Faith Is…

Good afternoon, everyone.

I want to start by taking you back to my youth. I just recently did a youth Bible study, which was a lot of fun to give, and maybe some of you heard it. I know oftentimes these youth Bible studies get heard by a lot of the non-youths in the church, and that’s wonderful. But I just want to take you back to my youth a little bit as we introduce this message. So growing up, I enjoyed skateboarding, and I think I mentioned that in my youth Bible study. I loved to skateboard with my brothers.

We had a common hobby, if you could put it that way, I don’t know, hobby, recreational activity, whatever you would call it, and we’d enjoy doing that together. They had friends that skateboarded, I had friends that skateboarded, and we’d kind of go out and do it together. We’d build ramps in our house. That was a lot of fun. My dad would help. We’d build the big boxes that we could go skateboard on and grind on the side with grind rails that come down from it.

And I told my parents, and my mom still to this day reminds me because I no longer do this, she reminds me that I told her that I would skateboard until the day I died, and that is clearly not the case anymore. You know, out of the mouth of babes, you have great aspirations in life, and you say things that eventually adulthood or whatever life catches up with you, and you don’t continue skateboarding. I mean there are professional skateboarders who are adults to this day, but I’m not one of them, so. But when I was young, I looked up to certain skateboarders, professional skateboarders at the time.

If you can think of... maybe you’ve heard of famous names like Tony Hawk. I had Tony Hawk’s, that was my first skateboard, was a Tony Hawk’s Skateboard, and I had his shoes and everything. It was full-on Tony Hawk back in the early, or the mid to late ‘90s. And Rodney Mullen, another famous skateboarder. I loved the way that he skateboarded, the things that he did. And Chet Thomas and a whole bunch of other skateboarders, and most of you probably don’t know those names, but that’s okay, that’s not the point. The point is, I looked up to them.

I wanted to, and I aspired to be like them. I wanted to be able to skateboard like them, do the tricks that they did, in the way that they did. They looked so cool doing it, I was thinking, “Oh wow, they look so cool, I want to do it like that.” And so I aspired to be like them as a young boy, skateboarding. Same became true when I played the violin. I grew up practicing many hours a day. I wanted to become... I didn’t know whether I wanted to become a professional violinist when I was young, but I certainly could have gone down that trail if I wanted to.

But I ended up changing course in college toward architecture. But I practiced a lot, I took lessons, I rehearsed with all kinds of different orchestras and small orchestras, big orchestras, full orchestras with the band behind it. And I aspired to be like people like Itzhak Perlman, one of the great violinists of our time. He’s still alive to this day. Or Joshua Bell, some of these other people who have become professional violinists. And I looked to them and I thought, “Wow, I love the way that they sound, I love the way that they play, I love the techniques that they apply.”

And Itzhak Perlman, just a curious thing, he’s such a big man. He has these huge sausage fingers, and I always was astonished at how he was able to move them so nimbly across the violin. I couldn’t fathom having the size of fingers that he has and still be able to play with the agility and the speed and precision that he did. But he did, and I looked up to him. I looked up to him. So I’ll ask you this question: What is a role model? What’s a role model? Pretty much somebody that you would look up to. And the definition of a role model is a person looked to by others as an example to be imitated.

I wanted to imitate Tony Hawk and Rodney Mullen, and some of these great skateboarders of my younger years. I wanted to imitate Itzhak Perlman and Joshua Bell on the violin. But what makes a person want to imitate somebody else? What makes a person want to do that? It’s pretty simple. It’s because we like the things that they do. We like what they do, whether it be the way that they speak. If you like the way that somebody speaks in life, maybe they’re a good orator, they’re a good speaker, they’re good conversationalist, you like the way that they converse, you like the way that they talk, and you want to imitate it.

You like the way that their character is, or you like the way that they dress and you want to imitate it. You like the way that they smile, or the way that they laugh, and you want to imitate it. Having role models throughout life is a very healthy thing in many regards. Because without them, without having those people who are professionals or very good at something in life, without having those to aspire to, we wouldn’t be able to better ourselves in life. I knew I wasn’t as good as Itzhak Perlman on the violin, so I aspired to become like him. I wanted to sound like him. I wanted to be like him on the violin. He became a role model, and he was a higher standard for me to aspire to. That’s why role models are important.

Turn over to Hebrews chapter eleven. Where we’re going to cover right now, may seem unrelated, but I’ll tie it back in in just a couple of minutes. Hebrews chapter eleven, you could turn there. We’ll just read the first verse. Hebrews chapter eleven and verse one says this, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith is the substance. This is the definition of faith in the Bible. God defines things in the Bible, and here he’s defining faith, what it is: Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.

Now, the word substance is pretty fascinating. And as an architect, as a person who went through architecture school... I’m not an architect, but as a person who went through architecture school, I can appreciate this and understand it to a greater degree. Here, the word substance is, the word is hupostasis, from a compound word of the word hupo, meaning under, and histémi, meaning to stand. So the definition of the word hupostasis is a setting under or a support. So from an architectural perspective, think of it as the foundation.

