Faith Hall of Fame

00:00 Love toy. I was in a series of meetings a number of years ago, and a little guy come up in the afterwards—this small church—and come up in the afterwards and said, "How come you talk so loud? 00:09 There's only a few of us here." So anyway, love children. Love the children. I do have to tell you another story. 00:19 I was in a series of meetings about a year ago, and a little girl came up to me afterwards, and she said, "That was so boring." 00:40 A little six-year-old girl out of the public park. 00:45 You want to turn in your copies of the scriptures to Hebrews chapter 11? Be reading this morning and speaking from verses 1 through 7. 01:00 We get asked a question this morning: How does the truth and reality of things in the spiritual realm become real for us in the physical realm? How does it become real, the fact that God loves us in the physical realm? How does that work itself out? 01:21 How is it the fact that Christ is Lord of the church? How does that work itself out in the physical realm? We understand that there are spiritual realities that are real, and there are physical needs to apply those spiritual realities too. 01:39 How do we get what's true in heaven down here to be true on earth? In other words, how does God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven—Jesus said in the Lord's Prayer—and how does His kingdom come as it is in heaven, and so may it be on earth? 02:01 And I think the answer is by faith. By faith. It is by faith in the person and finished work of Christ, and it is by faith in the Word of God and the God of the Word. 02:15 Anything we receive from God and anything we have to give to God is given and received by faith. So now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it, the elders obtained a good testimony. 02:35 By faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. By faith, Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, 02:56 and through it, he being dead, still speaks. By faith, Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death and was not found because God had taken him. For before he was taken, he had this testimony that he pleased God. But without faith, it is impossible to please him. 03:17 For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. 03:25 By faith, Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. 03:42 We come in our study of the book of Hebrews now to the practical section from 11 and 12 on, where we are able now to begin to flesh out those things which are true spiritually. 03:55 Those things where Christ is seated at the Heavenly Father's right hand interceding for us, and all the truth of the heavenly tabernacle and the blood sacrifice that was applied to our hearts by faith in Christ now is going to have a walk of faith. It's not just a belief of faith, but it is a walk of faith. 04:17 And so we enter into this passage here in chapter 11 to introduce some of the faithful warriors and faithful Christians--faithful believers, rather--of early times. It has been called a Hall of Faith. 04:34 Now, I was just looking up just this morning a little bit how many different Halls of Fame there are. There's a Hall of Fame for about anything you can imagine. There's an Automotive Hall of Fame, an Aviation and Space Hall of Fame, Music Hall of Fame--lots of them for different kinds of music. There's an Art Hall of Fame. 04:54 There's sports of all kinds of Halls of Fame: Rodeo Hall of Fame, Cowboy Hall of Fame. There's a Mining Hall of Fame. There's a Robot Hall of Fame and a Rugby Hall of Fame. You name it, there's experts in it. 05:08 And so when a Hall of Fame is implemented, it is to take the experts or the models--the models and the expert participants in that field--and hold them up for their accomplishments and kind of model things after them. Well, 05:27 so it is with this Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11. It is to take those who have had noble, remarkable, and noteworthy applications of their faith through their lives throughout the Old Testament and to lay it out for us as an example. 05:49 To say, "This is what faith looks like. This is how faith functions. This is how faith makes its way in the world." And by the way, this is the same faith that we're to have on this side of the cross, on this side of Christ's sacrifice. So we're talking about faith the next several Sundays. 06:11 Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. We're talking about believing in God. We're talking about obeying God. We're talking about charting a way forward in life, and we're talking about not drawing back. 06:29 We dare not disconnect the first several verses of chapter 11 with the last several verses of chapter 10. "For yet a little while, and he who is coming will come and will not tarry." You believe that? If you do so, it is by faith. "And now the just shall live by faith." A quotation from Habakkuk, 06:51 also used by Paul in Romans chapter 1. "The just shall live by faith. But if anyone draws back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who draw back to perdition or to destruction, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul." So