The Power of the Assurance
Here is the auto transcript from this week’s sermon on the Gospel to the Hebrews, The Power of the Assurance
We're going to be in Hebrews chapter 11.
We're going to skip over 9 and 10 this week.
And when Brent comes back, he already had the message for 9 and 10.
But that's okay, because I felt like it was providential when he called and he said Hebrews chapter 11.
And I went back and I was like, "I don't really remember exactly what Hebrews chapter...
Oh, it's that chapter."
So I feel like it's providential, but keep him in your prayers for complete healing restoration.
He's had some other things that he's had to cancel that he really wanted to be a part of just due to his back.
And so he needs healing.
He needs that time of rest.
And I am sure by the time I'm done, I already put my phone in airplane mode, I will have all of his critiques from home as well.
So Brent, I love you.
If you have an issue with anything in the message today, you can email me at brent@hebraicfamily.com.
So open your Bibles with me to Hebrew chapter 11, and we're going to dive right in.
Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1 says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."
As believers growing up in the faith, it doesn't really matter what denomination you grew up in, we hear a lot about faith.
If you were alive in the greatest time of music, there was a gentleman by the name of George Michael who liked faith so much that he wrote a song about it.
And I had started to rewrite the lyrics of that song and I was going to read them today and then I considered the hazes enough.
We'll get some real hate mail if I start reading George Michael lyrics to secular songs that have been changed.
But faith is the most important thing that you could have as a believer in Jesus.
We hear you have to keep the faith, you must have faith.
But what is faith?
Faith is the belief, the conviction, and the fidelity, there's a word we haven't used a lot, the fidelity of the truth of God and His divine nature.
That God is the provider and bestower of Jesus Christ.
He's the provider and bestower of salvation.
He's the provider and bestower of a kingdom.
Fidelity is not a word that is super popular.
Now we have super in-depth words that come from the old English like I was bussin' and drip.
You know, it's no longer a faucet, like there's a slang or whatever these things are and I don't even know what they mean.
But I saw a TikTok that was shared with me this week on the Gen Z Bible and I literally realized, oh my goodness gracious, I am old.
I have no idea what those words mean.
Well, for a lot of us in this room who aren't Gen Z, maybe we're millennial or we're baby boomer or whatever, fidelity is not a word that's used much at all.
In fact, I think the last time I heard fidelity or saw fidelity, it was on a bank.
First Fidelity Bank.
By the way, First Fidelity Bank, you can make a donation online for the name.
But fidelity means more than just in a bank.
Fidelity means loyalty.
Loyalty.
How much loyalty do we have nowadays?
You know, it used to be when you talked to your grandparents, your grandparents would get a job.
They grew up and they got some profession, whether it was blue collar, it was white collar, whatever, and they would work this job and they would work their way up in a company and after 40, 50, 60 years, they would retire from that company and they would give 'em a watch.
Now not a Rolex, like Reddit says, but they would give 'em a watch.
And in that watch, it was like, thank you for your loyalty to this company.
Thank you for being steadfast.
There's a real sexy fruit of the spirit for you.
The one that requires suffering, that requires you to continuously do things over and over and over again.
Loyalty.
Now if you read the blogs, if you read LinkedIn, if you read Indeed, they teach you a system on how you can jump from job to job so you can make more money, so that you can have more influence and more power.
It's about every two to every three years.
We have some business owners in this room and you know yourself just how much money you have had to throw at individuals just to keep talented people working for you because there is no fidelity anymore.
Church, we gotta wake up.
There's no fidelity anymore.
This is why over 80% of Christian marriages end in divorce.
We wanna talk about abortion, we wanna talk about that.
Clean your house first.
Be loyal to your faith first.
And I'm already off my notes and that's okay.
But loyalty to God, His word, His promises, and the outpouring of His Holy Spirit is faith.
It's not just that I believe in something.
Well I believe that if you want Mediterranean food, you can go to Madison's right down the road and you're gonna get a good Euro.
But it's temporal and what happens if Madison's changes cooks?
What happens if Madison's closes their door?
What are you gonna do then?
