All right, welcome everybody.
We are going to start a little series, a little short series.
We're going to talk about faith this Sunday night and the next few Sunday nights.
Just kind of go through Hebrews chapter 11 kind of quickly.
There are a lot of great biblical figures to look at there that are celebrated for their
faith and while we're not going to go through in great detail and look at them, we will
look at some of the strengths of these people and maybe learn from their examples and maybe
even some of their failures.
So we're going to open up with a prayer and then we'll jump into Hebrews chapter 11.
Let's pray.
God, I pray that you would just bless this study as we go through the book of Hebrews.
I pray that you would help me to do a good job to preach and teach your word and to present
in a way that helps us to grow in you, dear Lord.
I pray that we can learn from these people that we read about, that they would be examples
to us both in how to have faith and even on some things not to do, dear Lord.
God, as we look at this list, these are not a list of perfect people, but God, they were
not saved because they were perfect.
They were saved because of their faith.
So dear Lord, let us look at our own failures and struggles and sin and not give in to those
things, not be discouraged by those things, but dear Lord, let our faith prevail just
as theirs has.
And I ask these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Hebrews chapter 11.
Now we've gone through Hebrews now for quite some time and what we have seen in the book,
just to briefly recap, is that the audience are Jewish Christians.
These are Jewish people who had grown up under the law, but they had come to faith in Jesus
Christ.
They heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.
They were living for Jesus Christ, but some type of persecution had come in their life.
They were facing some intense persecution, which was causing them to want to turn back
from their faith in Jesus and turn to the old system, to turn back to the old way of
doing things.
And the author of Hebrews has been making his point throughout the whole book using
a lot of Old Testament scriptures, what we would call Old Testament scriptures, to make
his point and to remind his audience that, look, these people in the past that you celebrate
that were those who did the old ways, the old system that you want to go back to, it
wasn't the old system that saved them.
There was something greater that God had in store.
Now the law and the sacrifices, those all served a purpose, but their purpose was to
be a shadow of what was to come, ultimately the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Now Jesus has come.
By this point, Jesus had come.
He had been crucified, buried, and resurrected, and this audience who's receiving this book
had come to faith in Jesus Christ.
But now in the midst of persecution, they're being tempted to go back to the old way.
Now maybe they felt like life was going to be easy under Jesus Christ.
Maybe there were other Jewish people who were saying, look, you need to go back to the old
way of doing things this way about Jesus isn't right.
Maybe they were facing a lot of pressure from other Jews who were not Christians.
For whatever reason, they were beginning to doubt and beginning to have difficulties in
their walk with God, and some, it appeared, had turned away from Jesus Christ.
So the author of Hebrews, after giving them some strong warnings throughout the book,
comes to Hebrews chapter 11, where he reminds them of these men and women of faith in the
Old Testament, and he's using this as an encouragement to encourage his audience to say, look, don't
give up.
God has not forgotten about you.
You may be going through difficult times, but don't give up.
God still cares about you.
The message of Jesus Christ is true and it is right and it's the only message that brings
salvation.
Don't give up.
And then he proceeds to tell them of a whole list of Old Testament figures, of heroes of
faith, if we can call them that, to encourage them in the midst of their trials to say,
look, there were those who came before you and some failed in sin and some faced great
opposition.
It was not always easy for them to serve the Lord, but they remained persistent in their
faith.
And not just on what they saw and what they knew of what we see in the Old Testament,
but they were looking forward to something further down the road.
Even the Old Testament saints were looking forward to Jesus.
They didn't know what the Messiah would look like.
They didn't know what God's plan would look like, but they were looking forward.
They knew that there was something better to come that was going to come after them.
And that's what we see in Hebrews 11.
Hebrews chapter 11, verses 1 through 3 tell us what faith is.
Now, faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen.
For our ancestors won God's approval by it.
By faith, we understand that the universe was created by God's command.
So that what is seen has been made from things that are not visible.
So what is faith?
Faith is the reality of what is hoped for.
