Heroes of the Faith 2
Heroes of the Faith Series • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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David
David
Good morning everyone. I am so thankful to be here again this morning. We missed last week because of the SaveOne summit but boy oh boy was it a good one. The Spirit of God moved so miraculously and had such a common theme throughout the entirety of the conference. It was as if He were trying to say something to us. lol I mean speakers that didn’t even know each other had messages that tied in together. It was truly incredible. My wife worked me like a dog but she worked right along side me. I love getting to do ministry with her. And my kids. It is a fabulous thing when families serve together. I am so blessed.
So this week we are in week 2 of our series Heroes of the faith. I heard that last weeks sermon was really good so I pray that continues. The host verses for the series is found in Hebrews 11. I am going to take a small portion of that today and rest assured, its going to start off in a serious place. I have had this message for a while and actually thought I still might have a while to go before I preached it. But the Lord said it is time.
Now if you would please stand for the reading of the word today.
8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.
9 By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise;
10 for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
11 By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.
12 Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude—innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.
13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
14 For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland.
15 And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.
16 But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.
You may be seated. I have prayed and prayed over this message this morning. The reason is I don’t want it to come off as anger from me and especially from the Lord but I don’t want you to sense the urgency. Sense the desire of the Lord to take you into deep waters. You know that there is no measurement for deep. It isn’t quantifiable. Here is what I mean. At age 3 deep could mean 8ft. That is your understanding of deep but at 42 deep for me is dark ocean beneath can’t see nothing but depth. Right but to someone who is 42 but been on a submarine what I just described isnt deep because they have been there. So depth is all about your perception, experiences and willingness to go. Jesus tells Peter launch out into the deep. How far is that Lord? Yes. God is limitless so he is as deep as you wish to go, or as shallow. Get out of the shallows.
I just want you to understand the richness and the eternalness of our Father. Every message I preach I want it said it was unto Him. Every job I take. Every task I accomplish. IT was unto him. Every thing I say no to, it was unto him. I want to uplift you but I must lift Him up. I want to encourage you but I must encourage you to know Him more. I want to preach blessings and abundance in this life but I must preach of a life with more abundance. I want to preach a word that would get you from your feed and get you to feed.
Don’t come to church talking about I ain’t getting fed when all you have been doing is feeding off your social media. That is why it is called a feed. Because you come here having put all of your weekly focus on that and your spirit is so filled with that trash you can’t eat what is really important. Then you wanna blame the pastor and we talked about this in our lift group. Only babies need help being fed. All other ages know where the food is and go eat.
Any way let’s move into the real sermon.
So here we have this list of people that have done some amazing thing for God. In verse 8 we have Abraham and the first thing it i says by faith Abraham Obeyed. I could preach on that right there for a lifetime. Because obedience is where it starts. Obedience is the starting line. That is the base line or the bottom rung.
1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Your reasonable service. Reasonable which means not something extraordinary but expected just because of what He has done. No big leaps of faith just consistent steps towards him. Then the next part is where it really gets big. Renewing your mind. But the first part is the jumping off platform.
So Abraham obeys. Obeys what? Being called to go out to the place he would receive and he went out not knowing where he was going.
I have preached before multiple times and i wish even I in the church could realize the truth of it that God may give you the what but he rarely gives the when, or the how, and You almost never get the why until you have made it through the what when and how.
The Sarah receives strength to conceive through her faith. it is building to this pinnacle of miraculous intervention and the hope inside of you grows but then there is is verse 13.
13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
Can you hear the failure. I mean they died in faith not having recieved the actual promise given to them. Abraham go and I will make you a great nation. Awesome promise but he never saw it. Sarah you will have so many kids it will be amazing. But she never saw it. You will be healed. But you die in your sickness. You will be prosperous but you die in the poor house. You will have life more abundantly but you can not seem to get out of lack.