I say temporal because how do you have loyalty and fidelity to stuff that can die?
That's temporal, that can let you down.
But we do.
Fidelity to the goodness of our faith comes with our financial systems, with our political systems.
We like systems in America.
We like systems.
Diet systems, banking systems, we like systems.
But how many of us really see through systems?
How many of us have fidelity, loyalty to systems?
In the opening verses of Hebrew chapter 11, we see that the writer of Hebrews differentiates what a believer in Jesus' faith must be.
Our faith and our fidelity to Christ is our firm foundation.
It is our steadfastness of mind of the things that are hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
The writer of Hebrews has been stressing the very reasons, and there's many, many reasons, this isn't a one argument, the very reasons why you should not fall away from the faith, fidelity, and loyalty to Jesus.
Why?
Because Christ didn't fall away from you.
Christ didn't say, "I don't like what you're doing today, and so I'm now going to get rid of you, cast you aside.
I've given up on you."
No, he said, "It doesn't matter what you do.
I'm right where you left me.
My arms are still open.
Will you come?
Will you come?"
In Jesus, he has fidelity to the love and the relationship with you.
We see that the writer of Hebrews differentiates that our fidelity to Christ and his promises with the steadfastness of our life is because we know he will do what he said he's going to do.
So if the writer of Hebrews tells us that we walk in lockstep with God and we keep the faith because we know by keeping the faith that Jesus is going to do what he said he's going to do, well, if you don't walk in your faith and you don't walk in fidelity and you don't keep lock to God, then do you truly have faith that God is going to do what he said he's going to do?
Or are you doubting that he is who he was, who he is, and who he says he will be in the future?
Because I'm just a very realistic person, and there's some people in this room who I know I can trust.
If I pick up the phone and I call them, they're going to be there.
They're going to do what they said they're going to do.
And there's some people in this room I know if I pick up the phone, it's a 50/50 chance that they show up.
So you don't call on that person as much.
You call on the one you can trust.
So then let me ask you a question, church.
If you're not calling on Jesus as much, is it because you feel like he's not going to show up 50% of the time?
Because if he has a 100% success ratio in your life, why isn't he the person you first call?
Why is the first person you call a YouTube video?
Why is it your ZTO or something you do?
Why isn't it the lawgiver?
Why isn't it God in the flesh?
Why isn't it Jesus Christ?
Why isn't it the call of the one who came and bled and died?
Why is that not your first call?
We need to start thinking about why we do what we do.
If Jesus isn't your first call, then you really don't trust him to be able to solve that problem.
And I know that's mean and it's direct, but it's true.
If you're not calling on Jesus, you don't feel like he's going to show up.
Or maybe you don't want him to show up.
Because if he opens the door to the house and he sees that you haven't cleaned your house in a year or that everything you were hiding from the people you came to church is on display in your living room or in your bedroom, what is it?
But there's a reason why we do what we do.
America is full of intelligent individuals, even though I don't know what busing means.
We are intelligent.
So there's a reason why you do what you do.
If you can't examine why you do what you do in your relationship with Jesus, then how do you know and how can you be honest with yourself to grow closer and to keep the faith?
Because ultimately, if you don't really have a relationship with somebody and they continue to live their life, what happens?
The void and the space of your relationship gets further and further away.
I gave this example to my wife at one time.
She had a friend and there was something that happened.
I don't even remember.
It was stupid.
It was minimal.
It wasn't big.
But there was something that happened and there was an offense.
And in the relationship, my wife went and tried to make it right.
And she thought she had made it right.
But the other person wasn't fully healed from the harm that was done.
So my wife continues to move on and to move forward, thinking that the friend is moving with them.
But the friend stayed right where the hurt and the offense was.
And so here we are, like a year, two years down the road, we finally realize we got a problem.
But we're no longer talking face to face.
It's not like we're standing on the front porch.
It's not like we're there.
All of a sudden, you're in San Diego and I'm in Oklahoma and the distance and the void has grown big.
It's grown bigger.
Today, I ask you, have you kept the faith?
Because faith is the assurance.
It's the promise of things hoped for.
So have you kept fidelity and loyalty to God and His word, God and His son?