Now, what do we hope for?
Well, we hope for more than what we see in this world.
And what we see in this world is pain and sorrow and heartache.
We look around at our own country.
It seems that our country is so divided and so full of hatred.
And as Christians, what we hopefully desire is that people would love one another, that
people would love God and that people would love our neighbor as ourselves.
That's what the Bible commands.
But yet we are faced with conflicts and wars and pain and suffering and sickness and just
the stresses of life.
But we hope for something better.
We hope for a day that we can be delivered of this, from this.
We hope for a day that we can escape our sickness and our pain and our stresses and all of the
hatred and the evil of this world will be gone and there will be healing and restoration.
And the Bible promises just that, to bring healing and restoration to us, those who have
put their faith in Jesus Christ.
And so our hope, when we speak of hope, our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus'
blood and righteousness, as the song says.
So we come in this room as Christians and we have hope.
Now those in the world who only see what the world has to offer, they are hopeless.
Because what hope does the world have to offer?
Well, the world may offer some wealth, some material gain.
The world may come with promises of health or prosperity.
The world may come with promises of fame.
But ultimately people that have these things, wealth, our health, our fame, find that they
are still unsatisfied.
They still feel hopeless.
Why?
Because the world still crumbles around them.
Because sickness still comes.
No matter how much money you have, you can't escape it.
Hard times still come.
No matter how much money you have, you cannot escape it.
No matter how famous you may be, you still have stresses and struggles, maybe even more
so.
And so what our world sees is hopelessness.
Because there's nothing in our world that can offer us any help whatsoever, our deliverance,
from the things that we go through.
But God's Word offers hope.
And that hope only comes from one person.
It comes from Jesus Christ.
And so what we hope for is peace and love and forgiveness of sins.
We hope for justice.
These are the things that we long for.
We don't see these things in our world.
And so our faith is the reality of what is hoped for.
Now we don't see heaven before us today.
We don't see Jesus standing beside us today.
We don't see Jesus seated at the right hand of God in a physical sense.
But that's where faith comes into the picture.
Because we see the Word of God and it tells us that Jesus is the Son of God.
It tells us that the only way that our sins are forgiven, that we receive eternal life,
that we are in the presence of God and escape all the myths of this world, is through Jesus
Christ.
That is our hope.
And faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the book of Hebrews tells us.
So if someone asked me today, prove to me that God exists, I couldn't prove to anyone
that God exists.
I can read to you the Word of God.
I can show you the creation of God.
But for many people, they've seen both of those things.
They've seen the Word of God.
They've seen the creation of the universe.
They look and they see the stars in the sky and the trees on the earth and the fish in
the sea.
And that's not sufficient evidence.
Well, that's all the evidence that I can give.
I can't give any more evidence than what God has created.
I can't give any more evidence than the Word of God that tells us who Jesus Christ is.
But the Bible doesn't call us to trust in Jesus based on evidence.
The Bible doesn't say, once you get enough evidence, then you can trust in Jesus and
everything will be okay.
No, the Bible calls us to faith.
And what you'll see when you read the stories of people who come to Jesus and healed, you
will, and are healed, you will almost always see, if not always, that it is their faith
that made them well.
The people that came to Jesus, they were healed because of their faith.
Both Jew and Gentile, whoever it was, those who came to seek out Jesus with a strong faith
were healed.
Why?
Because they had faith.
Because they heard about who Jesus was and they trusted that He was who He said He was,
that He was who they heard He was, that He had the power to do the things that they had
heard.
And so we read God's Word and hopefully we believe that Jesus was who He said He was,
that He's the Messiah, that He's the Son of God, that He has the power to do great things.
Most importantly, the power to forgive our sins because He died for our sins, the power
to raise us up from the dead because He was raised from the dead, the power to restore
us for eternity to the presence of God, to be in His presence.
These are things that we don't necessarily have any solid proof that we can give anybody.
Now, the proof is in the Word of God.
I think that's sufficient enough.