now, what is this faith that he is trying to emphasize that we need? 07:13 Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Now, this actually means that there is a world out there that we are convinced that exists, even though it is unseen. You cannot put it in a test tube. You cannot touch it. 07:32 You cannot smell it. You cannot perceive it with your senses. You can't look at it with physical eyes. But nevertheless, that world out there is real, and it is actually more real than the physical world of which we are part of. Do you believe that? I have had to chew on that statement for a long time. 07:53 Is the spiritual world more real than the physical? Well, the physical is real. I mean, we're sitting on chairs. We're standing and touching behind a wooden pulpit here. We're standing in our shoes on the floor. It's real. 08:10 But the spiritual world is more real because that is the realm of God. God is the ultimate reality, and since God is Spirit, then the Spirit world is even more real and more impactful than the physical world around us. 08:30 And so he says, "Even though we can't see it, we are confident that what we're hoping for or we're expecting is real." It's real. Now, the word "faith is a substance" means confidence--the confidence of things hoped for or expected. 08:49 The word "hoped for" here is not--we know this, but it's not something that you hope is in existence. You hope happens. But this word in "hope" in the scripture means expectation. We're expecting something that we are convinced and have confidence is real. It's not just a pie in the sky, 09:11 but it is a real place with a real God, with a real heaven, with a real hell, with real beings--spirit beings, angels, demons--and it is a real world, and they impact the world around us. And so we are confident. 09:28 We have assurance of the reality of things that we're expecting, and we have conviction of things that are unseen--the evidence of things or the proof of things or the conviction of things that are not seen. What is invisible we believe in. 09:49 Now, this is different than the belief of many in the last several hundred years since the Enlightenment and the scientific age. The scientific age introduced the fact or the idea that people had that if it is not measurable and it is not scientifically provable, then it does not exist. 10:08 And that was contrary to many hundreds and thousands of years believing in the unseen spiritual supernatural world. Now, in Western society, that was laid aside for reason. They said, "We will be reasonable. We are people of reason. 10:27 So if we can't reason it out, if it must be accepted by faith, we don't believe it." That doesn't change it, brothers and sisters. That doesn't change the fact that there is a supernatural realm or a realm beyond the realm of time and space and matter. 10:46 This is a spiritual realm where God lives and where God dwells, and it is that realm which he has chosen to enter into in time and space and reality and matter when he came in the incarnation in the person of his Son. And so, if you read, 11:04 like, for instance, in the book of Ephesians, you have the first three chapters, which all talk about the heavenly realms. We're seated with Christ in the heavenly realms, and there's all power and authority and dominion that Christ has in the heavenly realms. 11:17 But then in chapters 4, 5, and 6, you can see how that impacts the earthly realm as we walk out what is true of us in the spiritual realm. And so we do ourselves a disservice when we think that there's nothing else out there. That's not true. 11:37 But we also do ourselves a disservice when we don't think that what's out there can impact here now--us, really--in our daily lives. And God, in his wisdom and in his glory and in his eternal magnificence, is able to impact us right here, 11:58 right now, right today, and change our lives. Because he is the God of out there, but he is also the God of right here. He has made both realms. And what we're just simply saying in verse 1 is that faith is a belief that the unseen realm is real, 12:19 and it needs to be embraced for what it is as the creation of God, just as this world around us is the creation of God. Then he says, "For by it, the elders obtained a good testimony." He is talking about the ancients. The ancient people. 12:39 The ancients of those who walked in faith. They trusted in the Word of God. You see, faith is really trusting in the Word of God and the God of the Word. It is believing that the Word of God is real and true as it has come from a real, 12:58 true God himself, and it is the Word of God and the God--and he is the God of the Word. So they trusted in the Word of God. We trust in the Word of God. 13:10 And so that puts us in the same lineage as those like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Enoch and Noah and Abel that lived out their faith in some very troubled times. 