So as I said, we've rounded third on this sermon series, a couple left in this sermon
series and then we go into the season of Advent where we're going to be looking at the mess.
One of the reasons why Jesus comes is to make sense of the mess that a lot of different
peoples and nations had found themselves during that time.
But we'll get to that and we're continuing in the book of Hebrews, simply irresistible,
simply the irresistibleness of grace, the irresistibleness of Jesus.
Yet there are times we tend to resist that.
And what kind of kingdom, what kind of Christianity, what kind of Jesus are you perpetuating in
your world, in your families, in your schools, in your jobs?
Are people looking at that and going, no, that's easy to resist, I want no part of that?
Are they looking at that going, huh, something is different?
And so we start a very kind of well-known chapter, Hebrews 11, the heading of my Bible,
we use the English standard version is, by faith.
This is all about faith and I love, and again, Brad, when you and I were emailing back and
forth on what Sunday would work, though I do plan my sermon series out, we can never
sync up all of the beauty of the differences and the different things we're going to learn
on a Sunday morning.
And to be able to say thank you to a missionary of almost 30 years, missionaries cannot do
what they do without faith.
I think you would agree.
And one of the interesting things in this chapter is not only how it starts but how
it continues, it's all about the aspect of faith.
That by faith, and there's so many different testimonies and stories of the Old Testament
that the writer of Hebrews is wanting this audience to understand.
And he's using it as a sermon illustration.
And we're not going to go through all of them, but I encourage you to read them throughout
today or this week that by faith, so and so did this, by faith, so and so did that.
And the thing we know about all those stories, for the most part, they didn't do it well.
They fell, they sinned, they made a mess of it.
And so as I told you in the beginning of service, what comes to mind for you that by faith,
this happened?
Now, we don't have time to really get into it, but I want you to think in turn about
those things.
By faith, you blank.
By faith, you whatever.
Or by faith, you didn't do this.
Because we've all had that.
Where all of a sudden, we see that we are about to enter a sin spiral or we know that
what we're about to do goes against God's word.
And by faith, you don't do it.
I always find it funny that people by faith, right, when they have made some bad choices
or they're seeking forgiveness from somebody, they said, God gave me the faith to go and
seek forgiveness.
God gave me the faith to go tell someone that they hurt me.
But rarely do I hear that by faith, Jim, I didn't do this.
By faith, I didn't do that.
It goes both ways.
So our confessions speak very directly to this idea of faith.
So let's break it down given the Heidelberg Catechism.
Question and answer 21, Lord's Day 7, what is true faith?
Now I should take that off the screen and ask anyone that's ever been catechized, looking
at you Schleichers, right?
You guys went with Dan Arzman, you guys walked through this, right, the Schleicher girls
through Catechism and where's Cam, right, and all the other Catechism folk, right?
I see, I know Matty Montman went through Catechism here.
You should all be able to know this by heart.
No?
Nothing?
Got nothing?
All right.
So let's read it.
By or what is true faith?
True faith is not only a sure knowledge by which I hold as true that all God has revealed
to us in scripture, it is also a wholehearted trust, which the Holy Spirit creates in me.
By the gospel, that God is freely granted not only to others but also, but to me also
forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness and salvation.
These are the gifts of sheer grace granted solely by Christ's merit.
I know you would have said all of that perfectly, I get it.
It's a knowledge and a trust.
Another way to say that is an understanding and a conviction of who Jesus is.
That is true faith.
And I think if we look at the world today, we need faith more than ever.
You can look out at the world today and the ground is not only groaning but the ground
is shaking.
The ground is crying out.
Not only are there disturbances all around us, there's disturbances within us.
The wolves in sheep clothing are everywhere.
And here's the catch, none of this is a surprise to God.
Christ foretold all of this, His scripture has told us.
Now I'm not here ringing a bell, wearing a sandwich board saying the end is nigh, the
end is nigh.
I'm not Jonah.
But understand that God's not taking a chance on this.
We've talked about this.
And what He's doing, He's calling people of faith to not only stand and not only walk,
but what would it look like for the sheep to sit down with the wolves?