But I read that proof and I have to decide, well, I have faith in this even though I haven't
seen all of these things come to be, even though I can't prove without a shadow of a
doubt that all the things in the Old Testament were true.
I believe they're true.
I may not have physical, tangible evidence, but I believe 100% that every word in the
Word of God is true because I have faith.
And so it is faith that's going to save us and we need to remember that.
And we need our faith to be strong because there are times in life that our life gets
difficult and we may be tempted to say, man, is God listening?
Does God care?
Has God forgotten about me?
And our faith may begin to waver.
And that sounds like what's going on with the Hebrew audience in this book is their
faith was wavering.
And so the author reminds them, faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of
what is not seen, the proof of what is not seen.
And so our faith is the proof that God exists.
And that's sufficient proof for me.
It goes on to say for our ancestors, one, God's approval by it.
Now he's setting up for listing off some of these ancestors.
Hey, you want to know what faith is?
Look at these people who came before you.
They believed the promises of God and they had to wait hundreds, thousands of years before
these promises ever came to be and they were long gone before the promises of God often
came to be.
But nonetheless, our ancestors were approved by their faith because they believed what
God says.
Now, do we believe what God says to us, that God loves us, that he will take care of us,
that he'll never leave us or forsake us, that we will be with him for all of eternity, that
if we are faithful to confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive us our sins.
These are the things that we must believe in faith so that we may be approved by the
same faith that those who have come before us were.
By faith, we understand that the universe was created by God's command so that what
is seen has been made from things that are not visible.
This idea that God has created all things.
And in one sense, we say, well, we can't see God around us.
But in another sense, we say, we see God everywhere around us.
We see God when we look into the sky.
You see countless stars.
You can't even count them.
The number goes up and up and up.
The stronger the telescopes we get, the more of the universe we can see, the more of the
number of stars and planets that we determine there are.
Perhaps there's a countless number.
Perhaps they go far away, further than we will ever be able to see.
And we see the greatness of the galaxy and we see the greatness of this beautiful planet.
There's such beautiful and miraculous things in this planet.
Now, I don't believe that these things were a result of a big bang.
I think they are a result of a God who is a creative God, who places these things and
makes these things just as they should be and puts them just where they should be.
And he's even so wonderful that he gives us an opportunity to see the beauty of this world.
And so, as the scripture says, by faith we understand that the universe was created by
God's command so that what is seen has been made from things that are not visible.
So even though God is not visible in one sense, we see him everywhere in another sense because
the fingerprints of God are all over the universe.
And so, he gives us this definition of what faith is at the very beginning of the book.
Now, let's look at the first few people in the book of Hebrews in chapter 11.
The first one we're going to look at tonight is Abel.
Now, he might not be one that we would think about when we think about a man of faith.
If we were making a list of great men or women of faith in the Bible, Abel may not be one
of the first names that would come to our mind, but yet the author of Hebrews finds
it important to mention Abel here.
In Hebrews chapter 11 verse 4, it says, By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice
than Cain did.
By faith he was approved as a righteous man, because God approved his gifts.
And even though he is dead, he still speaks through his faith.
Now, if you've never read the story of Cain and Abel, you can go back in the Old Testament
and you can read that in Genesis chapter 4.
But the story is simple.
We don't know much about Cain and Abel other than that they both brought a gift to God.
Abel's gift was accepted by God and approved by God, but Cain's gift was not.
Now, what we see here in Hebrews chapter 11 is that Abel offered to God a better sacrifice
than Cain did.
And it says this is because of his faith.
By faith he was approved as a righteous man, because God approved his gifts.
Now, what was the difference between Abel and Cain's gift?
Well, if we look back at the story, it may not be obvious at first that there's much
of a difference at all.
We read that it says that Cain gave some of his fruits to the Lord.
And then it says that Abel gave some of his firstborn, some of the best of the best, some
of the first fruits, so to speak, as the Bible would say.
That is to say the best of the best.
So there seems to be a difference between what Cain gave and what Abel gave.