13:25 They trusted in the limited amount of God's Word that they had, and we trust in the totality of God's Word in what we have. And so whatever Word we have from God at whatever time we lived, we take that Word and we trust in it and we obey it and we walk in relationship to it. 13:47 So he says, "Now, the elders obtained a good testimony. A good testimony from God, and they obtained salvation by Jesus Christ." Now, here is something we need to come consider: is that the Old Testament saints were saved just like we are. 14:07 The Old Testament saints were not saved by keeping the law. They expressed their faith by keeping the law, but it was their faith that saved them. Abraham believed God, and it was accounted unto him as righteousness. 14:21 And so all of the people of faith in the Old Testament were looking forward to something and someone. Genesis 3:15, "Even in the garden, as soon as Adam and Eve fell, there was a promise that was given from God that there will be a seed of the woman who will destroy the head of the serpent, 14:42 and in the process, the serpent will bruise his heel." He said, "From your seed, Eve, there will be someone coming that will save this mess that you have gotten yourselves into." And so, do you believe that? And they said, "Yes, we believe that." In chapter 3 and chapter 4. 15:01 This is the one who is going to save this mess. He is going to redeem us. He is going to trod the serpent." She was disappointed when Cain killed Abel. And so here they had this mess continuing, and it has continued for 6,000+ years. But we know that we have looked back on now what they were looking forward to, 15:23 and that is the person of Jesus Christ who was coming and who has come. And so, by it, by faith, the elders obtained a good report. They were saved by faith in the coming of Christ. We are saved by faith in the Christ who came. 15:43 Now, let us look at this also in verse 3. We want to look at 3-7. We want to look at four aspects of faith this morning: faith in creation, faith in sin and sacrifice, faith in walking with God and fellowship with God, and faith in being preserved from the coming judgment. 16:04 So, in verse 3, "By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God so that the things which are seen were not made by things which are visible." So, the things that you can see did not bring forth the things that are. It was brought forth by the Word of God. 16:26 The most basic element of faith is faith in the Creator and the creation that the Creator created. 16:34 The Bible says in Genesis chapter 1, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and God said, 'Let there be,' and there was." He created the world. This word "worlds" here can also mean the ages and the universe. 16:55 He created all that is visible and all that is invisible, both seen and unseen. He is the Creator. And when it came to the seen, the visible, he spoke and it was created. 17:11 Exodus chapter 20 says, "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth to see and all that in them is." In six days! Now, some people say, "Well, the days could be ages. They could be periods of time. They could be 1,000 years for one day and 1,000 years for another day." But the Bible says in Exodus chapter 20, 17:31 in the giving of the law, that God created it in six days and everything in it was created in those six days. Psalm 33:6 says, "By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth." So, 17:51 all of the heavens, all of the stars, the moon, the sun, the stars, the heavenly beings were created by the Word of his mouth as were all the things around us. 18:04 The only thing that Genesis says that he actually created with his hands in Genesis was man and woman as he fashioned that lump of clay and that rib into a body and breathed into them the breath of life. And so we believe this by faith. Yes, there is evidence. 18:25 Yes, there is evidence. 18:26 There is good evidence in the world around us, in the created world, in the creation. There are all kinds of reasons to believe in a young earth creation. 18:42 But the bottom line is we trust the one who was there who told us what happened and how it happened, rather than trusting someone who was not there who tries to tell us what happened and what did not happen. So, we will trust the Word of God. 19:00 We will trust the Word of God that the things that the Word of God says are true and without error. 19:07 That opposed to the scientific world, which was not there and who tries to project backwards onto the creation or onto the world, the universe, project backwards based on what they see in the present. They project backwards based on what they see in the present by use of carbon-14 dating methods and so on. 19:29 But we base what we believe on the Word of God who was there and told us what happened because he did it and he told us and he is true and he is trustworthy. Believing in the book of Genesis, believing in the scripture from cover to cover, it is very, 19:49 very difficult to maintain faith if you do not believe what God has told us about himself and about what has happened in the past and what is going to happen in the future. And if you cannot trust what he says about the past, how will we ever trust what he says about the future? 