Bon dia. Oh, good morning, brothers and sisters. Wonderful to be in Richmond, to be among you, dear brothers and sisters.
You notice I didn’t wear a necktie this morning. It’s because I never wear one in Brazil, and I couldn’t locate one here. I almost asked Kenny if I could wear his, but I didn’t think it was a very good idea.
But it is wonderful to be among you, to see some of you that we haven’t had opportunity to fellowship with in a while, and to see a lot of new, beautiful faces. Wonderful to see you. We do trust the Lord will give us some more time of fellowship later.
Before I actually share from the Scriptures what I feel the Lord has put in my heart, I want to take a very brief time and just report to you of the goodness of our Lord. I know you already know, but I’m going to tell you again anyhow: how faithful He is to His people.
We can never be separated from His love, no matter where we are, regardless of our circumstances, whatever it is that we are going through. Absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God. He is utterly faithful to us as His people, to His Word, and to all of His promises.
I just want to report to you that He has been wonderfully faithful to Isabel and me in many, many different ways. He has been faithful to provide for us. He has been faithful to protect us. He has been faithful to lead us. And yes, brothers and sisters, He has been faithful to discipline us.
You know, sometimes we don’t see that as a blessing of the Lord. It’s like the writer of the book of Hebrews says: discipline is a difficult thing to go through, and it’s only afterwards that you look back and see how wonderful it really was.
We’re also glad to report to you that the Lord is faithful in blessing us. Some of you may have heard; some of you may not. But Isabel and I are expecting a baby in September.
I’ll leave it to you to think about what it must be like to be a father at seventy, okay?
You know, this morning I was thinking about how to direct your attention to this portion of the Word of God. Because it’s Hebrews. But if you’ll notice, that’s all it says in the Bible: just Hebrews. It doesn’t say it is a letter to the Hebrews; it just says Hebrews.
But this morning, I think I’d like to direct you to the Gospel according to Hebrews. You know, brothers and sisters, I think we sometimes do ourselves a great disfavor by thinking of the Gospel only in terms of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Do you know that from Genesis to Revelation, it’s all Gospel? It’s all wonderful good news about God’s great love for us. And so this morning I want us to have some fellowship together out of the Scriptures in the Gospel according to Hebrews.
So let’s start with Hebrews, chapter 1. Hebrews—the Gospel according to Hebrews—chapter 1, verse 1 and part of verse 2:
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son.
Chapter 2, verse 1:
For this reason, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it.
Chapter 4, verse 2:
For indeed, we had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.
Chapter 11, verses 1 and 2:
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for,
The conviction of things not seen.
For by it men of old gained approval.
Chapter 12, verses 1 and 2:
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us,
Let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us,
And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
Fixing our eyes on Jesus,
The Author and Perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Let’s ask our risen, reigning Lord to continue His blessings upon us as we share this time together.
Lord, thank You so much for this wonderful opportunity that You have already granted us today: to come and sit with You at Your table, to try to set aside all the things that distract us and interfere with our seeing You more clearly.
Lord, thank You so much that Your Holy Spirit was here to guide us and direct us in our own humble way of trying to offer the thanks, praise, and worship that You rightfully deserve.
Lord, we are thankful that as we continue now in this time, we have Your presence here to be our help. Lord, we want to acknowledge before You that without You we can do nothing; that You alone have the words of eternal life; that no man by himself can speak Your Word.
Lord, we not only need to be strengthened and led by You today in order to speak Your Word; we want to be able to listen and hear what You have to say. And we want to go out of this place today determined to obey what You speak.
So help us by Your Spirit, all of us. We just place ourselves under that wonderful enabling anointing of Your Spirit, for You to accomplish what is in Your heart for these moments we have together. We thank You in advance for all Your goodness, and we do it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
I’m sure that most of you have read a number of times this Gospel according to Hebrews. Now, why do I hesitate to call it a letter? Because it doesn’t start like a letter. It has no greetings. It just says, “God.”
But it ends like a letter. So that is the thing that is a little difficult—to really put a tag on this and say what it is. It’s more like a treatise. It’s really a burden put down in written form from someone who saw something very serious happening to some people he loved very, very deeply.
This portion of the Word of God contains many, many warnings. Now, these are not empty warnings; these are real warnings, because the people to whom he was writing were in very serious danger.
Now, I don’t know about you, brothers and sisters, but for myself, when I think about the Gospel, I don’t include warnings in my mind. But I think that is wrong. I think the Gospel includes warnings. We find that in the Gospels themselves. Our Lord Jesus warns us about false Christs, false prophets, and many other things.
This letter—this portion of God’s Word—contains many warnings. But He doesn’t stop there. He also gives many, many encouragements. So wherever he has to issue a warning, he always wants to come down on the positive side of great encouragement.
You go through sometime and read how many times you find this little phrase: “Let us, let us, let us.” Just there in Hebrews 12, you find, “Let us, let us.” And it is always a word of encouragement.
Now, what was the real issue that this writer was concerned about? It was probably the most serious issue that any group of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ could ever face.
Simply put, these ones to whom this portion of God’s Word is being written were people who had a genuine enlightening experience of seeing the Lord Jesus as their long-promised Messiah. As you can tell by the title, these were Jewish people that this writer was writing to.
They had had an experience where their eyes had been opened and they had seen the Lord Jesus as the Messiah. But now something had happened. We’re not told exactly what happened, but something had come in and influenced their lives to where they were at least on the verge of turning their backs on all of that and going back into Judaism, rejecting all the finished work of our Lord Jesus.