Under-support is the word substance. So faith is the under-supporting of the things not seen. Excuse me. Faith is the foundation, if you will, the under-supporting or the structure, the foundation of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Think of it as the undergirding. Faith is the undergirding or foundation of our faith is defined by our actions, what we do. The things that we do in life show our faith. You remember back in James two and verse twenty-six, you can just turn over there quick. James two and verse twenty-six, a very familiar verse, we all know it, says this.

James two, twenty-six. “For as the body without the spirit is dead...” we all know that. If we have no spirit in our body, we’ve died. So similar to that, how God is likening a body without a spirit in it as being dead, faith without works is dead. So imagine your body is faith and your spirit is works. If you don’t have the works of your spirit, the body of faith is dead. You have no faith. Faith without works is dead. So the undergirding or foundation of our faith is defined by our actions, the things that we do, the works that we perform in life.

So how can we know if we have the proper substance? If I could put it that way. Going back to the definition, you could turn back to Hebrews eleven one. How can we know if we have the proper substance or foundation of our faith? Think about this, brethren. This is where it ties back to role models. There are many great role models that Bible tells us, role models of faith in the Bible. And we have an entire chapter devoted to those very role models. And the role models show us, God tells us, what those role models did in their life to demonstrate their faith.

Those role models had certain actions, they acted a certain way, they lived their lives a certain way, such that those actions, again, faith without works is dead, those actions defined their faith. And so if we have an aspiration just like I had an aspiration as a child to become like Tony Hawk or Rodney Mullen or Itzhak Perlman, if we have an aspiration to become like one of the greats, the great Bible faith leaders in the Church, of God’s Church throughout the millennia, if we want to aspire to be like those greats in the Hebrew eleven Hall of Fame of Faith, if I could put it that way, then we have to look at the things that they did.

If I wanted to study how Yitzhak... if I wanted to become better at violin, I needed to study how Itzhak Perlman used his fingers, how he shifted, the way that he used his bow. I needed to study his movements. I needed to study his intonation, his tone. I needed to study all of the things that made him who he was. So just like I would have to study Itzhak Perlman to become a greater violinist, we have to study the actions of the great people of faith in the Bible, if we aspire to become great in faith ourselves.

So again, faith as defined by the actions of those in the Hall of Fame of Faith, Hebrews eleven, will break down into four categories. We’re going to cover those four categories today. As we read through, you can think about all the different people who are in this chapter, Abel, Noah, Enoch, Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all of the different people who were in it, Moses, his parents, Rahab, all of these people had great faith. But what we’re going to do is pick apart and dissect, and understand what they did that caused them to have great faith.

We all know that they were faithful people, but why? Why were they faithful? What did they do? What can we imitate from them as they are our role models in faith? That’s what this message is about. So let’s dive right into the first point. “Faith Is…” that’s the name of this... This sermon is going to be “Faith Is…” and it’s going to be four things. Faith is number one, sacrificing. We’re going to be here in Hebrews eleven quite a bit today. So you could take your bookmarker, if you have one in your Bible. I recommend putting it there so that we can come back to it easily on a regular basis.

Because we’ll be hopping in and out of Hebrews eleven, but we will be coming back there quite frequently today. So let’s understand what it is that makes sacrificing and where it is in this Hebrews eleven chapter that we see sacrificing is so important and why does that tie to faith. Let’s read from verse one again and we’ll continue. “So now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. For by it, the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”

None of us were around and existed at the time of creation. If you think about it, we have to have faith to believe that the world was created by God. Because none of us saw it with our own eyes. And we can’t see God with our own eyes. That’s the whole point of this verse. It’s saying God is invisible, and at a point the world never even existed, but at a point the invisible God and Christ together built the world, built the universe. And that takes faith to believe.

We know that’s not a stretch to understand because there are a whole lot of people on Earth today, after 6,000 years of being able to study the amazing creation that God has made, and have no excuse that there should be a Creator. People still don’t believe that there was a Creator. They would rather believe in the outrageous theory that there was a Big Bang, or that somehow evolution occurred. We came from slime. But where did the slime come from? Where did anything come from? That theory is so crazy and ludicrous.

It actually is much easier to believe that a great Creator God, who is invisible, that we can’t see, created the universe, including the earth that we’re on today. But brethren, it takes faith to believe that, because none of us were there at the creation. But that’s not part of the first point. Here’s the first point. Verse four, By faith, what we’re about to read, Abel did in faith. “By faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and by it, he being dead, yet speaks.”

Let’s turn over to Genesis three. We’re just going to read four or five verses here in Genesis three about that account of Cain and Abel. Genesis three and verse four, we’ll pick it up. Excuse me, Genesis four. I’m sorry I wrote the wrong verse. Genesis four and verse one. “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. And she again bare his brother Abel.” So Cain and Abel, the first two sons of Adam and Eve.