20:10 And so we know that these things were created by him, by the Word of God. The seen, without being influenced by the seen, it is influenced by the unseen. So, we have creation faith, the most basic belief in scripture. 20:29 Then we have this sin and sacrifice faith where he talks here in verse 4 about sin and sacrifice. 20:38 "By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and through it he being dead still speaked." Now, 20:52 we should probably take a trip back to Genesis chapter 3 and Genesis chapter 4 because we have to wonder how did Abel know how to sacrifice? How did Cain and Abel know how to sacrifice? How did Abel know what to bring? 21:11 And so we know that he was a keeper of sheep and Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in Genesis 4:3, "In the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat, and the Lord respected Abel and his offering, 21:31 but he did not respect Cain and his offering." And then we know what happened. What about this offering? How did they know what to bring? We are not told exactly. Were they to bring the best that they had? If so, it appears that Abel brought the best. 21:50 He brought the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. This was a good, well, healthy lamb, a sheep that he brought. 22:00 And Cain brought some of his crops. We do not know the condition of the crops. Some Bible scholars will say that Abel brought his best and Cain did not bring his best. Well, we do not know that for sure. Was it the faith that they had? That Abel had faith in God and Cain was just going through a ritual? 22:20 We do not know that either. Was it that he brought the firstborn and maybe, or the first fruits, and maybe Cain did not bring his first fruits? He brought the last fruits. We do not know. Or was it the blood? 22:36 I suspect that it had to do with the sacrifice that God had sacrificed to clothe Adam and Eve early in their sinful life. 22:46 And so when Adam and Eve were hiding themselves under the fig leaves, God clothed them by shedding the blood of an animal and taking the skin and clothing them. And I think that is a key to what Adam or Abel and Cain knew should happen. That it was a prototype. 23:08 It was an act of faith saying, "We know that we are sinners. We know that we need to be covered by blood and we know that we need to come to God in his way." Whatever way it was, they did not come. One came God's way and one came man's way. 23:30 I believe Abel came God's way because he was looking forward by faith to this Passover sacrifice that he did not know much about, but he knew that God had clothed mom and dad with the skins and probably Abel and Cain were then also clothed by skins. I do not think they were wearing fig leaves. I think they were wearing probably skins of some sort. 23:50 And God had set the record here that you come to him covered with the covering that he provides for us, and that is blood, a blood sacrifice. 24:03 For in Hebrews we find out that it says, "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." And so I believe that Abel was in touch with that in some primitive form. He knew what God required. He followed through and Cain did not. So, what do we learn here about Abel? 24:25 We learn here that he came in faith. He came in faith in the promise of God, the Word of God, and the provision of God. A primitive faith, yes. He did not have all of the scriptures. He did not have all of the knowledge of God that we have today, obviously. 24:42 But he took what he knew and he acted on it and he rested in it and he did not try to change it. 24:48 He did not try to short-circuit it. He did not try to bypass it. He just recognized his sinfulness and he brought the propitiatory sacrifice and God accepted it. So, we come to God by faith. By faith now on this side of the cross, 25:10 in the finished work of the cross. We have got more information as a Jewish people with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and then Moses and then the prophets all pointing to Christ, pointing to Christ, pointing to Christ, and they were saved by faith in what was to come. 25:28 We now are saved by faith in what has come and who has come. And we are convinced that as sinners we need a blood sacrifice to cover our sins and to wash them clean. So, we have the faith in creation. 25:47 We have faith in the sacrificial work and then we have faith in walking in fellowship with God. By faith, Enoch was taken away, verse 5, so that he did not see death and was not found because God had taken him. So, 26:06 we are moving through the early chapters of Genesis, exploring their faith, exemplifying their faith. "For before he was taken he had this testimony that he pleased God." Again, we should look at Genesis chapter 5 in order to understand this. 26:24 Enoch was the father of Methuselah and Enoch walked with God, verse 18 of Genesis 5, excuse me, verse 19, "After he begot Enoch, Jared lived eight hundred years and had sons and daughters." So, all the days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty-two years and he died. 26:44 "Enoch lived sixty-five years and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years and had sons and daughters." So, all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years and Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him. What in the world happened to Enoch? 