your text:
“I am preaching on Sunday. But the church has just finished doing a series on Hebrews 11 and I am doing the final sermon. Could you read it and give me some insights that you may have?”
Well, it so happens that I’ve read Hebrews 11 over and over again, especially of late. That verse 6 is one that I quote often, and lean on heavily, and that I often ponder the final two – verses 39 and 40, wondering just what they mean.
Setting the Stage:
The World’s Way vs. God’s way
…a taxi pulls up to the Saloon, and out jumps a man in an incredible hurry. As he runs toward it’s swinging doors, we hear the angry words punctuated with expletives, “Hey *&^%*….” the man turns back, and leans into the now open front window of the cab, and flips a few 20’s at the driver, and tells him to go buy himself some new runners. He runs through the doors knocking over the poor drunk bugger who had just swaggered over to it and was about to push them open… this man, Ralph, doesn’t even flinch… he doesn’t sit, he hastens to the bar, slaps the marble top and shouts… “whiskey straight up, and make it snappy!” The piano music and rollicking conversation that had permeated the bar only a fraction of a second earlier all comes to a sudden halt… and as the bar tender saunters toward that end of the bar, he looks over at the owner/manager, and receives a ‘go ahead’ nod… the drink is supplied, Ralph picks it up, slaps it down his gullet through his open pie hole, and you hear an “AH!”… HE WIPES his mouth, and looks around, satisfied, and strolls out of the bar.
Do you remember the first time you wondered what FAITH is? Is today the first time? I’ll spell it for you F A I T H… where shall I go to help you understand the word.
I remember hearing others speak of FAITH and I asked… But the answers as supplied didn’t satisfy in the sense that I had an “OH!” kind of “AH HA!” response to their answer.
<<It wasn’t like the first time I asked my parents about where babies come from and they explained that one day they looked out into the garden and there amoung the cabbages was a little bundle, and it was crying, and lo and behold it was a human being! A baby human being! I listened intently and wasn’t satisfied they were giving me the straight goods. Their answer seemed doubtful, but I was too young to pursue it at the time, and went back to making my mud cakes.
The bible is where the answer to this question begins, but it ends in your heart. I differentiate your heart from your mind. In your heart is where you KNOW that babies aren’t found in cabbage patches, even though you have no other source to prove your notion at this time. Intuition is an irrational sense, differing from the rational ones of sight sound touch taste and smell. Intuition relates to and flows from what we all know as conscience. Many times we’ve battled with our consciences, and tried to act outside of its dictates. We’ve reasoned how ridiculous a ‘rule’ is and how it may be disregarded since Mommy and Daddy will never know where the missing bananas went, and besides, had they counted them? And besides, didn’t Mommy and Daddy deserve to have a few bananas filched from them?!? Hadn’t they dared to have more than one child and thereby divided their loyalty between ME and those others!?!? And maybe as you pondered this you thought of how it wasn’t too late to go and dig up the cabbage patch so that no more competition could be introduced… but you realized that you weren’t entirely sure that’s how… so you eat the banana(s) and now what to do with the peel… no better place than under the couch, for judging by all the stuff under there, the dust bunnies and long lost lego pieces, and Dad’s left slipper… the one he couldn’t find that resulted in him buying a new pair of slippers! YES! and you hide the banana peel there… but soon, in the heat of the summer your sin cries out! And the couch is lifted and the slipper is found and your mom and dad hug… and your little brother flies over to the long lost lego piece… and there they were… you broke into a sweat… your eyes dart from side to side, you try to act casual, you try to whistle, but immediately stop because you still can’t pucker all that well and it would just add to the suspicion you must now be under… and to your absolute delight they turn to your younger brother, and he is taken from the room, beaten until he confesses to a crime that you and he know he didn’t commit, and you scuttle away relieved that your surreptitious banana eating days have come not to an end, but have merely just begun… but later that night, in the middle of the night after the forth glass of water brought by your mother who really has a poor attitude indeed since she suggested that a lot more water would be provided next time you got her out of bed… and you weren’t sure what she meant, but decided not to press the issue… your banana caper rose in your mind… and it was inescapable! You’d been found out, and yes, you were still running free, with a pink instead of red derriere, but in your heart you felt it… the guilt… the unavoidable guilt… you then knew about this thing we all call the conscience.
It’s there that we work out the definition of FAITH and the KNOWING of what FAITH is. The words we read, the people we ask and their answers are all on the exterior, but the answer to what is FAITH is on the interior, and its answered in that still quiet place.
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:6
let’s just read that verse a few words at a time….
