Pleasing God by Faith
Notes
Transcript
1 | How have I experienced the tension?
Last week, we got back into Hebrews 11 which began a discussion on what exactly is faith?
As the author of Hebrews explains, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
In other words, faith is confidence that what is unseen is just as real as what we tangibly experience!
The image that came to my mind with this is when Miguel discovers in Coco that there is this other world all around him, a land of the dead. He discovers this other world that is just as real as the physical one he dwells in.
Does my faith reflect this kind of confidence?
Having the same type of confidence or trust that God is present, here. now… as you are sitting in front of me, or that my stomach is grumbling and wants a donut from the lobby, or that this iPad is a real thing whether I am near it or not.
For me…. That makes me squirm in my seat. And so if it does the same for you, then well at least you know you have company…
But I was grateful as Matthew taught that he brought us back to a place of understanding that this letter was written because the original audience was struggling with their confidence in God’s presence and work through Jesus.
And reminded us that God is patient and kind with us as we journey through the life of faith with him, it's not about willing ourselves toward faith, but allowing him to do his work in us and through us.
But this made me think, well then… What does faith look like?
Is it merely a mental exercise of belief? Where you intellectually believe something like the ocean is incredibly deep, and yet… it doesn’t affect the way that you or I live our lives unless we ever plan to explore the depths of the oceanic trenches.
Or is it just a declaration of belief? Where we just say the right things so that God or other people simply think well of us, but you don’t even have to truly believe it for yourself.
2 | How have you experienced this tension?
For many people in our world who self-identify as Christians this is how we think of faith… intellectual belief and/or words.
If faith is just intellectual belief or words, how does it change the way we live?
The answer for most is not very much.
If that’s all faith is, it leaves us vulnerable to a materialistic mindset—living as if this world is all there is. Where we are consumed by the anxieties of the present and future and regrets of the past…
So if faith is more than just words or back of mind beliefs, what does it actually look like test driven in the real world? To answer this the author takes our imaginations back to the earliest pages of the Scriptures…
3 | What do the Scriptures say about this tension?
Read Hebrews 11:4-7
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 God 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. By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
The original audience knew all of these characters and their stories backwards and forwards, and so clearly the author wants to reignite some their memories of the Scriptures in new ways as they were struggling to hold onto their faith in Jesus as the Messiah, the one they could not see, and his promises, the basis for things hoped for…
Each of these three characters are found in the early pages of scripture, so let’s start at the very beginning…
In the Garden there were Adam and Eve, the first humans and their confidence in God was meant to be based on sight. Each day he would journey with them in a way in which he would be described as “walking with them during the cool of the day.”
Imagine direct mentoring time with God, where he spoke and his voice entered into our ears audibly, where he walked and we saw his presence with us?
This was the idealized partnership of creation.
And yet even then their confidence was not fully in him. They desired what he wouldn’t provide, knowledge and insight apart from him. And so they took what was good in their eyes and they severed the relational connection with God… instead of walking with him they hid from him. Instead of hearing his voice in delight, they became afraid of what he might say in response.
And so in their sin and rebellion, no longer would the human experience be where seeing was believing. Instead, faith would become confidence in what we could not see.
So when Adam and Eve would have two sons, Cain and Abel. I could only imagine story time around the fire each evening, where their mother and father recounted the times of the garden within Eden. When God’s presence was near, and his voice was clear.
Read Hebrews 11:4
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.
They would both grow up and eventually they would both make an offering to God… We are never given the specifics of the why, but what we do know is that God was delighted in Abel’s offering but not in Cain’s.
But here we get an indication of the difference… faith.
Cain makes merely a physical gesture, but Abel’s heart and mind were united with his physical action… that his offering was an offering based on this confidence in what he could not see or experience.
Abel’s faith was demonstrated through his sacrifice, and in that God was delighted.
Cain’s faith, his confidence was overwhelmed with jealousy and darkness. And the first human life was taken… and yet “through Abel’s faith, though he died, he still speaks.”
Main Idea: God delights in a life lived out of confidence in what cannot yet be seen
Abel demonstrated through his offering what faith looked like through sacrificing his best, trusting God’s ability to provide more than his own.
The thought of living in faith through worshipful generosity is so peculiar in a world of scarcity… whether it is in giving to God through the priests of the OT or to the local church in the Jesus era, whether it is giving generously to care for a person who has fallen on hard times, or surprising and delighting someone with something special and wonderful…
The point is not just the physical act of giving, but it is allowing your confidence in what cannot yet be seen to be present in the physical world… and that delights the heart of God!
Abel’s faith echoed beyond his life, but he was not the only one. Generations later, we meet Enoch—a man whose faith led him to walk so closely with God that he never experienced death.
Reread Hebrews 11:5-6
By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God 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.
So we have Enoch, who is like the exact opposite of Abel and of even Adam… Both of whom experienced God physically, and neither listened and obeyed his voice… both put their faith, their confidence in themselves and the voice egging them on toward rebellion.