Now, my brothers and sisters, if we go to anybody other than the Lord Jesus, what hope do we have? If we try to find help for our life and hope for the future, where else are you going to find it?
What we are faced with here is that God has given His absolute best, and it was not good enough. For some reason, it was not good enough. Now, to me, I don’t know that there is anything of a more severe nature than something like this.
This is not just something related to what happened almost two thousand years ago to this group of people. It is a real danger facing every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are living in a hostile world. The god of this world, the arch-enemy of God and the arch-enemy of God’s people, is determined to do everything within his power to get us away from fully entering into all that is ours in our Lord Jesus Christ.
He is the wisest creature God ever created. So what does that mean to us? He is wiser than we are. Not only that, he is a liar. He is someone who will not tell you the truth. He will tell you half-lies. But he is a liar. He was from the beginning; he is the father of lies.
He is the god of this world. He is the one influencing so much of what is happening in the world. But here we are as God’s redeemed people, citizens of a heavenly realm, living here in this hostile environment.
We are fools, my brothers and sisters, if we think that somehow these kinds of things do not confront us as well. The effort is always to use subtle ways to get our focus and our attention on somebody other than the person of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
This whole letter is referred to in the last chapter as a strong word of encouragement. Brothers and sisters, may we be a people willing to listen when God speaks a strong word of encouragement to us.
Please don’t be so foolish as to think that somehow we can escape the same kinds of dangers that these people faced in this time. In some ways, we might say the dangers we face are even greater.
We are not living just at the end of the end. I mean, we are at the very last few seconds of what God is doing. We know from the Word of God that during this time the enemy is going to intensify his efforts simply to get us focused on somebody else other than our Lord Jesus Christ.
My brothers and sisters, if you are focused someplace else, if somehow you have gotten distracted or misled, or something else has been substituted for the very person of the Lord Jesus Christ, you are in danger. You need to listen to the warnings this writer issues in this portion of God’s Word.
So I have read five portions from this letter to the Hebrews. Forgive me, I am going to refer to it as a letter to the Hebrews, okay? Because I have been saying it that way for so long that it is hard for me to change.
This writer begins by pointing out to us, first of all, that God has always been faithful to speak. There has never been a time when God has not spoken.
Maybe we can gain a little help by understanding something of the situation that faced God Himself. My own understanding from reading the Scriptures is that when the perfect God created a universe in Genesis 1:1—
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
—I think the writer just puts a period there and says, “That is what God did.” He doesn’t tell us how He did it. He doesn’t tell us how long He took. He just says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Then, in verse 2, something happened of tremendous significance, where there was emptiness, void, and darkness. Now, my understanding is that God did not create it that way in the beginning. How can a perfect God create something imperfect, with emptiness, darkness, and void? He cannot.
So something happened in God’s universe. We don’t want to take any time this morning to go back to that, but some of you, I think, have read about how Satan rebelled against the throne of God and God’s judgment came upon him. I think what we have on this planet today is the result of God’s judgment on Lucifer.
Then we find in Genesis 1:26 God saying something very wonderful:
Let Us make man in Our image, and let them rule.
This chaotic condition was chaotic for the simple reason that God’s government was not a reality there. Another kingdom had been set up there. The kingdom of darkness had entered in. Something came in that God never desired to happen.
God created beings in such a way that they had the capacity to rebel and do their own thing, and that is exactly what Lucifer did. But notice what God did. He said, “Let Us make man in Our own image, and let them take dominion.”
What that says to me, brothers and sisters, is that God’s purpose for man was to be an instrument of establishing the kingdom of God here on this planet.
As far as we can tell, this is the only planet in God’s big universe that has this kind of problem. From beginning to end, the earth is the focus of God’s attention—not the heavens, although that is there. But the focus is on the earth. Why? Because, as far as we can tell, this is the only place in the universe where God’s government is not a full reality.
When the Lord Jesus teaches us to pray:
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
What God has been seeking to do in all of this is to reestablish His eternal government on this planet. He has chosen human beings to be the instruments of doing this.
Well, you know, when we look back, we say, “Well, Lord, maybe You made a mistake.” But He never makes a mistake, and He doesn’t have to change His mind. He may change His ways, but He doesn’t change His mind.
I’m glad to report to you this morning—this is good news—there is presently now a Man who is in absolute control of everything that happens on this planet and in the universe. You know what His name is? His name is Jesus.
He is one hundred percent God and one hundred percent Man, a totally unique blend that there never was in the whole world before. Right now, today, the Christian world is celebrating His resurrection.
But, brothers and sisters, let’s not stop there. Let’s see that this resurrected One has now become the ascended One, and He is seated at the right hand of Majesty on high, in the position of absolute authority over everything that happens in the universe, including this planet.
Now, by His sovereign choice, He is allowing Satan to do his work. But please, let’s not forget what we have been called to be. We have been called to be instruments of reconciliation in this world—not just to reconcile people back to God, but to reconcile the whole universe back to Him.
Because of who God is, He cannot rest, brothers and sisters, until everything in His universe is in perfect harmony with His will and with all that He is doing.
So He has been working, and He has been speaking from the very beginning. The heavens declare the glory of God, the psalmist tells us. When God creates something, He speaks through His creation.
What is He trying to do? First of all, He wants us to know what kind of God He is. Now, this is a problem for all of us. At least in the beginning, it is a problem.
