was not a pastor. As best I could tell he felt pretty unqualified to teach the workshop he was teaching. He was a construction worker who loved the Lord and had said, “wherever He leads I’ll go.”
Now how do we get there? Because there is where I need to be and where you need to be. If we are Christians, heirs of the promises of Abraham, then we need to be like Abraham and have a willing heart to follow the Lord where He leads us and do what He has or is calling us to do.
I believe that all Christians have a calling to serve the Lord in some capacity. God desires to be glorified in His people and in this short life has missions for them to do. I don’t know specifically what God is calling you to do but you should seek him for that.
And when He calls you follow no matter where it is or what it is. The early church did not have a great deal of resources but they sent apostles all over Europe and Africa and
So what needs to change about us so that we have this availability? We have already seen that God calls us to trust in His seemingly impossible promises. So how do we walk that out? I want you to see finally that:
2. Biblical saving faith radically lives not as citizens of earth but as strangers and exiles. (13-16)
Look at verses 13-16 with me.
13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
If we are going to live lives that are pleasing to the Lord and marked out by this radical faith that is God glorifying and pagan frightening then we have to understand that the American dream is not our dream. This country is not our country. The hope for
Remember last week? Abraham was in the Promised Land but lived like an immigrant. He was in the place where his posterity would settle and become as pagan as the rest of the nations but Abraham moved about living in tents and not settling in. And that is the point. We can not allow ourselves to settle in. Our tent stakes must not be hammered in too deep. This is not our home. Because if we acknowledge this place as our home our temptation will be to stay in it, embrace it, and live like the rest of the residents that are here.
Let me give you four steps to avoid the lure of the world and the things in the world which by the way is passing away.
Look at verse 13 for the first step and that step has to do with the mental and spiritual aspect of acknowledging our true citizenship.
13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
After we have acknowledged our foreignness to this place we begin to talk like foreigners. That is the second step. Look at verse 14.
14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.
The third step has to do with our actions. Like Lot leaving
15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.
Particularly in the context of Hebrews this had to do with the Christians heading back to Judaism. But for our context and application this has to do with us falling back and trusting in our own resources and abilities.
And the fourth step has to do with our desires. Look at verse 16.
16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
When you put your hands to the plow what you are saying to the world is that its trinkets are of no value to you and you are heading to a
Let me be painfully honest with you all this morning. This life of faith is difficult. It will not be your best life now nor will everyday seem to be filled with purpose. There will be days when you question your calling and your fitness for service. There will be days when the Lord withholds the resources and you cry out why? There will be times when people look at you like you are a fool and they treat you as such and they tell you things no one should utter even though they are well meaning. There are days when you want to give up and move on and stop living like this. Those are the trying times. Those are the times in my own life when I have questioned my calling to ministry and wondered should I just pack it all in? Have I misunderstood my calling in life and should I be doing something else?
But in those darkest most shaky faithless moments I am pierced through to the heart by the words of my master, the Lord Jesus Christ, in Luke 9:62.
"No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the
People of faith have a special place. People who have forsaken all to follow Christ and to do what He has called them to do are precious in His sight. The world may hate you. Your family may hate you. Your coworkers may avoid you at all costs and hate you. You may be despised and rejected of men a man or woman of sorrows acquainted with grief but so was the One who was bruised for your transgressions. The servant is not greater than his master. If the world hated and did not understand Him then certainly the same should be said about you.
The journey of faith is difficult. It will cost you your life. But the reward is great. Look at verse 16 with me again.
16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
Do you know what the greatest obstacle to true faithful service to the Lord is? Resources. Either in your mind you have too much to give up or you have too little to get started. Either you are like the rich young ruler or you are like Peter when he stepped out of the boat and started looking at the waves.
This is going to all come together fantastically when we get to chapter 12 and see the command to fix our eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith.
So my admonition to you this morning is to be radicals. Be the type of Christians that make people nervous. Seek the Lord for what He would have you do and then do it. Step out on faith and trust the Lord. Because He is ultimately trustworthy and in your going remember Habakkuk 3:17-19.
17 Though the fig tree should not blossom And there be no fruit on the vines,
Though the yield of the olive should fail And the fields produce no food,
Though the flock should be cut off from the fold And there be no cattle in the stalls, 18 Yet I will exult in the LORD, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. 19 The Lord GOD is my strength, And He has made my feet like hinds' feet, And makes me walk on my high places.
May the Lord help us to do so.
Let’s pray.
Comments:
Login to post comments