There seems to be a change in their heart here.
It seems as though maybe Cain just gave whatever was left.
Okay, I need to give something to God.
Whatever's left, I'm going to give it to God.
As to where Abel, it appears, gave God the best of the best.
He gave him the first, the best of the best that there was to offer.
He gave to God before he took any from himself.
Now, what that shows us is that Abel's heart certainly recognized and respected God and
wanted to honor God with his gift.
As to where Cain, perhaps it was just an afterthought or something that was done out of obligation.
Now, Hebrews 11 says that Abel's gift was given by faith.
And so here we see what it means to give in faith.
That Abel in faith loved God, wanted to honor God, wanted to worship God, and in doing so
he gave God the best of what he had to offer.
But what about us?
If we want to be men and women of faith, are we giving in faith like Abel gave in faith?
Are we giving with a joyful heart?
Are we giving because we really want to serve God?
Are we giving because we use this as a way to worship God and to give back to God what
God has given to us?
Or is it just something we do?
I really don't want to get rid of my money this month.
It's been a hard month or there's this thing I want to buy and if I put this extra money
in the church or help with this ministry, I won't have the money to do it.
And so I'm going to take care of what I want first and I'll just whatever's left, I'll
give it to God.
Well, that's not really a heart that's giving in faith.
And so what Abel teaches us is that we need to be those who give in faith.
What else does it say about Abel here?
It says, and even though he is dead, he still speaks through his faith.
Now our faith is going to outlive us in a sense.
Or our lack of faith might outlive us in a sense.
If we are men and women who have faith and we live by our faith and that's evidence in
how we live, then that's going to have an impact in the kingdom of God.
It's going to have an impact maybe in the work of the kingdom of God, maybe in those
that we encounter and even still tonight we're reading about Abel.
His faith still speaks through him.
We are learning about his great faith.
Is that something that can be said of us?
That people look at our life and say, hey, he's got great faith.
She's got great faith.
Maybe they do or maybe they don't.
You've probably encountered people like this in your life.
Maybe you are one, but people who just, they just, they go through the worst of the worst
times and it's just horrible.
And everybody else, you know, we go through that stuff and we're just complaining and
we're just depressed.
And then you meet people and they're just going through the worst time ever.
And they just say, man, I just praise God.
I'm in the midst of the sickness.
I'm in the midst of this hardship in life.
Everything around me is falling apart.
And some people say, but God is so good.
And I just praise God.
And I know God's going to be with me.
And you say to yourself, maybe, man, how do they have that kind of faith?
Man, I wish I could be more like them because sometimes maybe you're like me and your faith's
not very strong.
The worst thing happens.
You get depressed, you get down, you get afraid, you begin to worry.
And in the midst of all that, we forget to praise God.
But some people's faith is so strong that they seem unwavering even in some of the worst
of the worst situations.
And man, we see people with faith like that and we should say, I want a faith like that.
But what we see here with Abel is that he has a faith that even though he is dead, his
faith still speaks.
And I bet you can think of saints that have gone on to be with the Lord, brothers and
sisters in Christ, and you probably remember their faith today.
We want to be those who have a strong faith.
And like Abel, we want to be those who give by faith.
All right.
The next thing we're going to talk about is walking by faith.
Hebrews chapter 11, verses 5 through 6.
This little section talks about Enoch.
Now we don't know much at all about Enoch.
Pretty much everything we know about Enoch is found early on in the book of Genesis,
and it's not very much.
And then we see a little bit about Enoch here in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 5.
Hebrews chapter 11, verse 5 says, by faith, Enoch was taken away so he did not experience
death and he was not to be found because God took him away.
For prior to his removal, he was approved since he had pleased God.
Now what do we know about Enoch?
Well, not a whole lot other than that he walked by faith.
We see that in the scripture, that he walked by faith.
If we go back and we look at Genesis and we take what we see here about Enoch, we don't
know anything about him.
We know that it tells us a little bit of his family tree, who his father was and who came
after him.