Now for some of you that maybe make you angry.
I'm sorry, but Jesus says that's what's going to happen.
That the lion's going to lay down with the lambs, right?
That people are going to be in community in the hopes that evangelism is going to occur.
That the sheep are going to do the job that the shepherd has taught them to do and we
do so by faith.
We set the scene, Psalm 11.
If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?
I don't know about you, but the foundations of a lot are being destroyed today from the
inside and the outside.
It's very easy to see.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, open your eyes.
Open your ears.
Don't ostrich this life.
What does that mean?
Ostrich is in conflict when things get all kind of exciting.
Ostrich put their head in the sand.
We don't do that.
We walk.
We live.
We stand by faith.
We are called the righteous because of Christ.
Outside of Christ, we are not righteous and this doesn't pertain to us, but with Christ,
we are.
So we have the definition of faith from the catechism, but understand all of our catechisms,
all of our confessions are bound and the foundations are given by the Scriptures.
Without the Scriptures, the I had a catechism means nothing.
The Belgian confession means nothing.
The canons of Dort mean nothing.
Luther's small catechism, I could go on and on.
But what does Scripture say about faith?
Well, let's go to that.
Hebrews 11, now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things
unseen for by it, the people of old receive 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.
By faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain through which he was commended
as righteous.
God commending him by accepting his gifts and through his faith, though he died, he
still speaks.
By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death and he was not found because
Christ had taken him.
Now before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God and without faith, it
is impossible to please him for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists
and that he rewards those who seek him.
Though said a little differently than our Heidelberg catechism, it's still the same
thing.
So April, we'll go back to that first slide.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.
If you've grown up in church at all, you understand this conversation.
You understand that we are to have confidence, never cockiness in Christ, confidence that
we stand on God's word.
We stand on what he says.
We don't add anything.
We don't take away anything.
We stand on God's word and an assurance that he is at work.
I wonder, let me pose this question.
If you did not have the assurance of faith, and what does that mean?
That God is at work with you, that his word holds true, that he will be with you till
the ends of the earth, right?
That Isaiah, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you.
When you pass through the flames, they will not set you ablaze.
I am the Lord your God.
He says the Holy One of Israel, your Savior, that he is with you.
I look out and I know that I know some of you are going through it.
That some of you are upset.
Some of you are angry.
Some of you are hurt.
Some of you are tired.
What would life look like without the assurance of faith in those moments?
This one's not rhetorical.
What if you did not have the assurance of faith when life got hard?
Give up.
That's a great answer.
Up there.
Hopeless, right?
Or, yeah, or you say homeless.
Well, probably both, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
Others.
Empty.
Ooh, that's a good one.
Hell.
Maybe you wrote that on the card.
We're going to talk about that, but that's not going to be until next fall.
Others.
Hateful.
Wow.
What was it?
Someone else?
The end.
Yeah.
Nothing good, right?
If you had no assurance of faith, I'm going to ask it even though I don't want to hear
the answer.
Did any of you show up on a Sunday?
Collectively, you can all say, thanks, felt good.
But it's true.
Not that I assure your faith by any means.
I did not say that I will be with you always to the very end of the age.
That was Christ.
That we stand on the promises of Christ because He said it.
We believe it.
There it is.
That we have that assurance of faith, that hope of things to come.
And we break it down by what God has done.
Hebrews is telling us, He's showing us what He has done and why we should have faith.
He understands that we have transactional mindsets.
All right, if I do this, you do this.
If I do that, you do this.
If you don't do this, I'm not going to do that.
We go contracts.
We make contracts all day.
We talked about that during the covenant sermon a couple weeks ago.
We make those decisions all day.
If you do something for somebody else and it's not reciprocated, be honest, you'll think
about that.
You may look at that person even differently.
Or you may go, yeah, I'm probably not going to help them again.
We do it all the time.
But then what Hebrews does, and April, we go to the next slide, is it's a breakdown
by faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God.
He's giving us the foundation so we can trust the word of God.
That your assurance of faith isn't bound by this, but its foundation is the word of God.