“Abel was a keeper of the sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time, it came to pass that Cain brought forth the fruit of the ground and offering unto the Lord.” Cain came forth with a vegetable or something like that. He came forth with some kind of a... I don’t know. You can imagine it would have been a turnip or a potato maybe, or celery. I don’t know what it was exactly that he brought, but we know that it was some kind of a vegetable or something that grew out of the ground.

And he offered it to God. “And Abel, as he brought the first fruits, firstlings of his flock, he also brought the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.” Abel did something different. He decided to sacrifice and offer an animal. The word firstlings of the flock was probably a sheep or a goat. And that’s what he brought. Now, on its face, it doesn’t take much... I don’t know about you, but I would much rather go to a restaurant and have lamb instead of a potato if I had the choice or a vegetable, or some kind of a carrot.

If I was offered a carrot or a lamb, it wouldn’t be a very difficult choice to make. And God saw that. He understood that, too. But it’s not just that the lamb is better than a carrot or a potato or whatever it would have been. Think about the time, the effort, the thought, the investment that came with giving God something of much greater value—a lamb. If you think about what it took in order to birth that lamb, to raise it up, to feed it all the time that it was alive, the potential that that lamb could go on and have other lambs and have other sheep, it was a much more substantial sacrifice.

Never mind that when you sacrifice, if you could even call it that, sacrificing a potato to God, giving a potato to God, what would that even entail? Do you just give the potato? You don’t have to cook it. Do you cook it? Do you burn it? Do you slice it open? Whatever amount of preparation would have been for this potato would have been very minimal compared to killing the lamb. The lamb is much more difficult, much greater sacrifice. You have to kill the lamb in all the ways that are proper and cook the lamb.

It would have taken a whole lot more time, effort, skill, never mind that it was worth a whole lot more than this carrot or potato. So, God saw that. It wasn’t just that God prefers lamb over carrots. It was that God saw the effort, the amount of sacrifice that was involved in that sacrifice. That lamb was worth a lot more than a carrot. And we know that by just going to the grocery store today. It costs a whole lot more to have a lamb, to buy just one cut of lamb, than it would to buy a whole basket of carrots. It’s much more expensive, because it’s worth more.

Much more time and energy was put into that lamb. So go back to Hebrews chapter eleven. Back in Hebrews eleven four it says, again, let’s read it again, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” And the word excellent means more in quantity, number, or quality. So the quality of the offering was better. And it might have even been a bigger... I mean, unless Cain brought an entire cart full of carrots or potatoes, the amount would have been much greater, because the offering of a sheep would have been...

Think about all the meat that’s in a sheep. Think about how much there is in a sheep. Much better than just a few carrots or whatever it would have been. So it was a greater quantity, greater quality offering. And it took much more work to offer the lamb than it would a potato or a carrot. And there’s just a great time commitment involved with that. Abel’s sacrifice showed God, through his actions, just how much he appreciated him. Because he sacrificed something that was worth something.

So the question for us today is the lesson that we can learn from Abel’s sacrifice... Abel’s sacrificing, excuse me, is that it took a lot of faith. The more we sacrifice, his faith, it might seem disconnected, but it’s not. God says that Abel’s faith was defined by his ability and willingness to sacrifice something big. Because he sacrificed something big in his life, he was considered great in faith. Do you and I naturally consider sacrificing a great act of faith? That’s what God says. That’s why it’s the first point.

When we define faith... and you’ll see it’s not the only time that sacrificing in the book of Hebrews chapter eleven is found. We’re going to go over a couple more examples before we move to the second point. Sacrificing is a huge aspect of our faith. The more we sacrifice, the greater we are showing God our faith in him. It’s an equation. Let’s go to verse seventeen for the second example of sacrifice. Verse seventeen. Switch over to Abraham. “By faith, Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac,” his own son, “and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said that in Isaac shall your seed be called. Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.”

We don’t need to go back to the account and read because a lot of these accounts, they’re very famous for a reason. They’re great acts of faith in the Bible. We don’t need to go back to Genesis twenty two to read about this account. We know that Abraham was told by God directly, “Offer up your son Isaac.” But in faith, Abraham went forward with that very unbelievably difficult request by God. He went forward with it in faith. He was willing to sacrifice his own son because he knew that the promises that God had given Abraham through Isaac and then Jacob and so on and so forth, birthright blessings that would come and flow through that family line, were going to come.

So Abraham had absolute faith that because God promised the birthright blessing to him, Abraham had absolute faith that even if his son Isaac died at that moment at his own hand, that God would bring him back from the dead in order to fulfill his promise. That’s the level of faith that he has. But look at the extent of the sacrifice that Abraham was willing to go to. He was willing to sacrifice his only son at the time. Now that sets the bar for us. One of my first sermonettes was given on this kind of subject was, are you willing to sacrifice your Isaac?