27:04 One day they could not find him. Where did he go? We do not know if anybody saw this, witnessed this, but he just disappeared. God took him. Why? We find out in the book of Hebrews right here in this passage that he pleased God in his walk with God. He was not found because God had taken him. 27:25 "For before he was taken he had this testimony that he pleased God." What was it that enabled Enoch to walk with God and please God? It was his faith. It was his faith. But without faith, verse 6, it is impossible to please God. There is no way that Enoch could please God without faith. 27:45 No way. There is no way that Enoch could walk with God without faith. And there is no way that we can either. Walking with God, we walk with him by faith in who he is, in what he has done, in what he has said. "Lord our God, be with us," as he was with our fathers. 28:04 "May he not leave us nor forsake us. That he may incline our hearts to himself to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments which he commanded our fathers." See, God wants us to walk with him. He wants to walk with us even back to the garden. That God came walking in the cool of the day, 28:26 the cool of the evening to commune, to fellowship, and to communicate and to be with Adam and Eve. And then, of course, that fateful night when he came that evening and he discovered, well, he already knew it, but he discovered, they found out that he discovered that they had sinned and that fellowship was broken. 28:46 And now, through the sacrificial work of the lamb, that fellowship is being renewed and it is by faith again. And so God says in Psalm 81, verse 13, "Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways." That is what God desires of us, to walk in his ways. 29:08 Psalm 89:15, "Blessed are the people who know the joyful sound. They walk, O Lord, in the light of your countenance." You walk in the light of the countenance of God by faith in a way that is pleasing him. We walk by agreeing with God. 29:22 Amos 3 says, "Can two walk together except they be agreed?" God will not walk with one who does not agree with him and one who does not agree with him will not walk with God. We walk in agreement and that in agreement is not getting God to agree with us, but him getting us to agree with him. The essence of faith, 29:42 to believe that the unseen is real and to have the conviction and the assurance that what God has said and who he is and what he has done is the final word. 29:54 Micah 5:5, "But we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever." Revelation 3, verse 4, "You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments and they shall walk with me in white for they are worthy." Worthy. 30:14 I think we should just stand up for a minute and just stand up and shake off the sleep a little bit, these sleepy ones. 30:26 I really do see this. 30:30 It is nice and warm to be here this morning. It is cool outside. Good place to go to church. It is later. And then we come to the fourth one here this morning and that is Noah. We have talked about the creation. We have talked about sin and salvation. We have talked about walking with God. 30:49 Now, what is this thing that Noah did? "Being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith." Noah. 31:10 Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord because Noah was a man of faith. God required of Noah, "Build an ark." God, what is an ark? It is a big boat. "Build it out of the right kind of furnishings and the right kind of wood and the right kind of pitch and the right dimensions." And God, what are we doing this for? Because it is going to rain. 31:29 God, what is rain? Well, rain is water coming down from the sky. Well, God, I have never seen water coming down from the sky except the mist. How could a boat float in the mist and in the dew? And God says, "That is okay. You leave it to me and you just trust me and you do what I tell you to do." And Noah walked with God by faith. 31:51 He had not yet seen the end result, but he knew there was something coming that was not going to be good. And if he wanted to survive and him and his children and his sons, wives, and his wife, eight souls, if they were going to survive they needed to obey God even when they did not understand. 32:11 We have not yet seen all that God has prepared for us. We have not yet seen what is going to happen in this old wicked world in the coming judgment. But we know enough. We know enough. God has told us enough to prepare, to prepare our hearts, to prepare our families, to prepare for the coming judgment. 32:33 And Noah blessed God by preparing in response to the Word of God and the command of God and he did so out of godly fear. "He was divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, the fear of the Lord." Deuteronomy 10, 32:53 verse 12 says, "And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways and to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul?" Joshua 24:14, we are very familiar with that verse where it says, 33:13 "Ask for me and my house; we will serve the Lord." But what we do not often think about is Joshua 24:14, right ahead of that verse where it says, "Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and truth." Isaiah 50, verse 10, "Who among you fears the Lord? Who obeys the voice of his servant? 