So what do you do? How in the world can God who is supposed to bless and not harm. Raise up and not harm. How can the God who has a plan for you and it is not to harm you but to bless you and keep you in good health allow these two the father and mother of our faith die without seeing the promise.
I mean it sounds so depressing. It isn’t what we normally hear. We hear, come to Jesus and things will work together for the good of those that love the lord and are called according to his purpose. But we want that good without it costing us anything.
You think that God is an addition to you life that makes things better. But God does not claim in his word to make things better. He claims to make things new. In that making new, most if not all of the time, requires something from you.
Oh Chris. God just wants to bless our lives. He just wants to make it better. He wants to make me a better person. You're gonna have to prove that to me. Well I figured there would be one of yall in the room. Would you prefer Old or New Testament. Old ok great.
18 And Gad came that day to David and said to him, “Go up, erect an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.”
19 So David, according to the word of Gad, went up as the Lord commanded.
20 Now Araunah looked, and saw the king and his servants coming toward him. So Araunah went out and bowed before the king with his face to the ground.
21 Then Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” And David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you, to build an altar to the Lord, that the plague may be withdrawn from the people.”
22 Now Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up whatever seems good to him. Look, here are oxen for burnt sacrifice, and threshing implements and the yokes of the oxen for wood.
23 All these, O king, Araunah has given to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the Lord your God accept you.”
24 Then the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price; nor will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God with that which costs me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.
25 And David built there an altar to the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the Lord heeded the prayers for the land, and the plague was withdrawn from Israel.
David comes to a place to bring a sacrifice or to offer worship to God. The man says take whatever oxen you want. Take the land. I offer it to you. David says I cannot take it. I will buy it for a price. For I will not offer a worship to God that doesn’t cost me anything. Then it tells what he buys it all for. 50 shekels. You know how much that cost. $78,000. One act of worship cost him 78000. One act. Can I ask you a question?
When is the last time your worship cost you anything?
Seriously, when is the last time it cost you anything. It is not about money. Please forget money. I get so fed up with people always concerned about the church talking about money. Your money if you are that concerned about it is an idol. No one goes out to eat at Texas Roadhouse and tries to pay McDonald’s. No one goes to the movies and tries not to pay. The only place where we get upset about people talking about money is the church and that’s because we believe the church to be about us and not about him. If you have an issue about giving your money to the church don’t give it. Keep it. Because God loves a cheerful giver not one that gives out of compulsion anyway. So you nor the church is getting anything out of it. It doesn’t honor God either. So quit or change your attitude about it. Remove the idol in your own life.
Seriously when is the last time the worship you bring to the Lord cost you anything. When has it cost you friends? When has it cost you time? When has you cost you pride? When has it cost you a sleepless night?
If your worship consist of you just coming to church, that isn’t costing you anything. That is easy. That’s the low rung. That’s the bottom line and if that is all you do, you don’t value the relationship very much. You don’t think this life is supposed to cost you?
29 So He said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God,
30 who shall not receive many times more in this present time, and in the age to come eternal life.”
If that isn’t enough
26 “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.
27 And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.
28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it—
29 lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,
30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’
31 Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?
32 Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace.
33 So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.
Most of us are attempting to have a religion of me instead of a worship to Him.
He said you better count all the cost before you make this decision. That means it is going to cost you something. It cost you daily. One way or the other. You know there are some miserable people caught up in this world because they decided to live against the way they know to live. They seek after that one thing to make them happy.
If I get that one thing. Whether it be fame fortune or whatever. The bible says there are only 3 sins. Lust of the eye, lust of the flesh, and pride of life. So we seek after that one thing and try to find that. Then we realize that once we have that it doesn’t fulfill. It doesn’t bring the satisfaction. So we replace it with another idol.