What are you willing to sacrifice in life? How far will you go in your life in order to sacrifice for God and for His work? Do we give up what we must in order to follow God? For some, it’s hard with families. Families make it challenging. But at the same time, are we willing, even if it means difficulty and strain in relationships, are we willing to continue to follow God regardless of the trials that it might bring us? That’s a sacrifice that we have to be willing to give. Whatever sacrifices we’re dealing with in our lives, whatever we have to give up in order to follow God now in our lives, pale in comparison to what Abraham had to give up.

None of us are being asked by God directly to sacrifice our only child. None of us. We’re not being asked that at this point. But I’ll ask you this. If God were to ask us to do that, would we have the faith of Abraham? Would we do what Abraham did? Would we follow and imitate his steps as a role model to all of us? Because sacrificing is a great act of faith. We want to be like these great men of faith, men and women of faith in the Bible. We have to do what they did. We have to imitate them as role models.

Sacrifice, by definition, means discomfort. When we sacrifice something in our lives, it’s going to bring discomfort. It’s not easy. But it’s life’s discomforts that help us to grow. And you think about a plant, a rose bush, we have rose bushes outside of our house. When you cut those rose bushes back, they explode the next year. But you have to cut them. Mr. Pack referenced this recently in a sermon. Pruning bushes makes them explode in growth. The same is true with us. If we are willing to sacrifice all the wonderful growth in the plant, if you will, from the previous year, if we’re willing to sacrifice that dead growth so that we can explode more in growth, we will in fact explode. That’s why it’s important to sacrifice whenever possible for God and His Work.

It’s not saying that we should do without so that we’re living in poverty or anything. That’s not the point. The point is, is we should sacrifice where we can. Sometimes that means in offerings, whether it be regular offerings throughout the year or Holy Day offerings. But we can sacrifice in other ways than just monetary. We can sacrifice using our time. We can sacrifice... You heard a sermonette today about meditation. Meditating before we go to bed.

Think of that as an opportunity to sacrifice your time to better yourself when you could be doing something else that you enjoy. Maybe you enjoy watching a movie, maybe you enjoy whatever it would be, reading a book. If you like doing those things, that’s great. But do we sacrifice our time to show God that we have faith in him? In prayer, study, do we sacrifice our time for the brethren? Do we give our time to help other people that we know may be in need?

Back to Hebrews eleven. One more example of sacrificing is verse twenty-four. “By faith, Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” So Pharaoh, when he became about forty years old, that’s when he slew that Egyptian man that was treating the Israelites wrongly. And at that point, he was kind of caught by the Egyptians. The Egyptians saw that he had done that.

And so Moses decided at that point he’s going to go back with the... become priest in Midian and all of those things that you know. The next forty years of his life, he continued in that way with the Israelites, suffering affliction with them. He did not continue as Pharaoh’s son, Pharaoh’s daughter’s son at that point. He had a “great life” for the first forty years. But at a point, he saw the injustices done to the Israelites, and he decided to act. And he knew that it might have had consequences, but he sacrificed that great position that he held in the Egyptian government, if you will, so that he could fulfill God’s will instead.

That’s the amount of sacrifice that he had. And by his sacrifice, he showed great faith. So times of trial are not easy or fun. For him, he had to suffer affliction. He sacrificed his next forty years to suffer affliction. But times of trial are not easy or fun, but they’re necessary, and we should try with all our might to welcome them and accept them, knowing the character it will produce in the end. So that’s the first great point of faith. If we want to, I could say, imitate these great role models of faith, the first act that we have to do in life is to sacrifice.

Here’s the second point. Faith is obedience. Obedience. We live in a world where everybody wants to do their own thing and live their own lives the way that they want, and they don’t really have accountability to anybody. That’s why it’s so difficult in God’s church, because God has a government. God has a structure. God being the... God and Christ leading the church with all of us through his ministry and government underneath. And God wants us to live a life of obedience administered through his government.

So let’s turn to Hebrews chapter eleven again in verse five. Verse five. “By faith, Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.” God found faith in Enoch simply because he sought to please God. Now what does it mean to please God? How do you please God? Clearly the sacrifice of Cain wasn’t as pleasing to God as Abel’s sacrifice. So what does it mean to please God? Pleasing means to gratify entirely.

As a father myself, if I see that my child, now children just had another daughter, very excited about that, but she’s too young to know how to please mommy and daddy yet, but our older daughter, I am very pleased as a father when I see that my daughter listens to me, does what I ask, when she’s obedient. If I ask her to do something and she does it the first time without me asking twice, and she does it, and she comes running up and does whatever it was that I asked her to, that makes me so pleased. Any parent can relate to that. I feel gratified entirely.

And it makes me want to give her the world. It makes me want to do anything for her. Think about God. It’s the same way. When we are obedient to God as His children, it gratifies Him entirely. He wants to give us the world. He wants to give us everything. You can have this, you can have this. Pleasures forevermore. Think about what it means that we will be given by God eternally if we’re just simply in obedience to Him. He just wants us to obey. He just wants us to live the life that He says that we should live, not the way that we want to live our lives.

