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Good morning!
For those of you that are visiting with us today, we have been studying the book of Hebrews this year.
I think it would be helpful for me to give you a brief introduction because it informs what we will learn today.
The book of Hebrews was written to several churches in Rome that were struggling with persecution.
Not just from the Romans, but primarily and most significantly from their fellow Jews.
As these Christians chose to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, they were cut off and disowned from their families, lost their jobs, their friends, and were left in a foreign land to try and survive.
This letter was written to encourage the church by reminding them of what they choose to believe and why.
This letter was delivered and then passed from one congregation to another and read aloud as a way to bolster up and renew their commitment to Christ.
It was written to exhort them to continue in their faith.
Last week we finished up chapter ten where the author reminds them that while they are struggling now, the day would come when sin would be destroyed and removed from the earth.
The peace that was promised by the prophets of long ago would arrive when Jesus returned.
He finishes the chapter by saying…
It is in the context of that reminder that we approach this next chapter about faith.
Church, I went back and forth this week on how to go through this chapter.
On one hand, it is good and beneficial to hear and digest it all in one setting, but it is also good to take a close look at each example and gain a greater understanding of faith from each scenario.
In chapter eleven of Hebrews, we see the author using a teaching style called exemplia, which is an extensive list of examples.
The purpose of this style of teaching is that by the end of the list, the hearers are shaking their heads in exhausted affirmation.
Once the list of examples has been read, there is no doubt that everyone fully understood the point that the teacher is trying to make.
As I studied and prayed, I decided it would be best to not roll through the whole chapter today.
We are going to just cover the first several verses.
Let’s start off this morning by reading the first three verses of Hebrews 11.
Over the last few weeks, I have pointed towards this chapter and specifically to the relationship between hope and faith.
Hope is a desire for something to happen with an undertone of uncertainty.
When you hope for something, you want it, but simply that you don’t know if it will happen.
For example, you may put something on a Christmas list and hope that you will get it, but you don’t know for certain that you will.
Faith, from a modern secular viewpoint, is a blind leap and is often understood to be the same as hope.
You hear people talking about making a blind leap when they start a new job or business.
There is a business plan and they are told to “have faith in the process.”
They want it to work, but again, they aren’t certain that it will.
While they intend to give it their best effort, there is still the chance that they will fail.
This is not what the author of Hebrews is talking about.
He is referring to what we would call Biblical Faith.
Biblical faith is the certainty that it will happen, not based only on hope or hard work, but on the revelation of God’s truth and character.
This is the kind of faith that the author of Hebrews is calling our attention to.
Biblical faith isn’t based on what we want or what we can do, but on certainty found through God.
When Wes Renard shared his testimony about changing his job, he didn’t just hope it would work out, he had faith that the move would be a success based on God speaking for him to do so.
He even communicated that the success wouldn’t be found in the job, but in his obedience to go where God sent him.
To completely swap industries would typically be risky, to say the least, but when God is the one guiding the move, we can have faith, based on previous experiences, that God will bring the success.
Look at this example with me.
In this recounting, the disciples believed in Jesus and knew for certain what was possible through him.
Prior to this event, they had seen him heal, walk on water, and feed thousands from a few loaves.
They knew, by experience that God was working through Jesus.
While Jesus is on the mountain with Peter, James, and John, a man brings his son to be healed.
This is where our narrative begins.
The disciples hoped they could help as they had seen Jesus do so many times, but they were unable to.
The father too had hope and but he was not certain.
We know this because of his response to Jesus, “I believe, help my unbelief!”
The father’s hope had not yet been transformed into faith.
He had hope, but not yet faith.
In order for his faith to grow, he had to have an experience with God that would transform his hope into faith.
This is how it works for all people, not just this father.
I was thinking about his last night and I can’t help but draw our attention to how God worked this process in my family.
With us today is an example of how God increased the faith of my family.
Lily’s chances were slim, according to what we knew prior to her birth, but as God’s people prayed, God worked a miracle.
Didn’t he Lil?
I can tell you this for certain and without a shadow of a doubt, God is still in the healing business.
I can say that because I saw him do it!
Because of the work that we have seen God do in healing and sustaining a baby, our faith is greater.
God’s love produces faith in his people.
Since the beginning of the world, God has been working to reveal himself to his people.
That includes you and I.
His goal has always been for us to know him as well as he knows us.
As we read through Biblical history, we see over and over again some that choose to believe what God is telling them and respond in faith and others who hear the same thing and choose not to believe.
The choices people have faced are the same choice that the father of the demon-posed child faced.
Do I choose to believe that God can do what He says He can do?
For those that chose to trust, their trust is based on previous experiences they have had with God.
Their faith isn’t a blind leap because they have seen and experienced God’s work in their life or in the life of someone they know.
We will see this as we work our way through all of the examples listed in chapter eleven, God is the one that initiates the faith.
(Again, we are doing that over the course of several weeks, not all today.
Y’all can relax.)
Faith is not something we can conjure up, rather, it is the result of us experiencing God’s activity in the lives of his beloved.
Our hopes are transformed into faith as we hear God and act in response to what we have heard.
Through God working in our lives, starting with the little things and then moving to bigger things, God reveals himself to us and our faith grows.
This is why I have been saying over the last few weeks that God’s goal is for our hope to blossom into faith.
In just a moment we are going to read the author of Hebrews first example of faith.
It is a story about two men.
One who loved God and responded out of that love and gave accordingly, and one who did not love God and gave out of obligation.
As we learned previously in this study, both Abel and Cain gave an offering that was based upon their occupation.
Abel tended the flocks and Cain plowed the ground.
God accepted Abel’s offering and rejected Cain’s.
God's approval of their offerings wasn’t based on the value, quantity, or kind of sacrifice.
God’s acceptance was based on the posture of the giver’s heart.
God approved Abel’s offering because he gave his very best.
Abel gave a gift with the desire of showing his love and gratitude toward God.
You and I know what it feels like to receive a heartfelt gift.
For much of my life growing up on the farm, bailing hay was a significant part of the year for us.
We would spend all summer cutting and bailing hay that we would feed our animals and sell to support the expenses that come with having a farm.
One year after hay season was over, my dad surprised my brother and I with matching shotguns as a thank you for working all summer.
My dad wasn’t required to do that.
There wasn’t a predetermined rate of pay or even and expectation of that.
He did it out of love.
That gift has always stood out to me as significant because it wasn’t required and it wasn’t expected.
When I read this passage and think about Abel’s offering, I get that same sentiment.
God rejected Cain’s offering because he gave it out of obligation, not love.
I would bet that everyone in this room has also experienced getting a gift that was not heartfelt.
I remember one Christmas my extended family gathered at my grandparents house in Lake Charles.
We did a gift exchange game that many people play.
It wasn’t a Dirty Santa game where you purposefully give bad gifts.
It as supposed to be a gift that you would be excited to get.
When it was my turn, I choose an unwrapped gift from under the tree and opened a fondu set that had made it’s way around the family a few times.
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