But we don't know very much about Enoch, but what little we know is sufficient for the
author of Hebrews to say, this guy is worth looking at and paying attention to.
Now what we know about Enoch is one, he walked by faith and two, he did not experience death.
Now that may be what most people remember Enoch for.
There's only two people in scripture that it says did not experience death.
One is Elijah that the Lord took up to be with him without dying.
And the other one here is Enoch who it says did not experience death.
And that's all we know is that Enoch walked by faith and he was approved by God because
he walked by faith.
And because he walked by faith, God took him home to be with him.
And that's all we know about Enoch.
But perhaps that's enough for you and I too.
Do we have that kind of faith in our life?
Would it be said of us that we are those who walk by faith?
Are there areas in our life that we see that we do not walk by faith?
How would other people describe your life?
How would other people describe you?
That's a scary thing to think about.
We may describe ourselves as a good man or a good woman.
We may describe ourselves as one, a strong faith who serves the Lord and loves the Lord
and is just good all the way around.
What if you ask somebody on the street, what would people say about you?
Do your actions show that you're a man or a woman of God?
Do your actions show that you live by faith?
Maybe they do or maybe they don't.
Maybe it could be said of us that we walk by faith and we're approved by God because
of our faith in Jesus Christ and that we are faithful to follow his commands.
But then again, maybe we need to do some work in our life.
Maybe we're nothing like Enoch at all.
Maybe we don't walk by faith.
But we need to walk by faith because it's our faith that's going to save us.
And Enoch walked by faith and as a result, God took him home to be with him.
And that's the ultimate desire for us is that we leave this old world that's not our home
and go to be in the presence of God.
Now, it's highly unlikely that God just is going to take any of us up at just any given
moment that God's going to look down and say, you are such a great man or woman of faith,
I'm going to take you up.
He could.
He's God.
He can do whatever he wants to.
But it's likely that you and I will live out our lives.
Now, maybe Jesus will return and take us home with him.
Or at the very least, what's going to happen is we're going to take our last breath in
this world.
Now, we may be 30 years old.
We may be 120 years old.
But at some point in time, we're going to take our last breath in this world.
And at that point, if we have been those who have walked by faith, God is going to carry
us home to be with him just like he did Enoch.
Verse six, now without faith, it is impossible to please God for the one who draws near to
him must believe that he exists and reward those who seek him.
Isn't that something?
Now without faith, it is impossible to please God.
Now in the context of Hebrews, this is important because the audience of Hebrews was wanting
to go back to the Old Testament sacrificial system.
They didn't, they were given up on Jesus and they were wanting to go back to the old way.
In a sense saying, okay, we're going to be saved by doing the old thing.
We're going to be saved by offering sacrifices.
We're going to be saved by the blood of goats and bulls.
But the author of Hebrews has already been making the point repeatedly that the blood
of goats and bulls is not sufficient for the sacrifice, for the forgiveness of sins.
It's only the precious blood of Jesus Christ, which is sufficient to take away our sins
once and for all.
And so there's nothing that we're going to do that's going to please God or earn God's
favor or earn God's approval or earn the forgiveness of our sins.
Now we're probably not sacrificing animals to the Lord today to atone for our sins.
If you are, you need to come see me after the service tonight.
We're probably not doing that.
But are there other ways that we try to please God?
Maybe we live in a little bit of sin, a little more than we want to.
And we say, oh, well, I'll just level out the scale.
Oh, the sin's getting kind of heavy.
So I'll make sure to go to church this Sunday and I'll even go to Sunday school or I'll
make sure to put a little extra money in the plate or I'll make sure to sing in the choir
or whatever it may be.
There are things that we do sometimes, maybe if we're honest, that we think we need to
level out the scale.
Oh, I've sinned a little bit this week, so I better do a little bit more for God this
week to level it out.
But that's not the way it works.
Our sins are not atoned for by our actions.
It is our faith that approves us before God.