And it’s not too much to ask. He just wants us to follow his word, live a good, righteous life, and in doing so, he’ll give us everything. So Enoch pleased God. He pleased God. Just like we hope to please God ourselves. And the way that we do that is through obedience. Go to verse eight, just two verses later. “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into the place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed.” Abraham’s faith was defined by his obedience. He went out, not knowing where he went.

Turn over to Genesis chapter twelve. We’ll just read this account quick. It’s a very short one. Four verses. Think of the faith that it would have taken for Abraham to do this. Genesis twelve and verse one. “Now the Lord had said unto Abraham, Get you out of your country and from your kindred and from your father’s house unto a land that I will show you. Leave your family, leave the land that you’re familiar with.” Try to imagine that being asked of us today.

Just leave everything behind, and in a time when there weren’t cell phones, the Internet, Skype, Teams, whatever, all these different ways and means of technology that we can communicate from afar. There was none of that when Abraham was told, “Leave your family and leave your land.” That meant something. That was not easy. You can’t just go back and visit them because you have a plane ticket that’s waiting for you. Very easy after talking with them on the phone for five hours. None of that existed. You can’t go back very easily.

You have to either ride a horse, you have to walk, and that’s that. The faith that it took Abraham to just simply up and leave his homeland was great. But here’s what Abraham was promised in verse two, “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless you and curse them that curse you. And in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” And here’s Abraham’s faith: “So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed out of Haran.” Seventy-five years old.

Now, Abraham, I think, went on to be about a hundred and seventy-five, so he was only three-sevenths of the way through his life by that time, when he was called to just up and leave. And it took great faith. As my father-in-law says, sometimes God expects us to just simply obey before he gives us understanding why. Maybe Abraham probably didn’t know what was going on, where he was going.

He was at least told that the promises that would eventually come to him, but he didn’t know where he was going. He was just told to get up and leave, start walking. And in faith, he did that. Because he did it without being told where he was going, God eventually gave him more and more understanding. And we all know where Abraham landed. Abraham begot Isaac and Jacob and all the line that came from them. So faith requires obedience.

Exodus twenty-four and verse seven, turn over there. After Exodus twenty, the law was given. We know Moses received the law in Exodus twenty. Then the statutes and judgments in twenty-one, two, and three. After all of that was done, Exodus twenty-four seven says this, “And he took the book,” Moses, “...book of the covenant, and read it in the audience of the people, and they said, all that the Lord has said, we will do and be obedient.” After Moses received the Ten Commandments, after they were spoken from Mount Sinai from God, and then Moses received all the laws and the judgments and statutes and so forth through the previous chapters, once they were all given, Moses said to the people, he read them, and all the people of Israel said, “We, we will obey. We will obey.”

Well, we know that they didn’t. They agreed to obey the whole law. But turn over to Hebrews three. What was it when they disbelieved, what did God reckoned that as being? Hebrews chapter three and verse sixteen. Hebrews three and verse sixteen. “For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was he grieved forty years?” Remember, toward the beginning of those forty years was when they agreed to obey all the laws in Exodus twenty-four.

“But who was God grieved with for those forty years? Was it not with them that did that had sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? And to whom swore he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?” Now that word believe not means disobeyed. The people disobeyed God. And because they disobeyed... they said that they would obey, we just read it, they said, “We will obey you and the law that you just gave us,” but then they didn’t. And when they disobeyed, how did God reckon that?

So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. Disobedience is an equation with disbelief, with faithlessness. So, when we read in Hebrews eleven... you can go back over there just a few chapters further. When we read in Hebrews eleven, these great faith people of God, that they obeyed, that was what led them to become great in faith. Because they obeyed, they were great in faith. Disobedience meant disbelief, faithlessness. Brethren, for us, our level of obedience to God’s laws and commands absolutely tells us how much faith we have.

It’s an equation. By obeying God more, you are in fact showing God that you have greater faith in Him. The obedience that we have demonstrates our faith. Although they may not seem connected on the surface, faith and obedience go hand in glove. And again, obedience is the works that we do, the things that we do when we obey God by keeping the Sabbath, keeping the holy days, tithing, saving up second tithe for the feast. When we obey God in every regard, he sees that we’re holding a greater faith in Him. And faith without works is dead.

So back here in Hebrews eleven, the last point for obedience is verse thirty. “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days.” Obey God before seeing his mighty hand at work. As with Abraham, it took faith to obey what Joshua was commanded to do by God. Joshua was told to surround Jericho, below these trumpets, circle Jericho for seven days straight, and on the seventh day, all the walls would fall down. Now if Israel is hearing it third hand or second hand from Joshua.

It took Israelites a lot of faith to believe what Joshua was saying that eventually in doing this... Could you imagine being the Israelites blowing the trumpets and walking around Jericho and saying, day one, “Sure hope day seven these walls fall down,” day two comes, “I hope these walls fall down.” And day seven, it took faith by them to believe what Joshua had heard by God. So that’s why it says in verse thirty, by faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days,” because they simply obeyed. They did what Joshua told them.