Think about it, brother and sister. Before you had a real experience of coming to know the living God, what were your concepts about God? I can tell you what mine were.
When I was fifteen or sixteen years old, if you had asked me, “Ernie, I want you to draw a picture of God,” what I would have drawn was a picture of a man with an angry face, a long beard, and a big stick. That was my idea.
I don’t know where it came from, but that was my concept of who God was. He always had an angry look on His face, a long beard, and a big stick. Well, why would you want to know somebody like that?
But you know what I discovered by His mercy? When He Himself came and flooded into my life, I found out He wasn’t like that at all. He was perfect love, who had provided such unbelievable blessings that it exploded all those false concepts I had about Him.
Why does God speak? So that you and I will come to know Him as He truly is—not what somebody else says, but that you will come to know Him as He really is. If you know the truth, you know what will happen? The Lord Jesus says you will be set free. You will be liberated.
What you believe about God tremendously affects your relationship to Him. So God has been speaking to reveal Himself to us, to reveal to us His purpose, and to reveal to us His ways.
As we find out here, God has been faithful to speak. In times past, He spoke by the prophets in many portions and in many ways. He has always been faithful to speak.
But there was a limit to what we could understand about God and God’s purpose just on the basis of what He had spoken previously. Oh, my dear brothers and sisters, we should be rejoicing this morning that God did not stop speaking there.
In these last days—when are the last days? With the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ—during these last days, God has spoken to us in a very, very, very special way. He has spoken to us in His Son.
I don’t pretend this morning to have much understanding of all that that means. But I do believe that God has spoken ultimately, totally, completely, comprehensively—everything He ever wanted to say. He said it once for all.
It includes everything else He has ever said. Anything He said through the prophets, anything He said in the Old Testament, He has said it—and said much more—in the person of His own Son. He doesn’t have to repeat Himself.
It is a once-for-all declaration of who He is, what His purpose is, and what His ways are. You see, my brothers and sisters, if somehow we did not understand the necessity of our Lord Jesus dying on the cross, we could never understand the cross.
Why is the cross a necessity? We can understand it only as we begin to see it worked out in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
When the Lord Jesus became the incarnate Word, as in John 1:1—
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
—and then John 1:14:
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
What we have here is, in my estimation, the greatest event that could ever have happened in the history of the universe: God the Son became a human being in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Please, my dear brothers and sisters—especially you younger brothers and sisters—don’t lose sight of who this One is that we call Jesus. He didn’t become the Son of God. He is eternally the Son of God.
Within the Godhead there was God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. They are all three equally eternal and equal in every other way.
Be careful when it comes to what happens at Christmastime. When you begin to remember the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, don’t think for one moment that He was born in Bethlehem. He was incarnated in Bethlehem, but He never had a birth—not as God. As Man, yes.
Please understand that in our Lord Jesus Christ, you have this perfect coming together of God and man. We see man as God always wanted him to be.
We become so accustomed to seeing men as we are now. We look at ourselves, we look at other people, and what do we conclude? Falsely, that this is the way God wanted men and women to be.
It is wrong, my brothers and sisters. You want to know what God wanted us to be? You look at His Son. In His Son, He declares to us, “This is what I have for you.”
In His great salvation, He not only foreknew us, but He predestined us. Listen to this: He predefined us to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
What that says to me is that God’s desire for every one of us is to have the image of His own Son fully stamped upon our lives. How does He do this? He does it by putting the life of His Son in us. That life begins to grow; it undergoes discipline, and the discipline produces that character.
Oh, my brothers and sisters, God has spoken volumes upon volumes upon volumes just by the coming of His Son into this world. He is the living Word of God.
Anything else you read, you need to judge in light of what God has said through His Son. Some of us are pleased to go back and just read the Old Testament and preach from the Old Testament. Please don’t misunderstand: to me, it is all the Word of God.
But it is not all equally a revelation of God. That is, God is limited in the Old Testament as to how we understand Him to be. But when we come to the person of His Son, there is no limit.
God has opened the door completely. He has taken the veil totally away, and the Lord Jesus said:
He who has seen Me has seen the Father.
Oh, my brothers and sisters, why do we want to go someplace else? Why do we let people lead us down and deceive us? We should not. We need to hold on to this. We need to buy the truth and do not sell it. It is our Lord Jesus Himself.
My observation is that the Gospel of our Lord Jesus has not had its impact in this world, in the United States, and in many other places, for one simple reason: we have not preached a full Gospel.
We have preached a limited Gospel—a Gospel that Jesus did die for our sins. As our brother Jim said this morning, please don’t ever let us take away from that. Without that, there is no hope for us.
But that is not the end; that is the beginning, my brothers and sisters. Do you know that in Him, in our Lord Jesus, is all that you will ever need today, tomorrow, and all the way out into eternity? You do not need anything else other than what you find in our Lord Jesus.
Now, that is the Gospel. There are some people in this world—and may God lay hold of some of your hearts—to be willing to go places where they have never heard about our wonderful Lord, or where what they have heard has been lies and distortions.
People are locked in poverty and locked in sin without hope because there is no one to go and tell them about this great Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Chapter 2. The writer says, because God has spoken to us in His Son, “For this reason”—listen—“for this reason”:
We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it.
Why would the Holy Spirit put something like this in the Bible if it were not a possibility for you and for me? Even though we have heard it at one time, what we heard may not have gotten its grip on our hearts deeply enough, and now we begin to slip away from it.