When you watch your screen late at night, have you kept the faith?
When you answer the phone, if somebody called you, did you keep the faith?
Every opportunity you have in life is an opportunity for you to keep the faith.
Sometimes it's easier to fall away.
Sometimes it's easier for me to go back and let those words fall out of my mouth.
Sometimes it's easier for me to shoot arrows at individuals rather than realize the problem is in myself.
It's easier to not show up.
It just is.
Whatever happens, happens.
But we're supposed to be the image of Christ, right?
That's what the Bible says.
Not just the book of Hebrews.
We're supposed to be molded and made into the image of Christ.
Well, if Christ was willing to not waver and to die for us while we were yet sinners, we weren't even saved at that point in time.
It wasn't like there was a profession.
We didn't even keep the faith.
At that point in time, we weren't even a thought process.
Yet Christ came, did, and solidified the value of all things for you in the future.
This is why I believe the book of Hebrews is so important.
There have been individuals who have taken shots at the book of Hebrews, especially in this portion, kind of chapter 7 through chapter 12.
They take issue with some of the phrases and terminology that is there, and they try to discredit that.
And they try to say, "Well, this is why there's a contradiction to the covenant.
There's an issue here.
We need to remove that because this doesn't align."
It 100% aligns.
Why?
Because God is God, and you are not.
Stop playing God and walk in fidelity to the relationship with Him day in and day out.
Stop taking a role that isn't yours.
You're struggling just to keep the faith.
Is it any wonder that when we start to throw out the chapters of the book of Hebrews and we stop to look at what God calls a better covenant and a better practice of the covenant, and it was originally intended that we see cycles of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people who deny Christ and fall away into apostasy?
When the entirety of the scripture says that there's only one way to the Father, and that's through the Son, well, let's rewrite scripture.
Let's rewrite what has to happen because this is too hard.
You're right.
It is hard.
It's hard to be faithful to your spouse.
It's hard to be faithful to your work.
It's hard to be faithful to a God who you don't always see.
But what if you could see Him?
Oh, wait.
Hebrews chapter 11 talks about people who got to see God.
But we have to read those chapters and find validity in those chapters in order for those chapters to be able to minister to us of the testimony.
Hebrews chapter 11, verses 2 through 3.
For by it the people of old received their commendation.
By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
It was by faith and fidelity that our ancestors, that the Moseses, the Enochs, all of them received their commendation.
Now, what's a commendation?
You know, we got a military background.
I got a commendation.
They gained their approval.
It was by faith and fidelity that they gained the approval of God.
This word connects us to this reoccurring theme in the book of Hebrews, namely that what God has said and how God has testified.
Do you remember how God stressed that the son had received his priesthood on the oath or the testimony of God?
Why is our testimony different than the testimony of God?
Why would we ever question what the role is of his son or who his son is?
Why would we go in contradiction to the testimony of God?
Now the writer of Hebrews is actually going to lay out an entire chapter of those who God testified were faithful.
Hebrews chapter 11 is God's testimony about those who lived their lives trusting and believing in his promises in the same way that God had testified about his son.
So now he's going to testify about the ones who were faithful.
This year, we'll talk about this after service in the family meeting, where we talk about the finances and changes and that.
This year I felt really strongly that the Lord had told me that steadfastness, that putting deeper roots in the ground of your faith as a church and all those things is what was going to happen this year.
And as we continue to go through the book of Hebrews and we continue to look at that, the book of Hebrews was written, I believe, not only to testify of God to man, but to also help us put our roots deeper.
Deeper than the original covenant with Adam and Eve, deeper than the original covenant with Abraham, deeper than the original covenant with David, deeper than the original covenant with Moses.
And while there was nothing wrong with the covenant, when God makes a covenant, it's a perfect covenant.
But the intention of the covenant is the intention of the covenant.
The writer of Hebrews lays out that prior to Jesus, people received their commendation by testifying and bearing witness through their faith.
Moses, Noah, Abraham, David, all of the ones before Christ were witnesses to the faith.
Everything they did was to be documented to bear witness to the faith.