And when they did that, the walls fell down. It took faith by the Israelites to obey Joshua’s command given by God. So that’s the second point: obedience. Faith is obedience. We saw the first point was faith is sacrifice. Second point was faith is obedience. And here’s the third point: faith is fearing God. Go back to verse seven. Faith is fearing God. Without the fear of God, we cannot have proper faith. So let’s see examples of this in verse seven. “By faith, Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”

He had a great amount of fear of God. Could you imagine in a world... put yourself in Noah’s shoes. Imagine in a world cut off from God, the mocking, the scoffing that would come toward Noah. As he spent years, however long it was, I think it was something... I’m forgetting how long it was exactly. It might have been even a hundred years or something, but I might be wrong on that. But he spent a great amount of time building this ark, all in preparation for a flood that he knew would come because God promised that it would. But he had to do it in fear.

He moved in fear. It’s not like it began to rain. He had fear before the rain ever came. But he saw what God had promised would come and so he began to act. Verse twenty-three. Hebrews eleven twenty-three. “By faith,” second point here, “Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw that he was a proper child and they were not afraid of the King’s commandment. By fearing God, fearing God, by definition, means that you’re not going to fear man. If we fear man, by definition, you’re not fearing God. They go hand in hand. We can’t fear man and fear God at the same time. We have to either fear God or fear man.

So let’s turn back to Exodus chapter one and read what it was that Moses’ parents expressed the faith. And they were the ones who made it into this faith chapter. Exodus chapter one. Let’s pick it up in verse fourteen. So all through this, the first part of Exodus one, the Israelites were under enslavement by Egypt, and they were put under hard bondage over and over again. And Pharaoh didn’t like that, so he basically kept... He wanted them to be suppressed, he wanted them to be downtrodden, but they continued to thrive regardless of the amount of pressure that was put on them.

So you come to verse fourteen, “And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: All their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigor.” I mean, the Egyptians were taskmasters. They enslaved them. They put them under hard bondage. Verse 15, “And the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of the name of the one was Sepphora, and the name of the other was Puah. And he said, when you do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women and see them upon the stools, if it be a son, then you shall kill them.”

Telling the midwives to kill every son that comes along. “But if it be a daughter, then they shall live. But the midwives feared God...” These are Hebrew midwives. So these are the midwives of the Hebrews. They feared God, “...and did not, as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive.” They defied the Egyptian government. They did not fear man. They feared God instead. “And the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said unto them,” verse eighteen, “Why have you done this thing, and saved the men children alive?

And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them. Therefore, God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty. And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses. Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born, you shall cast into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive.”

So Pharaoh got even more enraged by this, and here’s where Moses comes in. Chapter two and verse one, “And there went a man out of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi,” Moses’ parents. “And the woman conceived and bore a son. And when she saw him that he was a goodly child,” again this is Moses, it was the same account that we read in Hebrews eleven, “...he hid him three months. And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and pitch, and put the child on the riverbank...”

And the story goes on from there. And then Pharaoh’s daughter picked Moses up on the riverbanks, and you all know the story from that point. But where the faith came in was how Moses’ parents reacted. Just like these midwives who feared God, said that they feared God by disobeying the Pharaoh’s commandments, Moses’ parents did the same. And in so doing, they showed great acts of faith. Great acts of faith. Had they not shown faith in that moment, had they allowed their child to be killed, even risking their own lives because of it, we would not have Moses today to look back to as another great leader of faith in the Bible.

So turn back to Hebrews chapter eleven. Fearing God is so critical. Fearing God is so critical for our faith. Mr. Pack gave a sermon a number of years ago now. I’d have to look back to see what year it was, but he gave a sermon on the fear of God, which was tremendous. If you had the opportunity to go back and listen to it, I would encourage you to do so. Hebrews eleven twenty-seven, it’s the next verse. Continuing to speak of Moses now. Not talking about his parents, but Moses, “By faith Moses forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king.”

So he followed in his parents’ footsteps. He did exactly what they did. They didn’t fear the king, they didn’t fear Pharaoh, and so did Moses. He didn’t fear the king, “...for he endured, as seeing him who was invisible.” Moses endured under great trials. Hebrews chapter thirteen, just one chapter over, let’s read verse five. Hebrews thirteen and verse five, “Let your conduct be without covetousness, and be content with such things as you have. For he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you, so that we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear what man shall do to me.”

We can easily fear what men will do to us. It’s very natural for us to fear death. One of the great fears in life is that of death, or failure, or being cut off from a job, or something like this. We can fear people, and when we fear people, our actions follow. If we fear the people that are threatening us, then we tend to try to please them instead of obey God. That’s where Moses decided, “I am not going to fear man. I am not going to let the threats of man persuade me away from obeying God.”