It was the problem in the churches of Galatia to which Paul was writing. It was a problem in the church in Colossae. It has been a problem throughout church history, and it is a problem today, my brothers and sisters: we do not listen carefully enough. Pay much closer attention to what we have heard.
What I have discovered is that there is a difference between sickness and symptoms. That is no great discovery; many people have discovered this.
When the writer is encouraging us to pay much closer attention to what we have heard, the temptation is that you and I will focus our attention on being able to listen more carefully. But that is not where the real problem is, my brother. That is the symptom.
You know what the sickness is? There is something wrong with our hearts. Spiritually speaking, there is a direct connection between the heart and the ear.
You can find it in the parable of the sower that our Lord Jesus spoke. Where was the seed sown, my brothers and sisters? Where was it sown? In the heart.
The problem was not that they did not hear. Some of it did not germinate at all because the heart was hard, and the birds came and snatched it away.
The second kind was very shallow. The soil was very shallow—just a little bit of soil. When it would germinate and grow, the roots would come up, the sun would kill it, and there was no fruit.
Then there was soil where thorns and thistles grew along with that which was growing. It looked beautiful to begin with, and it had good potential. But then, at a certain stage, the thorns and thistles took over.
Those of you who work in your yard have discovered that weeds grow faster than grass. These things grow faster than the Word of God does.
You and I, especially if we are living in a society like you brothers and sisters live in—now, I am not saying it is any more difficult for you than it is where we are. I am not saying that for a moment. But don’t forget: this is one of the subtleties of the enemy.
The deceitfulness of riches, being concerned about the everyday things of life—it gets in there and chokes out. Why? Because you cannot hear? No, because something has happened to your heart.
Your heart has become cluttered with many, many, many things. You hear yourself saying, “I just don’t have time to read the Word of God anymore. There is too much going on for me to get some time to spend with the Lord and meditate and pray.” Too much time—I mean, not enough time, right? If you don’t say it, at least you think it.
But what are we going to do in the midst of this? Are we going to stop listening? Are we going to let our hearts become so full of things that it totally crowds out what God has spoken to us?
Then the Lord talks about the good heart, the honest heart. When the seed comes into it, it receives the seed. The seed germinates, grows, and produces fruit. Now, this is what God has wanted.
This matter of hearing, my brothers and sisters, is not just a matter of hearing; it is a matter of the heart—the condition of our heart.
How can we do something about this? Have you ever tried to do something about your own heart? Maybe the Lord, in His mercy, has been able to unveil to you something of the problem in your heart, and you set out to do something about it on your own. How successful were you? Huh?
There is only One. Oh, my brothers and sisters, this is why we need to know that our Lord Jesus not only suffered on the cross, was buried, and was raised from the dead, but He has been seated at the right hand of the Father, Majesty on high.
Doing what? What is His position? What is His function? For the last two thousand years, I will bet it has been at least a year since most of us have even given any thought to what our Lord has been doing. You know what His position is? He is our great High Priest.
He not only came here and accomplished His work. When He said, “It is finished,” in John 19, it is finished. Nothing needs to be added. Oh, brothers and sisters, nothing needs to be added.
Everything we need was accomplished in the person of our Lord Jesus when He became the Lamb of God on that cross.
But we needed help. We could not do it on our own. So the Lord tells His disciples in John 14, John 15, and John 16, “I am going to send a Helper to you.”
You don’t realize how much you need a Helper, but I know how much you need a Helper, and I am going to send you a Helper. The Spirit of truth is going to lead you into all truth.
It is the Holy Spirit who takes that finished work of our Lord Jesus and leads us personally, individually, and as fully as we want to go into that finished work. But under whose direction does the Holy Spirit function? Our great High Priest.
When it comes here to Hebrews 4, he says:
The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing asunder the soul and spirit, and disclosing the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
My brothers and sisters, our Lord knows everything about your heart and about my heart. He is aware of all the problems. He looks in with those eyes of penetrating fire. He looks right into your heart.
He knows why you do things when you do not know why you do things. He not only knows what you want to do; He knows why you want to do it. And what is He going to do? He is going to work on the why—the motive.
Nobody else can do that, my brothers and sisters. But if we will take our hearts and put them before Him, and say, “Lord, please examine my heart. As the great High Priest, examine my heart. Do whatever needs to be done in my heart so that I have the capacity to pay much closer attention to what You have said.”
Chapter 4, verse 2:
For indeed, we have had good news preached to us, just as they also.
That is speaking about those that God brought out of Egypt and wanted to bring into the land of Canaan, into His rest. You remember when they got to Kadesh-barnea, they refused to go in. They refused to listen.
Even though they had committed themselves back in Exodus 19, when God spoke to them and they said, “Anything You want, we will do,” when they got to the situation, they listened to the ten spies and not to the two.
What does that prove to us? Democracy is not always the best way to go. Amen.
But they refused to go in. You know God’s judgment on them? He caused them to wander around in the wilderness for forty years until they died out. The writer here tells us why:
Because the word that they heard was not united by faith.
We have had the Gospel preached to us, he says, just as they also. But the word they heard did not profit them because it was not united by faith in those who heard.
I have been trying to get some understanding of what the writer has in mind when he talks about being united by faith. I have gone to a number of books—I don’t have too many in my library anymore—but I went to a number of books.
I think I discovered what the writer was trying to say, because this phrase, “united by faith,” is used in one place to describe what happens when you eat food, it goes into your stomach, you digest it, and it gets assimilated into your whole body.