This is why if you just take one covenant and you void the rest of them or you don't read about the rest of them, you don't get the entirety of this narrative of what God is saying.
This is like if somebody knew me, Phillips knew me a long time, but if you were to ask Phillip just to testify about the first two years of my life, you're going to get a very different man than maybe even the previous three years.
And then if you ask him to just then testify about the last year, you're going to get a very different testimony than if you said the first two years.
So when you look at the narrative of the Bible and the entire of the inspired work of God, it's not just about understanding one covenant.
It's not just about understanding one story.
It's not about trying to understand one way to walk.
It's an entire progressive father to sons and daughters narrative that says, if you are faithful to the end, there's a reward.
Malachi, it's a sucker.
Noah's way better than a sucker, dude.
Way better than a sucker.
If you are faithful to the end, we see Enoch and Noah in their faith and fidelity to God that they please God, that the righteousness came by their fidelity and their faith and belief in God.
We then see in Hebrews chapter 11, the testimony of Abraham, that it was by his faith and fidelity that he received his inheritance.
This was a land, a promise that was not only the promised land, but a city that's foundation was designed and built by God.
We also hear in the scripture that if your house isn't built on God, if it's not built on the rock, that you're on sinking sand.
So there's four shadows throughout the scripture talking about not only this city, this promised land, but something future to come.
This is a shadow of the very kingdom that Christ says in John chapter 14, he goes to prepare a place for us, a promised place where he will come again and take us too.
I'm reminded of the 90s, one of the greatest times of Christian music.
First amen I got today, man.
But there was a song, I don't even remember exactly what the name of the song, I think it was big house, but it was like, it's a big, big house with lots and lots of rooms.
Yeah, like we sing about that, but literally God not only gave us a land, Father Abraham had many, we're going to do a whole sermon in Sunday school songs.
But Father Abraham had many, many sons and they were promised a land, they were promised to like the stars to fill up the world.
But at the same point in time, you have this big, big house that it says that Jesus in John chapter 14, John testifies that Yeshua is going to testify of a place he's going to prepare to bring us to.
He will bring us to it by coming back.
Thomas then says, we don't know where you're going.
But yet Jesus responds and says, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.
If you believe in me, that I am the author of the way, that I am the author of the truth, that I am the author of the life, you'll get to see the Father.
You'll get a price line reservation in the hotel.
My understanding is it's like a five star hotel, I haven't stayed at many of those.
But if I'm satisfied with the red roof inn, can you imagine what it's going to be like in the Father's house?
I'm not really satisfied with the red roof inn, I always leave there feeling like I got COVID.
But this is God's Word, as such the very inclusion of the testimony of their faithfulness in the text of the scripture is God's testimony about them.
See, one of the beautiful things of the Torah is the Torah says like, hey, I'm going to give you kind of a biography, kind of an overview of what happened with Moses and the Israelites.
The book of Hebrews and the writer of Hebrews says, I'm not going to give you a biography, I'm going to give you the testimony of God about Moses.
Isn't that what we want to hear?
We talk about, we want to hear well done, good and faithful servant.
So everything we're doing is to hear the testimony of God to us.
So we get to read the testimony of God's Word about Moses.
How awesome is that?
What was the point of Moses?
What are we trying to get with Moses?
What are we trying to get with Abraham?
What are we trying to get with these?
The writer of Hebrews in chapter 11 says that they were faithful, they were loyal, they kept the faith, they didn't fall away, they stayed in relationship, fidelity with the Lord.
And that is how they got their promise.
Man, fidelity.
We just fixed that.
See the divorce rate drop, see friends stay friends longer.
Fidelity to the Lord is the assurance of a promise with somebody who has 100% success rate in delivering on his promises.
I fail.
If I can get text messages or emails out to all the people that I say I'm going to do, heck, Michael and I are supposed to be going to the stand and getting some chicken for like four weeks, and I hadn't even told him about how this week turned out.
But it's like, I fail constantly just to try to maintain the very element of the works of my testimony to people.
God literally can say and do anything and he's got 100% success rate.
So all the way back to the beginning of the conversation, why isn't he the first person you call?