How many of you have ever gotten to burning bush talking to you?
Max, did you just raise your hand?
Okay, we'll probably have a conversation after this, if it was.
How many of us have had a talking donkey and don't say, I have a Pastor Jim?
Don't say that.
But understand that God, those are divine connections, divine appointments where God
speaks to those individuals.
That's divine revelation.
Understand that he gives us that every day.
That he speaks to our wants and our needs.
He speaks to our hurts.
He speaks to our successes.
He speaks to our missions, to our evangelism.
He speaks to those things so that his scene was not made out of things that are visible.
He created it.
We talked about this.
Boom, created, light, dark.
And I don't care what your theology of Genesis is, whether you are a seven day, 24 hour,
or you're not.
Again, that's not really a Selvitic issue if you understand that God created it.
That God sustains it by the word of God.
He is the one that is doing the work.
And how we see if you go through God, the whole Cain and Abel thing, right, go to the
next verse.
Each was given the man of faith, oh no, sorry, go back.
We're not there yet.
But if we continue on with Cain and Abel, like it says when we read 1 through 6, that
by faith, one was accepted and one was not.
Now, we could dive into why that was, but that's set for another sermon.
That understand that by faith we walk.
By faith we live out our faith.
By faith, my hope is we do that via flesh and blood and not always on the internet.
But by faith we work out our faith.
That the world will see that.
I've said this before.
I'll probably say it again, that when life is hard, people will look at you.
If you're a person of faith, if you're known as a Christian in your world, and I'm not
necessarily talking about your family, but the outside world, if you're a teacher, your
classroom, your administration, if you're in business, your boss and all of those things,
right, if you're known as a believer and life gets hard, I guarantee you people will look
at how you respond.
Did that happen for you guys?
In a country where Christianity is not kind of primary?
I guarantee you that Brad Naomi knew that.
They had to live that out and people were watching that by faith we do this.
By faith we walk.
And why?
Because he not only created and foundation and given everything, he also gives to us
the Holy Spirit to allow us to give us not only the knowledge, but the conviction of
truth that we can walk out the life that God's called us to live.
Now go to Corinthians, April, that by the manifestation of the Spirit for the common
good, for to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, to the other the
knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another
gifts of healing by one Spirit and understanding that these gifts are given to the church.
It's given to the people of faith, all of those that have done the spiritual gifts inventory.
By faith you walk in those.
For those that have taken it and for those that haven't, you take it, you get a ranking
of your gifts, right?
It's not gospel truth, it's a ranking of your gifts.
Now I've also had a couple of people not like what they've gotten first off, so they continue
to take it, right?
Because they want it to say what they want to say.
They're doing it wrong.
That's not how it works.
But we walk in the gifts that God has given and he's given it to the church.
He's given it to build up the body of Christ.
He's given you gifts to help your faith.
And I see it all the time in churches, right?
The 80-20 rule, that 80% of the things are being done by 20% of the people, right?
I can't stand that statistic because that's how you get church burnout.
That is why at Munster Church we want you to walk in your gifted areas.
If you're not gifted at teaching, shocker, don't teach.
It's okay, you're only going to spin your wheels.
Maybe you want to learn about teaching, you want to shadow someone that has the gift of
teaching and we have some very gifted teachers here.
Or maybe you have the gift of evangelism or the gift of hospitality.
Just because you have the gift of hospitality doesn't necessarily mean that you lead the
small group.
Your house just may be the host church or the host house.
All of this is to help support and supplement your faith.
I don't have too many people at this church come into my office and say, pastor, there's
nothing to do at this church.
Woe to the person that says that.
No one has said that yet.
Some people have alluded to it, but they've not actually said it.
Yet I've had in churches where people have come and said, I've done everything and I'm
exhausted and I go, do you want to know why that is?
No, enlighten me, because you've done everything.
Not everyone has all the gifts.
We have been gifted, if you're an arm, be an arm.
If you're a knee, be a knee.
If you're an earlobe, be an earlobe.
That is part of working out your faith.
When it all comes together, as Corinthians tells us, it is the body of Christ.