This is what we are talking about. When God speaks His Word into our heart, does it get assimilated into our lives to where it affects the way we live?
What happened very simply with the children of Israel is that God said, “Go in,” and they said, “No.” They did not obey. They disobeyed.
Not in any way to put any kind of cloud of guilt on us, but let’s think for a moment. Are there any of us here this morning who, maybe at some point in our life, God has spoken to us and we have not obeyed?
I am here to say to you this morning, beginning with myself: if I had obeyed everything that God spoke to me, I would be a different person today. There would be more Jesus formed in my life.
God is always faithful to speak, my brothers and sisters. Always. Sometimes we do not like what He has to say; therefore, we do not listen very carefully, and we do not end up obeying.
But God’s response that He wants from us when He speaks is for us simply to obey what He says to us.
When we have these times together as the Lord’s people, when we open the Word of God and try to let God speak to us through His Word, it seems to me that every one of us has two decisions to make.
We have to first decide: is God speaking, or is it just man speaking? If it is just man speaking, then you can go to sleep, okay? But if God is speaking, then we need to obey.
The danger, my brothers and sisters, is that we listen and listen and listen and listen and listen, so much that we come to the faulty conclusion that because we listened well, that is all that was required.
It does not end there, my brothers and sisters. It ends when you and I obey what God has spoken to us.
So let’s mix with faith what God speaks. We have to decide when God speaks to us. You know, God uses all different means.
I think He uses some of the foolishest things and foolish people to sometimes speak His Word. But we have to be careful how we listen, because if we are put off by the vessel, we might miss God’s Word.
I remember one time in Jeremiah, God said to Jeremiah, “Jeremiah, I want you to go down to the potter’s shed, and I want you to see the Word of God.” See the Word of God.
Yes, my brothers and sisters, you find that the prophets of the Old Testament—God dealt with them in many, many different ways to help them understand what He was saying. Hosea, for example: what did He have Hosea do in order that Hosea might speak the Word of God to Israel? He had him go and marry a prostitute.
God’s ways, my brothers and sisters. But we have to be careful. The issue is not that we question God’s way. Our issue is: are we going to obey?
Here in Hebrews 11:
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for,
The conviction of things not seen;
For by it men of old gained approval.
Or, as one of the better translations says, I think, they gained a good testimony. Now, as I have read Hebrews 11, my question is: who is testifying about whom?
God is testifying that these men and women had a lot less information and a lot less revelation. Abraham was not privileged to see what you and I have seen, nor Moses, nor any of the others.
But you know what it simply says eighteen times in this eleventh chapter? “By faith, by faith, by faith, by faith, by faith.” So you can see how important it is for us to go back there and see that issue of mixing what we hear with faith.
The kind of faith we are talking about here in Hebrews is active faith. It is living faith. It is God-given faith. It is not something you are born with. It is not something you can educate yourself into. It is something that God Himself imparts to you as a gift from Himself.
Some of you, I know, have considered Ephesians 2:8-9:
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.
What does “that” refer to? It is a relative pronoun. What does it relate to? Faith. And that—not of yourself—the faith is not from you. It is from God Himself.
It continues to be a mystery to me, although I think I understand just a little bit of what happened in my own experience, of how God produced this kind of faith in me.
Here I was, twenty-three years old. I had never read the Bible. I had never owned a Bible. I had never gone to church except one or two times.
On this instance, when somebody was preaching the Word of God, all of a sudden, it seemed like something was going on inside of me—something being produced in me.
When I heard about the Lord Jesus dying—now, I had sung songs about the Lord Jesus dying, even in my unbelief—but when the Holy Spirit began to do something in me, then I found a capacity to believe the truth that was being proclaimed.
Brothers and sisters, when I believed—oh, I won’t take the time this morning to tell you—but it is beyond words for me to explain what happened. God did something in me, and He will do it in any of us.
Where did this faith come from? It came by God’s doing. Remember Romans 10:
Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Somehow the Holy Spirit works the living Word of God in our hearts, and the result is that He produces faith. With that faith, we believe unto salvation.
It is grace, all the way from the beginning all the way to the end. You remember in Zechariah, when he puts the top stone in place, one shouts, “Grace, grace unto it.”
Here, when he comes to chapter 11, I don’t know if he is trying to give us a definition, but at least he is trying to help us understand what faith does.
Can you still have a Darby translation? You do? Please read chapter 11, verse 1 so everyone can hear.
Now faith is the substantiating of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Anybody who doesn’t have a Darby translation, read it in your Bible. Does it sound like what he said? Do it again, Kenny.
Now faith is the substantiating of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Faith is the substantiating of things hoped for—the evidence of things not seen. Not just the substance. What are some of the other translations? Somebody else have something besides the New American Standard?
“Substance.” Somebody else have another word? Yes, Carolyn. “The assurance.” Okay, anybody else have another word?
I think Mr. Darby got it right. I am sorry, I don’t always agree with Mr. Darby, but that is my problem, not his, okay? But I think he got it right.
Faith is a substantiating. It brings out of the spiritual reality that which is already in Christ as a reality.
You cannot get anything from God that is not in His Son. He does not have to get busy and create something because you are in need. No, my brother, all the fullness—everything you will ever need—is already in His Son.
But what does faith do? Faith sees it as belonging to you, and you bring it into your experience. It is substantiated; it makes it real to you.
When this happened to me, when I came to know the Lord, the Lord did not die for me that day. He died for me two thousand years ago. But when I believed, faith took it out of the realm of a total accomplishment and brought it into my experience.