Verse seven, “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God, whose faith follow, considering the end of their conduct, conversation.” We are going through an entire chapter, brethren, in Hebrews eleven, to follow the faith of these people. Remember them who have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the Word of God, whose faith follow, considering the end of their conduct. When we follow Abraham’s example, Moses’ example, Moses’ parents’ example of fearing God, obeying God, then, brethren, we might as well find ourselves in this Hebrews eleven book of faith as well.

We’re no different, and God would consider it that way. Go back to Hebrews eleven again, verse twenty-nine, another example. “By faith Moses and Israel passed through the Red Sea as by dry land, which the Egyptians, assaying to do, were drowned.” Could you imagine the fear that would have been involved in that? They had to fear God rather than fearing the Egyptians behind them. Had they not feared God and followed Moses and obeyed the government of God by walking through that unbelievable scene, walking through the Red Sea with water on either side of them, he would have easily caved to the fear of man and followed and gone back to Egypt.

Even after they crossed the Red Sea, they wanted to go back to Egypt. But the whole point is that the more fear that we show, the greater fear of God that we have in not showing the fear of man, the greater our faith will be. And lastly, verse thirty-one, “By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace.” You can go back through the account in Joshua two. We don’t need to read through it, but it’s the whole account of Rahab when she received the spies and her life was on the brink.

They were on to her. They could tell that she was hiding the spies. So, she went and made sure that they were absolutely hidden from the Jericho government, all because she believed and had heard the stories of Israel crossing the Red Sea and how God had delivered them. She simply heard stories, brethren, and she had great fear of God. That’s what led her to be in this faith chapter. She had such fear of God that when she heard that Israel was coming toward Jericho, she knew the outcome was not going to be good for Jericho. And in the end, it wasn’t. We saw that the walls fell.

So Rahab showed great faith by defying her government, not fearing man, in order to obey God. Brethren, the lesson for us is plain. There are times when we may be confronted with great trials of our faith, and we may be tested on the fear that we have, whether it’s of man or whether it’s of God. Do I fear God more enough to be willing to lose my job if it means, if I’m threatened for losing my job because of the Sabbath or the Holy Days or something like this? Do we fear man over God? And that’s the key. If we simply obey in fear, then God will liken that to having great faith.

So the last point is this: faith is vision. Faith is vision. We all know the Bible says without vision the people perish. Well, you could argue that without vision, the people have no faith. Without vision, it’s impossible for us to have full faith. Think about Abraham. We just read him a little bit ago. Part of the reason he had a great faith to leave his land was because he saw the vision that God had set out for him: that he was going to be the promise, that he was going to be a leader of many nations.

And that through his seed, many nations, the sand of the sea, eventually, would flow from him. He saw that. He had vision and allowed that vision and seeing afar off to persuade him to hold great faith. The same is true for us. If we don’t have vision, without vision, we cannot have great faith.

Let’s read verse nine in Hebrews eleven. Speaking of Abraham, just read verse eight again. By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out of the place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed. And he went out, not knowing where he went. “By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked for a city which had foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”

Abraham looked for, you could say, New... Revelation wasn’t written yet, so we didn’t know anything about the term New Jerusalem. We didn’t know anything about the city that God is going to be bringing. Abraham probably heard of it from God but didn’t record any of it, which is why it says here that he was looking for a city whose foundations and whose builder were God. He saw afar off. He didn’t allow the physical things of this life to dissuade him from having faith.

So by seeing that, great vision, having great vision of something that would come even after his lifetime. Remember, he was seventy-five years old when he left. He still had an entire hundred years left in his life before he would die, and he’s still in the grave waiting, not conscious, of course, but he’s waiting, just like all the Bible greats are waiting in the grave for the promise of eternal life to come. But he had that vision. He kept it. He maintained it all the way through the rest of his life, starting from when he was told to get up and leave his hometown, his homeland.

Verse eleven. “Through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.” God gives us a lot of promises in life, and Sarah claimed that promise. God judged her faithful because she had claimed the promise of being delivered of that child.

Turn over to Genesis chapter eighteen. Genesis eighteen, verse nine. Genesis eighteen and verse nine. “And they said unto him, Where is Sarah your wife? And he said, Behold, in the tent. And he said, I will certainly return unto you according to the time, a time of life. And, lo, Sarah your wife shall have a son.” This is the account that was described in Hebrews eleven. “Sarah heard it in the tent door, which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old and stricken in age, and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself...” Abraham was about a hundred years old at this time.

“Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my Lord being old also? And the Lord also said to Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed, I will return unto you according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. And Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not, for she was afraid. And he said, No, but you did laugh.”

So even Sarah, who became one of the leaders of faith because of her faith in God to give her a son at an old age, she started off by, in a certain way, lacking faith. It goes to show, brethren, this is an example, we don’t have to be perfect in what we do. Abraham wasn’t perfect in faith, and he became the father of the faithful, we understand. Sarah clearly wasn’t perfect in her faith, but became perfect in faith, became faithful. Chapter twenty-one, one shows that.