It is our faith in Jesus Christ that results in the forgiveness of our sins through Jesus's
righteousness and not our own.
So whatever acts we are trying to do to please God and earn God's favor are never going to
be sufficient.
There is only one way that we get in right standing with God, and that is through faith
in Jesus Christ.
And without faith, it is impossible to please God.
And so it says, for the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and rewards
those who seek him.
So what about you and I today?
Are we those who seek Jesus Christ or not?
Well, Enoch was.
Enoch was one who walked by faith.
And that's the call of God's word for us today is that we would be men and women who would
walk by faith.
Okay, so we've seen Abel, one who is an example of giving by faith.
We've seen Enoch, who is an example of walking by faith.
And the next example we're going to look at is living by faith.
Hebrews chapter 11 verse 7, living by faith.
Now we talk a little bit about Noah in this section.
Now Noah, you may have heard of before.
He's pretty, pretty popular character in the Old Testament, especially his story about
building the ark.
This is a pretty important story if you've gone to church in your life as a kid, you've
probably heard this story.
And maybe even if you're completely unchurched, you may have even heard of the story of Noah
in the ark.
Well, in Hebrews chapter 11, Noah is one of the characters that is talked about because
of his faith.
In verse 7, it says, by faith, Noah, after he was warned, what was not yet seen and motivated
by godly fear, built an ark to deliver his family.
By faith, he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by
faith.
Now, the Bible tells us that Noah was a preacher of righteousness.
Now Noah is a great example of living by faith.
Now it says that after he was warned about what was not seen and motivated by godly fear,
built an ark to deliver his family.
Now sometimes God may put things on our heart that we don't understand.
Now imagine Noah here for a second, that God says, I want you to build this huge ark, about
450 foot long.
I mean, this is a big deal.
If you look, I don't remember all the measurements off the top of my head, but it was a huge
thing.
You can look at the ark, the museum that you can go visit in Ohio or Cincinnati, wherever
it is, somewhere in that area.
You can look at the ark, you can look it up online.
This is a real life replica of how big the ark was.
This was a huge thing.
And God tells Noah, one, I'm about to destroy the earth because of all of its wickedness.
And here Noah is supposed to build this ark to be able to escape when this flood comes.
And this took Noah a long time to do this.
This would have taken a lot of faith.
One, to be able to be a preacher of righteousness in that time that was full of evil.
Certainly people probably didn't want to hear anything that Noah had to say.
And two, you're building this huge boat because, oh yeah, God's going to flood the whole world.
Well, it's not like this is something that had ever happened before.
And so Noah has to have a lot of faith.
One, to believe that God's going to do what he says he's going to do.
And two, just to stand up to those who may be opposing him and coming against him.
But nonetheless, it says that Noah was a man of faith.
But what does it say?
It says that he was motivated by godly fear.
Now he didn't see.
It's not like God had shown him and taken him into the future and shown him these things.
No, they were unseen.
He didn't see the flood that was coming.
He didn't see the boat finish.
God just says, here's the plans.
Make the boat.
Get ready for the rain.
And it says that he was motivated by godly fear.
Now what about you and I?
Do we fear the Lord?
Well, how motivated are we to serve the Lord?
If we're not very motivated to serve the Lord and follow his commands, then we likely don't
have much fear for the Lord.
The more we fear the Lord, the more we are going to be obedient to his commands.
And obviously Noah was.
He celebrated for that, for his faith.
He was motivated by godly fear.
And so he did what God said.
And what was the result of that?
He was able to build an ark and deliver his family.
And so Noah is a good example of living by faith.
When God tells you to do something, even if it doesn't make sense, even if you face opposition,
even if you can't even imagine how it's going to work out, how would the world even possibly
be flooded?
How am I going to make this huge boat?
This is going to be a huge task.
I mean, these are all legitimate questions that we ask sometimes when God calls us to
do something that seems bigger than us.
And oftentimes what God calls us to do is bigger than us.
But that's where faith comes in.
We say, okay, God, I know that what you're calling me to do is difficult.