This is the way God wants us to live in every area of our life. Is He trustworthy? Can you trust Him? Has He ever failed you when you put your living faith in Him? No, I can answer for you.
Maybe you do not understand some of it. Some of this we have to look back on later and see: it was not the failure of God. Some of the things that happen in our lives are difficult for us to explain—the inexplicable. It was not God’s failure.
We have to place the failure someplace else, if there is a failure. But, brothers and sisters, God in His great mercy builds faith into us. The more you use the faith, guess what happens? The more you get. The stronger it becomes. The more you can believe Him for.
If you never start out, don’t expect somehow to see Him remove a mountain when you have not asked Him to remove a molehill. God knows us. The Holy Spirit knows us perfectly.
He has been commissioned by the Father and the Son to come here and take every one of us: first of all, convict us that we are sinners who need to be saved; then reveal to us the Lord Jesus as our wonderful Savior.
He goes on and on and opens up to us again and again. It is like unpeeling an onion—layer after layer after layer—of all that is ours in our Lord Jesus.
You know what Paul says in Ephesians 3? That he had been commissioned by God to go and preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Now, my brothers and sisters, I have a question for us. How far down do you have to go to get to the bottom of the unfathomable? How long will it take you? If you are trying to find the unsearchable, how much effort do you need to expend? How long is it going to take you?
What do you think God has planned for you in the age to come, when you are ushered out of this world as it is now and ushered into the age to come? What do you think you will be doing?
Many of us remember how our brother Lance used to say that some people think they are going to be floating around on a cloud, and the angels are going to come with caviar—or whatever your favorite food is—and give you Virginia ham or whatever it is that you like. Today is a good day for Virginia ham, huh?
My brothers and sisters, it is nothing like that. It is almost an insult to even talk that way. It means that you and I, when we came to know our Lord Jesus, had been launched into the greatest eternal adventure that we could ever conceive of: coming to know more and more and more about our wonderful Lord.
How do you do it? By faith.
Let me give you two examples. I am going to try to finish, I think, at twelve o’clock. That’s just eleven o’clock. I have another hour and five minutes.
Two examples. We will not go to the Scripture; you can read it for yourself later. But you remember when the Lord Jesus had fed the five thousand and He told His disciples, “Get in the boat. Go across. I am going up into the mountain.”
Don’t forget, He had already been on the boat with them one time. You remember how the storm came up? He was on the back of the boat sleeping. They woke Him up, and He calmed the sea.
This time the Lord wanted their faith to grow. So what did He do? He sent them out by themselves. He went up into a mountain to pray.
In the middle of the night, when they were going across the Sea of Galilee, a big storm came up. These fishermen did not know how to make any headway. They were in danger. The boat was filling up with water.
They saw the Lord Jesus come walking on the water, and they were not sure who it was. Some of them thought it was a ghost. Simon Peter said, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.”
Think about it for a moment. Peter was always putting his foot in his mouth, always getting into trouble. But the Lord never criticized him for that. Never.
As our brother said, the Lord never chided him for that. He had to talk to him about some other things, but He never chided him. Well, maybe He did one time about the coin He took out of the fish’s mouth to pay the taxes.
But most of the time, the Lord just endured Peter’s talkativeness and his—what is the word?—impetuosity.
Think about it. Here are these men on a boat. Many of them had been on this sea many, many times. They knew the sea, but the boat is sinking.
Here comes the Lord, and Peter says, “Lord, if it is You,” because he wasn’t sure, “if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.”
Peter starts to get out of the boat. What do you think the other eleven are saying? “There goes Peter again. Oh, he’s getting himself in hot water. Why don’t you just sit down and behave yourself, Peter? You know you can’t walk on water. What are you trying to do, being a show-off?”
I don’t know what they were saying, but maybe something like that. But you know what happened, my brothers and sisters? When the Lord said to Peter, “Come”—not before He said, “Come,” but when the Lord said to Peter, “Come”—you know what he did?
This is not just a fairy tale. It is not a myth. It is reality. This fisherman put both feet—I do not know, one at a time or two at a time—but he put both feet outside the boat and began to walk on water.
How did he do that? He did it in a faith response to what his Lord told him to do.
He did not say, “Lord, now You are out there walking on water. I can walk on water too. I am going to show You. Just watch me.” He did not say that. When the Lord said to him, “Come,” he got out of the boat and started walking.
Everything was going fine until he took his eyes off the Lord and put them on the waves and the wind.
We can say what we want to about Peter, but I think maybe one day we will sit down with him, and you know the first story he will tell us: “I want to tell you about that time I walked on water.”
Let’s not be critical of him. Let’s see him as an encouragement to our own hearts: when we are in these kinds of situations and we hear the Lord’s voice, and He says, “Come,” let’s get out of the boat and come.
The second one is about the woman who had the hemorrhage of blood for twelve years. She had been treated by doctors, but the doctors were unable to help her.
Somehow—we are not told exactly how—she knew that her healing was in the Lord Jesus. She knew in her heart that if all she could do was touch the hem of His garment, she would be healed.
We are not told how. I think I know how. I think the Holy Spirit was working in her heart. That’s how.
She had a big problem, though. What was the problem? A multitude of people around the Lord Jesus. How was she going to get from the outside of that crowd to the center so she could touch the hem of His garment?
I think she had a secret, my brothers and sisters. I think she used her liabilities for her greatest asset. I think she had sharp elbows. Why? Because she had lost a lot of weight.