Genesis twenty-one, one. “And the Lord visited Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as He had spoken, for Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time which God had spoken to him.” Eventually, that child was born. But even the most faithful people listed in the Bible can waver at times. It’s a great lesson for us all.

It’s a little bit of an aside from the point that right now we’re covering, which is faith is having vision, faith is seeing afar off, but it’s related. Because in order for Sarah to have that faith, you can have vision and things that are still in this life that are far off, or you can have vision in the things that are eternal, that God is going to promise us all when we receive eternal life. That’s the kind of vision that we have to have.

So let’s go back to Hebrews eleven again. Hebrews eleven and verse thirteen. “These all,” speaking of all the previous ones listed, which was Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Sarah, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.” Their faith was defined by how much they sought the kingdom, how much they sought things that weren’t in this life.

Brethren, they were considered strangers and pilgrims on earth. That means an alien alongside or a resident foreigner. God’s people, all of us, today included, ought to see ourselves as aliens in this world. We’re not the kind with big eyes and a green head, but we should see ourselves as aliens or foreigners. People who are on this land and look around and say, “I really just don’t fit in. I don’t fit in.” It’s not to say that we want to be odd or weird, but we can’t see ourselves as being part of this world.

Abraham didn’t. Enoch didn’t. Abel didn’t. All of them. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but they all looked for those promises of afar off because they had vision. They kept the end goal in mind because God promised that. And by doing that, by seeing afar off and constantly keeping their eye focused on the goal, it allowed them more and more and more to live their lives as foreigners on this earth.

John seventeen and verse fourteen is a perfect example of this. John seventeen and verse fourteen. Christ speaking, “I have given them your word...” He’s praying to the Father, Christ is praying to the Father, saying, “I have given them, your people, your word, and the world has hated them because they’re not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that you should take them out of the world.” We have to live in this world. We have to go through life dealing with all of the pressures and the difficulties and the struggles and the temptations this world has to offer.

We’re not to be taken out of this world. We can’t go live on Mars and be Christians. God doesn’t want that, but that we should be kept from the world, kept from the evil of this world. “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through your truth, and your word is truth.” We are set apart. We’re set apart from the world. The more we start to look like the world, act like the world, think like the world, live our lives in a worldly way, the less and less and less our faith is in God. That’s the equation here.

When we live and act and think like the people in the world, we are not thinking afar off. We’re not keeping our eyes focused on the things above and the things afar off. We’re thinking about the here and the now and the physical and the things that are not going to be here eternally. All of this is going to go away, brethren. This world as we know it, it’s all going to change when God’s kingdom comes. We just have to keep our eyes on that. Do we want to try and conform to this world now, or do we want to try and conform to God’s way so that we can live eternally, and that everyone will look up to us eventually as having great faith? Your names can be written in this book too.

Do we have the vision and therefore the faith that these great Bible leaders had? Back to Hebrews eleven. Okay, let’s keep reading in verse fifteen. “And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.” If we turn our minds back to the world, it’s easy for us to slip back in, start to conform, start to want to be like and have role models in the world. Our role models should be those of great faith in the Bible.

Verse sixteen. “But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly, wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city.” God has prepared for us this great promise, being part of His family, entering New Jerusalem, all of the things that He has stated in His word. That’s what we have ahead of us, if we’re willing to keep our eyes on that, focus on being part of that city, focus on being part of that country, if you will.

Okay. Verse twenty-one. “By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph and worshipped leaning upon the top of his staff.” Now, how does that have to do with vision? Well, Jacob kept his faith all the way until he was about to die. Look at what it says here. “By faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed his sons.”

Of course, there was faith involved with blessing the children and knowing what would flow from that, the blessings of Joseph with Ephraim and Manasseh and all that comes from that, we know that there was a lot of faith involved there, but consider the faith that he had just by being an elderly man of old age he kept his faith all the way to death. That’s having vision, too. Holding to the truth even to an old age is a way of expressing great faith. Faith means never ever, ever giving up, no matter what.

And finally, in verse twenty-six and twenty-seven. Back to Moses again. “Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.” Rather than going back to Egypt under hard bondage, where it might have been “easier” in a certain way than wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, he kept his mind focused on the greater riches, the greater riches of eternal life, the promises that God has given him and Israel. “For he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.” He had respect to the recompense of the reward.

“By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.” You can’t focus and have vision on the things afar off if we’re focused on the here and the now in this life. That’s where, coming back to the sermonette, how important it is to meditate, how important it is to think about the things that God has done for us and have that vision of what God is going to be giving us in the future. It will help us have greater faith and set us apart from the rest of this world so that we don’t fall into the world.

Moses knew his reward awaited him, and he saw the invisible. He saw the invisible God. So brethren, as we conclude here, as we look to these role models in Hebrews eleven, let’s never forget these four foundational actions that defined their faith. Their faith was defined by sacrificing, it was defined by obedience, by fearing God, and maintaining vision. So brethren, if we can maintain these same attributes, your name may as well be written in this book of Hebrews eleven.