It is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
But we're going to have times when we under plan for maybe the amount of people that come
to an evening dinner or a trunker treat at a church and we have almost double the amount
of people we think we will.
But what was so awesome to see, right, Yoshi was able to see all the people that rose up
to the occasion to do the different things.
It's a good thing.
It's a great thing.
But I also had people that stepped into a maybe minor gift area.
By the end of the night, they were exhausted.
And I said, good, because the job got done.
Now if that was how it always was, then we aren't being good stewards.
The council, the elders, me, the deacons, we're not being good stewards of your gifts.
If we always rely on the same people to do everything and everything and everything,
guess what, when they stop doing stuff, they're gone.
Because it felt more like a job than a faithful growth area of their giftings.
And so we understand that the gifts are for our faith.
The gift is for the action.
We saw it in Cain and Abel.
Right, Cain and Abel, there's gifts by faith, we see, that Abel offered his gifts and it
was more acceptable than Cain, but he offered in by faith.
Abel did that.
You go through the entire chapter of Hebrews, chapter 11, by faith Abraham, by faith Abraham,
by faith Moses, by faith Jepha and David, all of these people, that by faith they did
it.
It's powerful, friends, that by faith we walk.
But the first thing is first, you have to understand that God is the one giving you
faith and that faith is something that you can grow by the spiritual disciplines, by
reading God's word, by prayer, by fasting, all of those things.
God just doesn't say, okay, Rick, I'm giving you faith, here you go, brother.
And then he backs off.
He doesn't say, Rick, you figure it out.
No, he comes alongside of us.
And here's the key.
God will always be good stewards of the seed of faith he puts in you.
And that we believe the Holy Spirit gets you excited about that faith, regenerates that
faith in your soul and gives you those orders to say, go, go make disciples.
And he's there every step of the way.
I love coaching kids, and I'm going to close with this.
I love coaching kids in sports.
Baseball is my favorite.
Basketball is where I got a vocal bleed.
I do a lot of yelling.
But what kind of coach would it be?
Day one of sixth grade, or sorry, six-year-old T-ball.
If I said here's a T, here's a ball, here's a bat, they're six-year-olds, by the way,
have at it.
I gave you the tools, I'm out.
It's not going to go well.
There's going to be kids knocked out by other kids with bats.
That's how that will go.
And Coach Jim won't be able to coach anymore.
God doesn't do that.
God doesn't say, okay, here's my word.
I'm not going to throw it.
He doesn't just say, here you go.
You think God would waste his voice that way?
No.
God's voice is not wasted on you.
God's voice is speaking to you right now in your soul, in your gut, in your spirit.
If you're convicted, that is God's voice.
If you're encouraged, that's God's voice.
If you feel, and maybe I'm just going to put this out there, not just because we have a
missionary in house, maybe you're feeling called to missions.
Maybe there's just an annoying voice in your life that says it's time to go, it's time
to go, it's time to go.
And you're like, nope, nope, nope.
Talk to Brad and Naomi.
Maybe they struggled with it.
What we heard is they're struggling being, or they've struggled a little bit with being
called home.
You talk to Brad and Naomi for five seconds and they have a heart for people and a heart
for faith and gospel and medical and missions.
So to be called home to be with grandkids, ugh.
And I don't even have them yet.
But that sounds exhausting.
But by faith, they are coming home for a new chapter of life.
By faith, what are you going to do?
I've had some people tell me, I don't like this series, pastor, because it seems like
you're telling me I have to work out my salvation.
And I said, go back and listen.
That's not what I'm saying.
It is the byproduct of faith in you to go and bring the gospel to people.
If you are not there yet, if you do not claim Jesus as Lord and Savior, I'm sorry, you can't
evangelize.
You can't give what you don't have.
But that gift of salvation is right there.
And if you're here this morning and you want that, maybe you've made mistakes in your life
and you go, I can't have faith because I've done this, this, and this.
No, it's because of those things and that understanding that Jesus died for you, that
faith is yours.
Receive it.
Profess it.
And get to work.
Bye.