But Enoch, he walked faithfully with his Creator for the entirety of his life with no indication that he experienced him physically… he lived his life out of confidence in what couldn’t yet be seen for him.
And God delighted in this reality. So much so that while the curse of sin would always lead to death… instead for Enoch “he was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him.”
Look at the experiential language here… His confidence was in what he couldn’t see, that he would live his life dedicated to walking with the one he couldn't see, and so instead of seeing death, he is taken up to see and experience God in fullness, what did that look like? No clue. But it must have been awesome!
Main Idea: God delights in a life lived out of confidence in what cannot yet be seen
When Jesus talked about following his well worn narrow path, this is what he was getting at…
Not just fulfilling religious practices so that God would be okay with you or I… but that the faith we have discovered in Jesus, the one we cannot see, would lead us to walk with him, that we would experience not just eventual eternal life but eternal living. Here. Now.
The call of humanity has always been to seek him, to walk with him, to abide with him.
The question has always been, will we? Will you? Will I?
Will we experience the rewards of drawing near in seeking after him? Or will we experience the consequences of confidence in self and in the here and now?
Three generations later, faith took on an even bolder expression. Noah was not just called to believe—he was called to act. And his faith would change history.
Read Hebrews 11:7
By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
So first, what was Noah’s motivation for his massive construction project?
By what? By FAITH.
But now it is not only faith in the ONE who is unseen, but in what the unseen one’s promised coming events. In other words, when God came to Noah and told him that there was a day on the horizon when the rebellion of humanity was too destructive and corrosive he believed it.
Noah believed God’s words. Btw he is the first human in the scriptures who that is said about! This is a really big deal, because his ancient ancestors didn’t. They listened and obeyed the slithery voice of the serpent rather than their true Creator.
But Noah listened and obeyed. His faith was lived out as he began assembling a massive cargo container. And rather than the rest of humanity which was actively pursuing the destruction of life, Noah would participate with God in preserving life. Partnering with God in caring for the Earth, all the birds of the air, the creeping things on the land, the fish of the sea were living out their golden age, and preserving the image bearers of God through his family line.
He was an heir of the righteousness that comes by “confidence in that which is not seen.”
Main Idea: God delights in a life lived out of confidence in what cannot yet be seen
Faith propelled Noah beyond belief—it led him to participate in God’s work, building the ark and preserving life in the midst of chaos.
When we make faith a back of the brain reality or just something we talk about we miss the rootedness that faith is meant to be. Rooting us to God and his promises.
We become like Noah, whose faith got legs and began doing a work of participation with God in the midst of the chaos of the world around him. Even as God’s father's heart was grieved by the broken state of humanity, he delighted in Noah’s response of faith.
4 | How can the Gospel bring resolution to this tension in your life?
Each of these biblical characters delighted the heart of God. But it had nothing to do with what they earned from him. It was because the faith that he had generated within their souls was continuing to mature…
(Story with Asher)
I delight in Asher because he is my son.
But watching Asher endure in the swimming pool and now swim so well delights my heart in a unique way.
It is impossible to please God apart from faith, why? Because apart from faith we are opposed to him, spiritual dead, and eternally distant… but when we receive faith for the first time we discover who we now are through Jesus.
The ultimate proof that God delights in faith is Jesus. That the one who couldn’t be seen was present through him, that the neverending God would endure the cross and be raised from the grave. So our faith is not just thoughts or words, but anchored in his life, death, and resurrection.
And as we learn to live out of this confidence in good days and bad times, as we endure and as we celebrate… we delight the heart of the Father. And we look to the one we cannot yet see and know that his face is delighting in us not because we are perfect but because we are being perfected!
These weren’t just easy words to be shared with privileged folks. These were followers of Jesus who were suffering greatly, and what the author proclaimed they needed most was not an evacuation plan out of the difficulties… but a humble confidence that the one they could not yet see, was truly delighting in them, and would not leave them or forsake them.
I know some of your stories and where you are tonight, and i am sure there are others here as well who i don’t know… who need this truth deeply.
May this passage be a deep encouragement for your soul tonight… would you allow it to land?
Without minimizing the hard, the difficult, and what feels impossible. Your God loves you, sees you, and desires for you to experience his delight in you.
His love is as real—perhaps even more real—than the love of your closest friends. His voice is clearer than mine in your ears. His plan is more secure than any plan you’ve made for tomorrow.
(Invite the band up)
5 | What would the world see if the church embraced this resolution?
Main Idea: God delights in a life lived out of confidence in what cannot yet be seen
Your invitation and mine is this as we walk through this hall of faith together… to allow God to deepen our confidence in what we cannot yet see.
That Jesus would become as real to us as we are to one another. That our citizenship in God’s Kingdom would be more real to us than the citizenship of whatever birth certificate or passport we hold.
And that as our faith is expanded and our abiding is deepened, that we would be filled with the fullness of joy as we look up and experience the face of our Father delighting in us.
Let’s pray.