Why is your faith in Bitcoin?
Why is your faith in a president?
He's mentally fit, I think.
Or is the greatest ever?
We literally have the greatest God ever.
There's all kinds of gods.
There's all kinds of gods today.
Some of you probably have other gods.
But he's the only one with 100% success rate.
And we're struggling to figure out like if we can like stay in lockstep with him, like oh I'm going to fall away.
I've been saying, people have been saying for two years like, oh Chris is backsliding, he's backsliding, he's backsliding.
You're the one who's sitting still.
I'm going after Jesus.
That's the promise.
That's the promise.
You're sitting still.
Ain't nobody going backwards.
Ain't nobody moving.
You have to show up.
You have to do something.
You have to believe your faith in God should cause you to do something.
This is the testimony of the majority of Hebrews chapter 11.
It's saying all those people you read about, this is how their faith was counted as righteousness.
Then we see the testimony of Moses and it was by his faith and fidelity that he foreshadows Christ by refusing to take the power of Pharaoh's house.
Let that sink in.
Moses had everything.
He was supposed to die, the Lord put him on a river, Dagon, the little whale fish god of the sea, doesn't eat him up.
He ends up in Pharaoh's house with Pharaoh's daughter.
He could take on the name of Pharaoh.
He potentially could be the Pharaoh.
He's got everything he wants.
Any protein shake he wants, Stephen, he can have it.
Anything he wants.
The best pizza restaurant, he can have it.
Any woman, any man, anything he wants, he can have it.
And sooner or later it will probably be his and he'll be the ultimate ruler.
He refuses to take the power of this world in the Pharaoh's house even though it was in his grasps.
He says, "I'm going to do what's right."
He stands up, he has a conviction of the Holy Spirit and the faithfulness of God inside of him and he slays one of the Egyptians who is abusing one of the Hebrews.
He runs away and when he's in the wilderness, the Lord calls him, he moves him, he makes him.
Moses, you know the guy who went up on Sinai and got those tablets that we talk about.
This is what we should do.
If you love me, you keep my commandments.
Oh, okay, we keep the Sabbath day.
Oh, we keep these things.
Moses, that guy.
He would forsake the luxuries of this life, the powers of this life, the majesty of this life to foreshadow a greater wealth, a greater treasure by staying steadfast to the calling of God.
Hebrews chapter 11 wraps up the previous covenants, the previous mighty men of God as their understanding of the covenants and their callings was to lead to something that wasn't temporal.
You know, we hear this thing, "If you love me, you'll keep my commandments."
This is a thing we throw around, but let me ask you a question.
It is widely believed that Abraham had some sort of Torah, some sort of law.
Now obviously we know the commandments of the Torah as we have today were given to Moses at Sinai, but it's widely believed whether it was oral law or it was tradition or whatever, that Abraham had some sort of law that was given to him, some sort of basic commandments.
We see in the Garden of Eden that God had some small basics of commandments for Adam and Eve, but yet where in those commandments did God say, "When you have a son, Abraham," because that wasn't even on the marker at that point in time.
That's not even on the marker, like having a son.
Sarah's not, like it's not even a thing.
He says, "When you have him, you're going to have to bring him and you're going to have to put him on an altar and you're going to have to sacrifice him to me."
That's not a commandment.
This means that Abraham himself, there's some baseline, baseline, but he was talking to God.
There was a relationship.
You can't say relationship.
If you say that, you're going to be like a megachurch.
No, sometimes we've forsaken, we're going to bed with the marriage vows, not with our wife.
Sometimes we're going to bed with the laws of the land, we're sleeping with things that don't have the relationship that God wants to have with you.
We're not Moses, we're not Abraham, that's not the time we're in.
We're in a time where the Holy Spirit dwelt in those temple of flesh and bone.
We call him Jesus Christ, Yeshua HaMashiach.
He willfully gave his life.
He endured to the end.
His faith was the assurance, not only there, but for us today.
He gave his life, then everything changed because when he went into the grave, he was like everybody else.
Oh, he's dead.
But when the stone rolled away and those women came and he wasn't there, and then he walked out of that stone grave, everything changed.