She had sharp elbows. She sees these people in front of her. What does she do? They move. She gets through, and she touches the hem of His garment.
What happened? She was healed. You can say what you want to, but brothers and sisters, it worked. The Lord said to her, “Your faith has made you whole.”
Where was her faith? Her faith was in her heart, but what was in her heart made her act—act out what she believed.
That is what James says: faith without works is useless. Don’t tell me you have faith. Even the demons believe. What kind of faith do you need? You need to have living faith, where there is evidence that you have acted in faith in obedience to what God has spoken to you.
Then let’s finalize what we are sharing this morning by looking at these couple of verses in Hebrews 12. Here the writer is talking about this great cloud of witnesses.
There has been a lot of controversy about who these witnesses are. There is no question, I think, that the writer is talking about a situation where you have this big arena, people running in a race, and others cheering them on.
There is controversy about whether these witnesses are people who have died and gone on before, and now they are sitting around this great arena coaching us on. I don’t think so.
I think these witnesses are the people of Hebrews 11. You know, my brothers and sisters, what it says there: by their faith, they obtained a good testimony.
What is the relationship between testimony and witness? Same thing. A witness gives testimony. So we are surrounded by many people that God has testified about—that they were men and women of faith, even Rahab the harlot. Yes, included in this list.
Sometimes the commentaries refer to those in Hebrews 11 as the heroes of faith. I will guarantee you, I don’t care who you call in here this morning and have him stand up here and ask him, “Were you a hero?”
Was Abraham a hero? Was Moses a hero? No, I am not trying to take anything away. But, my brothers and sisters, not one of them would try to identify themselves as heroes.
They were men and women just like you and me, who probably had greater problems and greater obstacles to overcome than we have in our own lives. But they were men and women who acted in obedience to the light they had. They obeyed God to the best they understood, and God honored it in marvelous ways.
When God promised Abraham, “You will have a son,” it is for sure Sarah did not believe. So she came up with a good idea how to help the Lord, because the Lord was taking too long to fulfill His promise.
Unfortunately, Abraham listened to his wife. I don’t want to make too much of that this morning.
But, brothers and sisters, these were not heroes. These were average folks, men and women just like you and I, who had the same kinds of struggles we have—maybe even greater. Plus, they had less light than we have.
They did not have the experience of the indwelling Christ in them, and yet they were faithful.
Here the writer says, since we have so many who have gone before us—who have been witnesses, whom God has witnessed to and said, “This was a man of faith. This was a woman of faith”—he says:
Let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us.
Abraham had his own encumbrances. You have your own encumbrances. They are different than my encumbrances. Maybe they are the same, but in a sense, probably different.
What are we supposed to do? What did Abraham have to do? He had to lay it aside. Take it off. What do you have to do? God has given you grace. He knows there is an encumbrance there, so what does He do? He gives you grace to lay it aside, to get rid of it.
Don’t try to take it with you on the trip. Some of us want to climb this mountain, but we want to take everything—our TV and portable TV and everything—with us up on top of this mountain. We wonder why we do not make it but a few feet up the mountain, because we are trying to take too much with us.
Lay aside all the things that are not necessary. Lay them aside.
Now, brothers and sisters, let’s be honest: this ain’t easy. What happens is that unconsciously, you and I begin to trust in these encumbrances rather than in the living God.
A nice bank account. Now, I am not for one second suggesting the Lord does not want us to have a savings account. But, brothers and sisters, the danger is that you put more faith in it than you do in Him.
It is an encumbrance. Lay it aside. That doesn’t mean you get rid of the savings account. You just change your attitude.
The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Make sure your heart is not attached to that savings account, so that if God speaks and says, “I want you to go here,” you say, “Lord, I can’t. I have a savings account.” That’s an encumbrance.
Then the sin which so easily entangles us is so close to us that it impedes our walking and our running. For myself, when I read the writer to the Hebrews, I think the sin the writer is talking about is the sin of unbelief.
You see, my brother and sister, with faith we can get everything from God that God wants us to have. But without faith it is impossible to please Him. You cannot get anything from Him.
Now, He blesses us, but He blesses us so that He brings us into a relationship with Himself where we can fully trust Him—or more fully trust Him.
So what is our great enemy? Unbelief. I want to ask you this morning: what have you received of riches in your life by exercising unbelief? What good has come into your life?
It is a sin. It is a sin not to believe God. It is a sin not to trust Him, because He is totally, one hundred percent, completely trustworthy. He is the only One who is.
It is a sin not to trust Him, not to obey Him.
But then I want us to focus on this final thought:
Fixing our eyes on Jesus,
The Author and Finisher of faith.
The temptation is for us to get our eyes on Abraham and Moses and all these witnesses, but the writer says, “Don’t do that.” This One that I am talking about is superior to all of that.
He is superior to the prophets. He is superior to Moses. He is superior to the angels. He is superior to Aaron. He is superior to Joshua. He is superior to all of these.
So he says, “Don’t get your eyes there. Fix your eyes. Focus your heart.” Where? Fixing your eyes on Jesus.
Now, brothers and sisters, where is He? Right now, as we are here in this meeting, where is our Lord Jesus bodily? Where? Bodily—listen carefully. I did not say spiritually; I said bodily. Where is He?
He is seated at the right hand of Majesty on high. Looking unto Him, fixing your eyes on Him.
Oh, my brothers and sisters, I want to strongly encourage you this morning to take this letter to the Hebrews, this portion of God’s Word, and read it and read it and read it until you fully understand who your great High Priest is and what He wants to do for you.