33:32 Who walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon his God." Jesus talked about this. He said this is not just an Old Testament concept, the fear of the Lord, but the fear of the Lord is for the New Testament as well. 33:49 "Fear not him who can kill the body, but fear him who can kill both body and soul in hell." Do not fear the enemy. Do not fear man. Do not be afraid. Walk by faith. And yet, the thing that you need to fear is you fear God who is able to take both body and soul casted into hell of those who reject him. 34:10 And so, fear him. And in Acts 10, verse 35 it says, "In every nation, whoever fears him and works righteousness is accepted by him." The fear of the Lord, the reverential awe and respect and even the terror of the Lord, Paul says, for those who are outside of Christ. 34:30 We know the terror of the Lord so we persuade men, we convince men and women to turn to Christ. This says he saved, he prepared an ark for the salvation of his family. Now, what was it, we can ask? What was it that saved Noah? What was it that saved Noah? 34:53 Was it the ark? 34:57 I would say no. It was his faith. 35:04 That is the whole point here. It was his faith in the Word of God, it was faith in the person of Christ coming. It was his faith in what God had said that God was going to accomplish it and that moved him. We had a wonderful discussion this morning about faith and works, faith and works. And working faith, 35:23 you hear of the Reformed brothers who will talk about faith alone and grace alone in Christ alone. I agree with that if you define what faith is. 35:36 And faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen that motivates through godly fear to action. Not to pay for our sin. It is not that Christ paid for eighty percent of your sin and you get to pay for the other twenty. 35:56 It is not even that Christ paid for ninety percent of your sin and you get to pay for or you have to pay for the other ten. Christ paid for a hundred percent. But what we are talking here about is living faith, not just a mental agreement with something. It is faith that moves, faith that lives, faith that surrenders, faith that obeys, faith that gets involved, 36:18 faith that stakes its eternity on that truth. That is the kind of living faith that these men and women in the Old Testament had. As limited as their information was, they believed God and they obeyed God out of that sense of passion for God and fear of the Lord. 36:41 Someone has said there is no commendation without faith and there is no condemnation with faith. Now, you take all of these people in this hall of faith, not a one of them is commended except because of their faith. 37:02 And not one of them with faith is condemned. They are held up in high esteem. And so it is with us. Without faith, brothers and sisters, it is still impossible to please God. For he that comes to God must, 37:22 first of all, he believe that he is. That is kind of a no-brainer. I mean, if you are going to come to something, you have got to believe that it is something to come to. 37:31 But not only that, but that he is a rewarder, that he is a good God, that he is a true God, that he is a faithful God, that he will do what he said even though thousands of years passed before you see it happen. 37:48 So it was with them. But they had staked their whole eternal life and existence on that truth. So, to make this a little practical this morning, we want to just look and see that this is directly tied, all of chapter 11 is directly tied to chapter 10, 38:09 verse 32. For he says, "But recall the former days in which after you were illuminated you endured a great struggle and suffering. 38:22 For you had compassion," verse 33, "partly while you were made a spectacle both by reproaches and tribulations and partly while you became companions of those who were so treated. 38:35 You went through excruciating, painful, difficult, suffering times of trial that tested your faith. You could have drawn back, but you did not draw back because that is the opposite of pleasing God. If you draw back, he has no pleasure in you. 38:57 But you are not of those who draw back to destruction, but you are those who believe for the saving of the soul and this is what it looks like," chapter 11. What I am trying to say is that faith is not faith in the just faith is not just real in the good times. 39:17 It must stand the test of the trial, of the difficult times. It must stand the test of suffering and tribulations and reproaches and difficulties. 39:37 It is through the struggles of life that faith is tested and character is developed and that faith is really faith. 39:50 Bad things happen in people's lives. 39:55 As a pastor, when I see bad things happen in people's lives or what it looks like bad things, hard things, let me get that out of the safe, hard things happen in people's lives. 