And God didn't decide to stop there.
He didn't stop there.
He went and he testified and he testified and he testified, "I did what I said I was going to do."
And then he ascended.
And when he ascends, the same spirit that dwelled inside of him is now available to each and every one of you.
This isn't the Abrahamic covenant.
This isn't the Davidic covenant.
This is different.
Because on Tuesday night, I literally dumped all kinds of scriptures on you from Genesis 1.1.
Where's the first place the Holy Spirit is mentioned in the Bible?
The first verse of the Bible, not the New Testament.
The Holy Spirit has been active in participating in the creation throughout the whole entire scripture.
So if you look at the scripture as a whole narrative, from the beginning was the Holy Spirit.
But we don't see the Holy Spirit come and take form of this body until later on in the story.
Throughout the Bible, God is leading slaves to become heirs of a covenantal promise.
Which covenant?
There's many, many covenants.
All of them were beautiful.
All of them are perfect for what they were intended to do.
But I need to ask you a question.
If your husband or your wife were to pass away and you were to remarry, are you renewing the covenant?
If Ian were to pass away and you were to remarry, you're not renewing the covenant you have with Ian.
I don't ever want you to pass away, by the way.
I just looked down and noticed you were gone.
So now that you're in the room, it's a little bit more awkward.
But my wife isn't here, so I couldn't use that.
And also I would have heard about that at home too.
But if your wife passes away or your husband passes away and you remarry, you're not renewing the covenant.
That's a term we like to use a lot in our corner of Christianity.
Well, it's the renewed covenant.
Which covenant is it renewing?
Is it the Adam covenant?
Is it the Moses covenant?
Because that's what we really apply to.
We immediately say, well, it's the renewal of the Mosaic covenant.
So why does David get the raw end of the deal?
Why is Abraham, it says where Abraham seeds and heirs according to the promise.
Why isn't it the Abrahamic covenant that's getting renewed?
We make statements that are incorrect based upon the entirety of God's word.
And we don't stop to think about it.
It's like, wait a second.
If I were to get remarried to somebody else, I would be entering into a covenant with that person because there's death, there's shedding of blood.
It's not the same person.
I can't have the same covenant that I have with my wife, with a future wife.
I can't have that.
You cannot have it.
It does not exist in the scripture.
You say, Chris, well, how do I know?
Because God promises that he's not going to write his commandments, his word, his instructions on tablets of stone anymore.
He says, now that I've come, now that I've died, now that I've resurrected, now that I've ascended to the right hand of the father, I'm actually going to write them on the tablets of flesh in your heart.
It's not the same.
You know how we know it's not the same?
Because we watch what the Israelites did with the commandments of the Lord.
We watch throughout the prophets and the testimony of the time where man has perverted them to do what he wants to do with the commandments of God.
Which again, men in this room, when you pervert things for your own benefit, you have now said you are God and God is not.
And we have an epidemic of that too.
So what happens?
All of a sudden you have a bunch of women who rise up and they say, I can't trust that God, my husband.
And I'm not Bill Gothard and I do not subscribe to Bill Gothard, but I will tell you that when the husband and wife are functioning together the way they should, it's the most beautiful thing that God can place on this earth.
Male and female he created.
Male and female.
Guys, you can't do it alone.
Women, you can't do it alone.
I love the Torah.
I love the Torah.
But having tablets of stone are not the same as the Holy Spirit inspiring the writing of the instructions and the commandments on my heart.
It is not the same.
And we look to the tablets of stone a lot and we forget that the goal of the Bible is for us to remain faithful so that God can complete his work in us.
That's not him handing us tablets of stone.
That's him taking his spirit, the perfection of his spirit, and putting it inside of us to conform us to his image.
The promise is better.
It's just better.
That's God's testimony.
That's what Hebrews 11 says.
A kingdom he would build, a place he would prepare, a city that he would bring, and a forever kingdom that he will establish.
It's better.
And I can stand on that because the Bible stands on that.
Hebrews 11, 39 through 40, even though God himself testified about their faithfulness, Moses, Enoch, all these people, yet even they had to wait for the better that was to come.