Do you know that He ever lives? He is able to save to the uttermost. Why? Because He ever lives to make intercession.
You may not be praying for me. I may not be praying for you. But He is praying for me and for you. Oh my, there is nobody like Him. Not only that, when He prays, guess what? He always prays perfect prayers.
The writer of Hebrews helps us understand our Lord Jesus as our great High Priest as nobody else does. We get a glimpse of Him in Revelation 1 as High Priest, but here it is more detailed for us.
He is a great High Priest. He is a sympathetic High Priest. You know what I mean? Sympathetic. He knows what you are going through.
Can you imagine somebody being able to totally sympathize with you in the situation you are in, no matter what it is? Our Lord Jesus was tempted in every way, and yet without sin.
You have One who is one hundred percent for you, one hundred percent on your side. He wants nothing but to bring you in—to bring many sons to glory, to bring you to full maturity.
Because then it brings great delight to Him. It brings great delight to His Father to see that in those who are redeemed, they have been conformed to the image of our Lord Jesus Christ.
How do you think this matter of being conformed to the image of Christ is going to be produced in your life? I want to ask you a very pointed question.
How long would it take you if you spent—let’s be realistic—suppose you had eight spare hours in your day. I know you don’t have any, but suppose you had.
Suppose you spent all eight hours a day, five days a week—we will give you two days off—and spent those eight hours a day just focusing on making yourself more like Jesus. What do you think the results would be?
After a year, how far do you think you would get? After five years? After ten years? After a hundred years? How about after a hundred lifetimes?
You cannot produce any of it. There is only One. It is our Lord Jesus Himself, by the Holy Spirit, producing this work of us being conformed to the image of the Son of God.
He is our great High Priest. That is why we need to look off unto Him, fix our eyes, focus on Him. Don’t get distracted. Don’t let anything or anybody lead you down a different road.
I know that sometimes preachers exaggerate, and I am sure there are times when I exaggerate. My dear brothers and sisters, I am trying my absolute best not to exaggerate this morning. I do not have to exaggerate about my Lord. It is impossible for me to exaggerate about Him.
He is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that you can ask or think. How can you exaggerate about Somebody like that?
He is for us, one hundred percent. It has all been accomplished, and now He has sent the Holy Spirit to lead us into that fullness. Why would we want to go anywhere else?
If we do, we are very, very foolish people. Let’s not do it. Let’s not do it. Let’s turn our backs on that, and by the grace of God, by the help of the Holy Spirit, let’s fix our eyes on the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us trust the Holy Spirit to bring us into a fuller, richer, experiential knowing of Him.
Remember what Paul said in Philippians 3. Let’s read it together and we will close. I kept telling you I wanted to close, but we will this time. Philippians 3.
I promised myself this morning I wasn’t going to get excited, but I did. I can’t help but get excited about this.
I have seen enough. I have witnessed enough on my own. I have had enough grief in my heart to see some of God’s dear ones—people that I love with all my being—whom I was convinced could never go away from the Lord. But they have.
I know, my brothers and sisters, that unless God is merciful to me, I will do the same thing, and so will you.
Don’t think that he who thinks he stands is beyond danger. Beware lest he fall. I don’t care how far you have come. I don’t care how much experience you have had. I don’t know if you were able to memorize the Bible forward and backward. You are capable of being led astray.
If you do not think you are, you are already deceived, my brothers and sisters. But listen to this Word. This is what needs to be in our hearts.
Philippians 3, beginning in verse 7:
But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,
For whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.
Now, my brothers and sisters, I have to say to you, that sounds to me like the words of a fanatic.
Here is a man with a brilliant mind, tremendous education, tremendous heritage. From the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised the eighth day—he had such a heritage that he could have stood up alongside any Jew.
But what did he say? “All on the garbage heap,” for one reason. For one reason: for the excellency of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things.
You see the relationship. We have a choice to make. You can hold on to the things that you consider important and lose out on the real important thing.
But if you are willing to let go of all of it, even what you have experienced in the past, do you know what God has done in your life cannot be undone? It is permanent. You do not have to worry about losing it.
You can degenerate back in terms of your own place with the Lord, but as far as what God has done, you can trust Him with that. So don’t try to hold on to it.
Oh, my brother, please don’t become religious. Don’t become a religious Christian. Be a real Christian: Christ is living in you, and you are living out of Him.
Be willing, if the Lord says, “That has to go,” gladly, with a smile, take a trip to the city dump. Get rid of it. Throw it on the rubbish heap.
You will find on the return trip that you will discover something of Him that you never had before.
Oh, brothers and sisters, God has spoken everything. He does not need to say anything else. It is all in His Son.
So let’s be encouraged this morning. Let’s take the encouragement of this writer. Let us determine, by the grace of God, that we are going to focus our eyes—fix our eyes—on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Not on doctrine, not on experience, not on all these other things, which are part of it. But you know you can have that and not have Him.
Let’s not be satisfied until we know Him. I don’t know where you are spiritually. Some of you I don’t know; some I have known for a long time. I still don’t know because we have not had much chance to fellowship.
But I want to say to you this morning: don’t be foolish. Don’t go anywhere else. Get your eyes focused, fixed on the personal Lord Jesus.
Ask the Holy Spirit to help you. You open up this Book and you will find Him on almost every page.
Let’s pray together.
Bless, Lord. See, I want to use some of you brothers and sisters to pray.