It seems impossible to me.
I don't know how, God, you're going to use little old me to do any of this.
But God, I trust you and saw I'm going to live by faith.
I'm going to live in obedience to your commands and I'm going to trust you in everything that
you call me to do.
And Noah is a great example of what it means to live by faith.
So these are just three examples that we've seen in the book of Hebrews in chapter 11.
Abel, one who is giving by faith.
In Enoch, we see one who is walking by faith.
And in Noah, we see one who is living by faith.
And these are all people that we could talk a lot more about.
And you should study more about these if you have them.
Now again, in the story of Enoch and Abel, we don't have much information about them.
But even what little information we have is celebrated by the author of Hebrews and recognize
that these were men of faith.
Now what I want to do is we look at these biblical examples and some of them we're familiar
with, maybe some more than others.
But also even in more modern times, we see great examples, great men or great women of
faith.
And so every week we're going to look at one of these men or women of faith.
And so tonight, a more modern example closer to our time of a man of faith is a man by
the name of George Mueller.
Has anybody ever heard of George Mueller?
Okay nobody.
Okay.
Well, good news.
We're going to talk about George Mueller tonight.
George Mueller is somebody that you probably should study because he was a great man of
faith.
Now, when George Mueller was a teenager, he was a pretty bad guy.
He wasn't good at all.
He was alive back in the 1800s.
His father was going to send him to a Bible school to learn the Bible so that he could
be a preacher, not because George had any desire to be a preacher or because his father
was some great Christian man.
It was just a good way to make a living back then.
You could make a lot of money if you were a clergy.
And so George was going to go to this Bible school and he was going to learn to be a preacher
and he was going to make money and that was going to be it.
However, when he went to this school, he went to a Bible study one night and he went totally
wanting to just go mock the other Christians that were there and make fun of them.
But what happened was he heard the word of God and when he did, he put his faith in Jesus
Christ and that changed his life.
Ultimately, he went to be a missionary for a period in his life.
I believe he went to be a missionary to the Jews for a short period.
And then as he come back home, ultimately, I'm summing up a lot of the story here in
the life of George Mueller, please look him up.
But ultimately, as he was back home, he would see children on the streets and he became
very kind of heartbroken for these kids, these orphans that were on the street.
And so he decided, he felt like that he needed to open an orphanage.
And so he did just that.
But one thing George Mueller decided very early on is he was going to be a man of faith
and that he was never going to ask anyone but God for anything that he ever needed.
That God would be the only one that he would tell of any of his needs, that he would totally
and completely trust in God and God alone to provide for him.
Now this takes a lot of faith.
Well he began to gather up these kids and ultimately his orphanage throughout the years,
he had 10,000 kids.
He had multiple buildings, big buildings that were full of orphanages.
And as you read through the stories of George Mueller, you see that God continues to bless
him and that George Mueller stays true to his promise.
And he continues to only ask God for his needs.
Let me give you one example, one of the most famous stories of George Mueller.
There was an occasion where there were several hundred kids and the orphanage was completely
out of food.
Now this was not uncommon for them to run out of things they need or to run out of money
to pay the bills.
And George Mueller never said a word to anybody.
He always prayed, God give me what I need to meet the needs.
And God always did.
One morning George got up and there were all the kids and they were getting ready for breakfast
and they were all hungry and the kitchen staff came to George Mueller and said, George we
don't have any food or anything to drink.
We are completely out of food.
George, what will we do?
George said, have all the kids sit down and get ready for breakfast.
And they did just that.
And George Mueller told the kids, let us pray to God for our breakfast and thank God for
what he's going to provide us with.
Now I should have refreshed myself on the story.
Look it up, it's a great story.
So he and the kids pray for the food that God's going to bless them with and no sooner
than he gets through praying, there's a knock on the door.
Now he's got hundreds of kids here, not a drop of food.
Nobody knows it, nobody has prayed about it, but George and he's totally been seeking
God, he and the kids here waiting for this food.