The new covenant is the revelation of God's entire end game.
The covenant in which all other covenants point to that there's a future end in sight, that this toil, this struggle is over.
Guys in this room, some of you have wrestled with things.
Some of it's been pornography, some of it's been alcoholism, some of it's been arrogance and pride and all these different things.
The new covenant is the promise that through the power of God, not through the power of yourself, there's an end game in sight, that you don't have to spend the rest of your life struggling with that, that you don't have to spend the rest of your life being bound by that, through the power of God coming and dwelling inside of you and your fidelity to God and his commandments, that you can overcome that.
And even though in this life you might have a temporal overcoming, it's also that sooner or later that will all be gone.
In this big, big house with lots and lots of rooms.
Lincoln wants to go there.
He's very excited about it.
Because we've forgotten to promise.
It's better than the ones before.
Doesn't mean the other ones were bad.
If I'm driving around in a 1972 pickup truck that can barely run and somebody walks through the door and says, "I've got a brand new 2023 Ford F-150 and I'm going to give it to you."
Doesn't mean there was anything wrong with the truck I had, but the truck I got was better.
And the progressive nature of the covenants that happens throughout the scripture goes from us having a massive responsibility to God saying, "Sooner or later, you don't have to toil anymore.
Sooner or later, you don't have to wrestle and struggle anymore.
I have provided a way and I will restore and complete you."
You have to have faith.
You have to have faith that I will do what I said I'm going to do.
Well, Hebrews chapter 11 is irrelevant to you if you don't have faith that when you pick up a conversation with the Lord through prayer during the day that he's going to be there.
How can you trust the Lord to do something at some future time?
All dependent upon the health of King Charles.
How can you trust him?
How can you trust him?
For some futuristic thing if you can't trust him today.
And why?
One of the mindsets that's the most dangerous is when I was growing up and I was in the Presbyterian church and the Baptist church and I was a mutt, I was in the Nazarene church, I've been all of the above.
I like being in a building where it says it's the flock that rocks like, "Yeah!
Yeah!"
Why?
Because when you rock out, there's just joy.
When you rock out, there's loud music.
When you rock out, you can't tell that I played the wrong chord.
It's all distorted.
It just sounds cool.
But when I was growing up, I wrestled with God but I didn't have this fear of God that was like, "Oh, if I make a mistake today, God's going to come down and punch me or be abusive."
I trusted that he was going to do what he said he was going to do by his character.
I trusted that.
Sometime, and I don't know exactly when, sometime as I started to understand more about the Mosaic Covenant and I tried to apply some of those things to my life, there came a time where I became far more fearful of, "Oh my gosh, am I doing this correct?
Oh my gosh, am I doing this correct?"
And while I've stayed the course, I've stayed with the Lord so far.
I know thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people around the world who have walked away because they couldn't do this and they were afraid of what this would be because of this.
Hebrews chapter 11 says there's something better.
Sooner or later, he already knows this isn't going to work right.
He knows you're going to fail, Stephen.
He knows I'm going to fail.
And he's still going to go through it so that you can enter into the rest with Jesus.
That you can finally have a real Sabbath.
You can just rest.
There is no greater gift.
There is no greater promise.
God's going to do what he said he's going to do.
This is the first time this has ever happened at HFF, I believe.
But in studying Hebrews chapter 11, worship team, you can come back.
And studying Hebrews chapter 11, we're into self-professed word nerd.
And so I really wanted to dive into some of these key words.
Faith, assurance, promises, and try to understand exactly what the writer of Hebrews is trying to tell us.
What he's trying to get through to us.
I don't want to just leave it ambiguous to you, like, "You gotta have faith, faith, faith.
Gotta have faith."
It's like, "Okay, I don't know what faith is."
And so I started studying those words.
I started looking at what the definitions of them were in the original language that they were written.
And I started to go through the different Bible translations.
There's a lot of them.
A lot.
There's a new one.
I found out yesterday, there's a new one.
And I don't care who you are, judgmental spirits exist in all of us at some point in time.
Sometimes subconscious.
Because I would never read from the message Bible.