40:07 And we pray that people's faith would not shrink, that they would not shrink back, that they would not draw back. And so, there is this time, this tension where you are concerned and you pray for this person, you pray for them and you say, 40:27 "Lord, let their faith increase and be strong, strengthen their faith." Here is what I want you to see from this passage, is that if you do have real faith, it will survive. It will survive. You will survive. 40:45 You will come through by faith in the promise of God, in the person of Christ, in the will of God, in the Word of God, in the provision of God, in the strength of God. 41:00 So, the perseverance here is the thing that really makes faith live, is when it perseveres. So, we think about this in our children. We watch our children. We watch our loved ones go through hard times and say, "Oh, Lord, strengthen their faith." Yes, we can pray that. 41:19 We need to pray that. But if they really have faith, they will press in and they will continue. 41:28 Not like those who draw back to destruction, but in the face of difficulty and great crisis. "These all died not having fully received the promise." I remember years ago when I was still in junior high, 41:48 maybe junior high or high school, 41:50 one of our a cousin of mine, her and her husband, were teaching at our Christian school. 41:59 One morning we got a call that their little baby, who they had waited and waited and waited to try to have, they had tried and tried and tried to have a natural-born child and not being thinking they were not able to, they adopted a little boy. 42:19 And shortly after she became pregnant and they had this little boy, second little boy. And we got a call one morning and the child was about two months that the baby had died during the night with a crib death. 42:38 Oh, God. Lord, help, strengthen. 42:45 This husband, father, who married my cousin, didn't come from a Christian background, we were concerned, "Lord, is his faith real? Is her faith real? Is it genuine? Will you take them through this time?" And God, in the midst of their sorrow and of their pain and of their crying out to Him, 43:08 carried them along with the help of family and a church family who loved them and ministered to them and they made it. But I remember talking to Him about twenty-five years later, maybe not quite twenty-five, twenty, fifteen, 43:28 twenty years later, about that event. He said, "If it would not have been for his faith," we would have got out of low memory and crying. 43:45 "But his faith 43:49 enabled him to persevere." Now, here is what I want to go with that. 43:52 He said, "After all these years, I still don't understand and I still don't see a purpose in it." Do you think after a period of time you would see a purpose? You would see something, "God, something good had to come out of this." And he said, "I still don't see any purpose in it. 44:12 I still don't see any good coming out of it. 44:14 But I still trust God." "These all died in faith," chapter 11, "not having received the promise," verse 39. They did not receive the promise, 44:36 God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us. I can't say I understand all the meaning of that verse. 44:48 But my takeaway for this morning is this: even when you don't see the end result of your faith and understanding and purpose in the midst of those trials, even when you go to your grave and still wonder what God was up to, you still do it with faith, 45:11 in the goodness of God, in the provision of Christ, in the sacrifice for sin, in the preservation of your soul in the day of judgment. 45:27 And without that kind of faith, it is impossible to please God 45:34 because God is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. 45:41 Let's pray. 45:44 Lord, this morning we do not know where life will bring us. We do not know what You will allow to have happen in our lives. Little did we know last night there would be an accident which several of our young wives would be involved in. 46:05 We don't know those things in advance. 46:09 We don't always know how our response to those things will be, but Lord, give us the kind of faith that will not be shaken in the midst of suffering, trials, difficulties, disasters. 46:25 Lord, let us rest in You, in Your goodness. We don't see You, but we know that You are real. We don't see grace, but we know that it is real. 46:42 We don't see the Holy Spirit, the working of Christ, but we know that He is real and that You are good and that You reward us as we seek diligently after You, 46:58 as we walk in the fear of the Lord and as we believe 47:04 and hold on to that living response to the goodness of God. 47:12 So, Lord, create faith in us, strengthen our faith and our resolve to obey, a faith that would change our lives, just taking God and His Word. Lord, as we go through this chapter on faith, 47:32 I pray for the other brothers that as they walk us through the next several messages as well, 47:39 that You would impress upon us the reality, 47:46 the reality of who You are and of the realm of heaven and the blessings to come. In Jesus' name. Amen.