There's a knock on the door.
It's the bread man, it's the baker from down the street.
He says, George, in the middle of the night last night, God put it on my heart to bake
bread for these children.
He said, so I got up in the middle of the night and I've been baking bread all night
and I've brought it here for the children.
No sooner than the bread man brings the bread, there's a knock on the door.
It's the milkman.
The milkman says, George, my cart of milk has broken here in the street in front of
your orphanage and I have no way to get the milk back before it spoils.
I need to get rid of it or it's going to spoil.
Could you and the children use this milk?
That's one example, one of many in which God provided for George Mueller and the kids of
that orphanage.
It came at just the right time.
That's what we have to remember is that when we pray to God and when we seek him is God
doesn't always do it as quick as we want.
Now we'd probably panic, we'd say, okay, I'm going to pray that God would send milk
and bread and we'd pray for a couple of hours and if it didn't come, we'd say, well, I guess
God's not going to provide.
Then we'd run out and try to do it on our own.
We'd run and get some milk and get some bread or do whatever we could or beg our neighbors
or ask our friends, but not George Mueller.
He was a man who trusted and said, God is going to provide and God always provided.
God always gave just the right amount of money that would randomly come in.
He never asked anybody.
He never said, oh, I need this money.
I got this bill.
I can't pay this bill.
I don't have this food.
He only prayed, God, would you meet my need?
And God always did.
Sometimes it was at the last second from the most unexpected places, but God always met
the need of George Mueller and those orphans.
And that's a more modern example of someone closer to our time who has been one who has
lived by faith.
Can we say that about ourselves?
Do we trust in God that much?
We say we have faith, but maybe our faith's not quite as strong as we want it to be.
Maybe we look at people like George Mueller and say, man, I wish I could have that faith,
but I just can't.
Well, maybe that's part of our problem.
Maybe we are men and women that are sometimes weak in the faith.
Maybe we say, man, I wish I could see God work like that in my life.
Well, maybe we could see God work a lot more in our lives if we were men and women of faith,
if we had faith like this and trusted that God was going to do things on his time in
his way, then maybe we'd be a lot better off.
But we like to get in there and kind of do it ourselves.
Part of that is because our faith is weak.
The author of Hebrews reminds us, A, what faith is.
And as we saw tonight, he taught us how to give by faith, how to walk by faith, and how
to live by faith.
We see that in examples in scripture.
We see that in examples in the recent past.
We see that in examples of brothers and sisters in Christ around us today.
But let us seek to be like these men and women of faith that we study about.
Let us seek to trust God above all else, to earn God's approval, not because of anything
that we've done, but to know that we are approved by Jesus Christ.
We are approved by our faith.
We are approved by his righteousness.
We are approved when we humble ourself before God and say, God, I put my faith in Jesus
Christ.
And then when we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we need to be those who live by faith in Jesus
Christ.
Let's pray.
God, we thank you for your good word.
I pray that you would help us to be those who live by faith in our life, dear Lord.
We have good examples of faith in our life, maybe some that live around us today.
Maybe it's these we see in scripture.
Maybe it's other historical figures, but dear Lord, there are certainly many men and women
of faith that we can learn from, dear Lord.
I pray that you would help us never to doubt you, that we don't always see how you're working,
when you're working, but we have to trust that you are.
We have to trust, dear Lord, that you are in control and that everything you do is right
and the time you do it is the right time.
So help us, dear Lord, to be those who give you the best of the best from what you've
given us, that we would give by faith like Abel did, that we would be those who are like
Enoch, that it could be said of us that we are men and women who walk by faith, and we
look forward to the day that you carry us home to be with you like Enoch.
God, let us be those who live by faith, that what you call us to do while we're still on
this earth, that we don't question you, but that we trust you and are obedient to your
commands no matter what opposition we face, no matter how crazy it may seem, dear Lord,
we call us to do things that we don't understand, but God, I pray that you would help us to
be men and women of faith that trust you in everything.
I ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.