That would make me a megachurch pastor.
That would make me ignorant of the word of God.
Oh wait, but yet the message Bible has the best translation for the last two verses of Hebrews based upon the definition of the Greek words.
What?
It does.
100%.
ESV, NASB 95, all these things.
KJV, King Jimmy.
The best translation based upon the definition of the Greek words is the message Bible.
You know that one that we like to judge?
I'm going to read it to you today.
As I've been told to wrap it up.
I love that.
Why are they flanking it at me again?
I want to read this to you.
Hebrews 11, 39 through 40.
Not one of these people, remember we're talking about Moses, Aaron, David, Elijah, Enoch, Samuel, literally Genesis through the prophets, all these men, it's who we're talking about.
Not one of these people, even though their lives of faith were exemplary, got their hands on what was promised.
Philip, you promised me key lime pie, I didn't get it.
They didn't get what was promised.
God had a better plan for us.
That their faith and our faith, listen to me church, their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole.
There is no old and new testament.
There is no old covenant, new covenant.
There's a lot of covenants.
It's a complete covenant.
Because it was His plan that they would come together to make one completed whole throughout thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years.
Their lives of faith could not be complete apart from ours.
I checked it with the Greek.
I did the lexicons, the Strong's, Blue Letter Bible.
I was in Lagos, Logos, Lagos, I don't know, you're holier if you say it one way, I just didn't.
I was in Lagos.
And in Lagos, this is how you build a city, and that was the most accurate by the definitions of the meanings of the original language.
That their faith and their life could not be completed apart from ours.
Thousands of years apart.
The writer of Hebrews ties in Deborah, Phoebe, all these people who we look to and we say, "I want to walk like them."
And he says that they're not completed with anything other than faith the same way we are.
So when Jesus comes back, we're completed in a whole.
I don't know about you, but I'm broken.
I could use a whole.
He said, "I can't do that without you."
Just like Moses couldn't do it without us.
That this is the promise.
If your faith is not in that promise, sooner or later you're going to fall away.
If your faith isn't in me, you're going to fall away.
Jesus changed everything.
And it's really that simple.
But how do I keep this commandment?
With more like Jesus.
It's 100% possible to walk out the commandments of the Mosaic covenant and be apart from God.
In fact, most of the time that's what happens.
It's not because the Word of God is bad.
It's because our approach is self-righteous.
Our approach is to find some sort of value in who we are.
And every once in a while we'll say, "Well, this is how I love God.
I keep His commandments."
Like you're not trying to love God.
You're trying to uphold yourself.
Because if you really love the commandments of the Lord, you would find freedom and release in walking in the commandments of the Lord.
You wouldn't have a Moses-sized staff up your rear end.
I'll have to talk to the elders and see if I'm allowed to say that.
Too late.
Ask for forgiveness.
But it's true.
Remember what Brent told us last week.
If we confess Christ, He will confess our names to God the Father and to the angels of God.
I want to live in the coming days like Christ.
I want to live in this lifestyle so that Christ be magnified.
I want to live in this lifestyle not to prove anything.
Because the truth is, nothing we do proves anything.
God is God and we are not.
He doesn't need you to be holy.
He doesn't need you to do any of these things.
Because what you do has no impact on who He is.
All He's saying is that if you want to live, if you want to receive the promise, if you want to receive the blessing, you have to die and He has to grow in you.
Saturday church, Sunday church, Monday church, Tuesday church, Wednesday church, Thursday church, Friday church.
Seven days a week, 24/7.
He's worthy of it all.
He's worthy of our attention.
He's worthy of our adoration.
And He is definitely worthy that if you don't do anything else in this life, if you failed your oath in your covenant relationship with your wife or your husband, if you failed it with your boss, if you failed it with your mother and father, if you failed it with anybody else, if you failed it with your elementary school or your high school or your junior high, if you failed it, you failed it, you failed it, don't fail this.
You might get across that line literally with blood, sweat, and tears just scraping at the ground.
But that's worth it more than anything else.
There's nothing better.
Let's praise Him.
Amen.
Amen.
Let's praise him. (gentle music)