And without faith…
It is impossible to please God… WHAT?!? I mean so what?!?! right?
I want free access to bananas 24/7 365… I want my brother to be blamed for every single caper, and I want that ache in my heart to go away… the ache of knowing that I stole the banana and hid the evidence… and truth be told the guilt of knowing my brother took the wrap for it…
Who wants to please God?!? Isn’t God always displeased no matter what I say or do? Doesn’t he have better things to do than to worry about me? Can’t I scuttle around down here doing my thing while he does his? Isn’t faith for something else? Much more significant?!?
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11:6
…the beginning and end of what FAITH is… begins and ends with God.
Let’s look at Hebrews 11… key verses like
13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. Hebrews 11:13-15
They didn’t receive what was promised… it seems to me that as you read this chapter over and over again that the word FAITH – repeated 28 times – begs that the question “What is faith?” be satisfied, for the answer to be sought and found.
God knows the answer. Apart from Faith it is impossible to please him, so he’s the one who has to tell me, and convince me what it is.
The authority of God’s word comes from the fact that he wrote it. I’m convinced that he wrote it. To those of you that find that doubtful, that is the beginning of YOUR FAITH. Faith is something that you can HAVE like a banana! And not only that but it is YOURS, it belongs to you alone, nobody else can have it FOR YOU, it’s yours to know, and to live… it’s inextricably tied to your conscience. It’s the satisfaction of all life’s questions. It’s the peace that passes all understanding. It’s the still small voice quiet at last. But back up… God’s word, do you doubt it? Are there other authorities that are just as meaningful if not more so… perhaps for you that’s where the battle begins! Let God’s word be raised up in your minds, and your hearts. Yes, your faith begins there.
Where is your bible. That’s a revealing thing as well. Is it in your house somewhere? Is it back at home in your parents attic? Is it under your couch with the dust bunnies, legos, slipper, and rotting banana peels? Is it an APP on your phone? Is it on the internet, is your bible a URL that you have memorized, https://biblegateway.com
My bible is all of those things….
if I actually did what I will now describe, then all the better. If I asked a table to be brought in, and placed at the front here. And then one by one, each of you brought your bible up here. And I asked you to lay it down, and walk away. If the internet was swallowed up at last and erased… if all the phones, tablets and computers were wiped clean… and you returned to your seats… how many of you would be empty? Lost. If I lost ultimately my mind, and lost all memory… the greatest loss would be God’s word that I have hid in my heart. Memorized, studied, pondered, torn apart, chewed, mused, fussed over. It is the beginning and the end of FAITH. But what about YOU, would you miss it?
It’s all about pleasing God alone. Answer these questions. He exists. Believe it? Do you believe it enough to pray with me right now, “God, if you’re there, make yourself real to me in a way that I can understand, make up for my inability with your abilities. Convince me that you are there, and what you are all about, Amen.”
He rewards… but if he rewards what about those poor folks in verse 13. The one’s who died without what was promised. But we have to focus on the next part…
Those last two verses are crucial. Each of THEM got in touch with, connected with God himself in their hearts, they heard what nobody else around them heard, and that’s the part that’s UNSEEN, unseen by others, unprovable to others, but YOU are sure, you have no doubts.
Hebrews 11:39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, 40 since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
and realize that there is a chapter 12 that immediately follows… that chapter 11 is an unfinished thought being expressed… that continues in chapter 12, and finally concludes in chapter 13. But chapter 11 is vital. We must pause and reflect on what chapter 11 is all about. It becomes a ready made joke to wonder out loud, since the word faith is mentioned 28 times.
so that only together with us would they be made perfect…
Father God…
2 Timothy 2:7 Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this.
“what I am saying…”
is the present active indicative. But the result of the reflecting, which is Timothy’s action, results in God’s action, which is
“the lord give thee”
We as those who have gone this road already go ahead of you… and we are
actively saying, constantly saying, with our words and our lives…
your work is to reflect, ponder, consider… think over
God’s work is to “give thee” it’s a final, yet active giving… it’s like when you go to work, your Boss ‘gives thee’ a pay cheque, and you have a stock pile of cash in the bank, and yet you are expecting more where that came from. You have tangible evidence of what has been given, and the path to how it came into your hands. So it is with the way God gives, as long as we ponder the way he would have us ponder.
His reward for you, is insight… is Faith
We need to ponder what his inspired word says, that’s where FAITH comes from… it isn’t a ‘grabbable’ thing one can demand from a bar tender, slap down our gullet, and walk out again now having received and imbibed it… it’s not a quick fix. It doesn’t come by going to other people like that guy who went into the bar.