It is not a bad thing to want stuff. I want a pop up camper. Just gonna throw that out there. Truly I do. If y'all start saving and pool together my birthday is next march. lol But if that camper becomes my sole desire and constant reflection of my affection it becomes an Idol to me. I have to cast that thing down. I am not called to worship that. HE IS THE ONE THING!!!! Jesus is the treasure. He is the calling. He is the object of our affection and if I have to cast everything down at his feet so be it!!!!!! Nothing shall take that place. Nothing shall cause that love to falter.
But what happens is we expect Jesus worship to be easy. I fear for some us in the church today. Because we can’t even sacrifice 2 hrs on a Tuesday night to call people to rescue them out of sex trafficking but claim if they come start killing people for their faith, I’ll do it. We complain when church goes over a little bit and we are late to watch the titans game. But I love you lord. We come into church and can’t sit through worship or the preaching without checking our social media or emails but claim I just want the word. No what you love is you and your comforts.
When has your worship cost you something? Seriously look at your worship of Him and recount when did it last cost me. When has it cost your image or what people thought of you. I don’t want to be considered fanatical or crazy.
11 “Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable.
When has your worship cost you a position? So many times people pray for promotion but I don’t think i have ever heard someone pray against one because they knew it would take them from their family or from the church or they may have to change who they are. NO they take that promotion and thank God for it but it aint from Him.
Have I hit on everyone yet?
You know why they are called idols. Let me give you the Hebraic translation. Look at this I even made a slide about it.
I - Dols
Susan can back me up on this. I means you. Dolls are things you play with. So what are you playing with more. What are you spending more time with. What are you not living without? Your number one idol is this right here. You won’t leave home without it. You can’t go without staring at it. You pay your tithe to it. And I am that way too. Which is why I have set limitations on my facebook app and moving into other apps. I have set myself 30 mins a day for facebook. Most days I have been ok thats it. Some days sitting around ill type in my code and give myself 15 more minutes. You can check my history if you want. But I DON”T WANT TO FEED ON THAT!!! Still got some other things to work on not perfect or better than just giving a practical thing that when the Holy Spirit started convicting, I changed. Because I love Him.
Look at what the disciples said back in Luke 18. We have already read the Master’s response but take look at this. By the way this is right after the interaction with the “rich young ruler” who was really a poor young slave.
28 Then Peter said, “See, we have left all and followed You.”
Peter says we gave it all up for you. Almost bragging or prideful. And Jesus response is there is no one that gives up anything for the sake of the kingdom that will not be rewarded in this life and the next. That word many means many fold or multiple times. So if you give up your house you get multiple houses in this life and the next. Yes so I’ll give my house now. STOP!!! This is what he means. He is not saying if you give up your house you will get many houses to you. What he means if you give up for my sake and become a part of this kingdom, others in this kingdom will also be of the same mindset. So let’s say Joey says God has called me to give up my house and do something for the lord. That means he and I are family. He is apart of the same kingdom. So he now has access to my house and to your house. To however many houses are the in the kingdom. That’s how his house become houses. Then in the next life his house becomes a mansion. So it is multiplied again. You see this.
So you say no body visits me when I am in the hospital. When is the last time you visited? No body sends me cards. When did you send cards right? You get it?
Worship team
Now listen to me. I am not speaking this out of a place of condemnation. That is not my heart because if it were, I would be speaking condemnation upon myself. Right!! It is out of love. It is
An invitation to something greater.
It is the Father calling you to deeper!! I want to see us a church begin to move in a direction in which nothing on this earth keeps us from Him.
15 If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back.
16 But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
In talking about Abraham and others Paul writes if they wanted what they left, they could have gone back anytime they wanted and recieved it. BUT they had their eyes on a better prize on a better homeland on a better place and that caused God to not be ashamed. He can say those are my children.
Can you take your eyes off this prize. Can you put your eyes on Him? Can you move out of I have sacrificed enough, it is someone else’s time to I will always sacrifice. I will always give. I will consistently move toward him and anything that moves me in the other direction will die. Do you love Him enough for it to cost you?