The Journey of Faith in a "What If" World

Introduction

Some of my favorite days growing up were when my dad would stop by the school just to stop by and be with me.

When I was in fifth grade, I had a man named Mr. Russ as my teacher. He told stories about telling kids their parents had died. This was the most unimaginably frightening thing to me. Every time I got called down to the office, the thought would cross my mind, “What if it’s one of my parents telling me that the other one was gone.” It was a haunting thought.

Thankfully, nothing like that ever ended up happening to me.

But mine is only one story of several million. And the fact of the matter is that unimaginable tragedy is playing out in the lives of so many people right now as we speak. The world that we live in is full of pain and difficulty. And there’s this sense that inevitably it will come for me as well.

And for me, that truth at times left me with a lot of “What If” questions. What if my parents did die? What if my heart condition does get worse and take my life? What if I make a mistake and really do mess up my life as I know it? What if my depression really doesn’t ever go away? What if I never win the war against sexual temptation? What if my daughter does have developmental issues?

The reality is that, because of sin, we live in a “What If” World. It’s a world in which these are legitimate questions. And yet, you guys have been learning about faith, hope, confidence.

So, what does it look like to have faith in our “What If” World?

Review

Our passage for this afternoon is in Hebrews chapter 11—go ahead and turn there. If you remember about one million years ago, you guys had been working through this chapter in Hebrews, learning about what faith is, and who our faith is in.

In Hebrews 11:1, it says “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” And so in this chapter you looked at the lives of people who have displayed that kind of confidence, that kind of assurance, and when we pick things up in verse 13, the author is going to give a little summary of what he’s covered so far. So let’s begin reading in chapter 11, verse 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. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opporunity to return. 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.

Dive into the Text

“These people”

Let’s be reminded, who are “these people” that the author is talking about? Well we can look back at verses 1-10, and we find it’s Abel (as in Cain and Abel), Enoch (the guy who got swooped up into heaven), Noah (not your Bible teacher), and Abraham and his wife Sarah. These are people whose stories are recorded in the Old Testament.

“were living by faith”

And the author is saying that “all these people lived by faith” or “according to faith”—meaning that they lived, they reasoned, they made decisions not based on what they could see with their eyes, but based on what they had been promised by God.

“the things promised”

And what had God promised them? Well, you might recall that God promised Abraham that he would become a great nation, and inherit the land of Canaan, and that all the nations would be blessed through his family.

But these other people—Abel, Enoch, Noah—they came before that promise. So what’s the author talking about here? Well, while I do think that God’s promises to Abraham are in view in a sense, there is an earlier promise that would apply to all. The story of Cain and Abel is found in Genesis 4, but in Genesis 3 God makes a promise to Adam and Eve and to us.

Genesis 3

Now, can anyone tell me what happens in Genesis 3? I’ll give you a hint: It isn’t great. The Fall! The Fall of mankind happens in Genesis 3. And yet we also find what theologians call the protoevangelium. (Everyone say, “protoevangelium.”) This is just a fancy way of saying “the first (proto) giving of the good news (evangelium),” or “the first proclamation of the gospel.”

What we find is that as soon as Adam and Eve fell, and as soon as God had announced the consequences to them, God also promised to save them. In the NIV God says to the Serpent, “the seed (or child) of the woman will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. ”

Jesus Storybook Bible

Here God promises a child to Eve who would do battle against Satan, and who would defeat Sin and Death. I absolutely love the way that the Jesus Storybook Bible portrays this text:

God loved his children too much to let the story end there. Even though he knew he would suffer, God had a plan — a magnificent dream. One day, he would get his children back. One day, he would make the world their perfect home again. And one day, he would wipe away every tear from their eyes.

You see, no matter what, in spite of everything, God would love his children — with a Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love.

And though they would forget him, and run from him, deep in their hearts, God’s children would miss him always, and long for him — lost children yearning for their home.

Before they left the garden, God whispered a promise to Adam and Eve: “It will not always be so! I will come to rescue you! And when I do, I’m going to do battle against the snake. I’ll get rid of the sin and the dark and the sadness you let in here. I’m coming back for you!”

And he would. One day, God himself would come.

This is the promise: I will come back, and I will bring you home.

It’s a promise almost too good for words: God will conquer sin and death! The curse of sin will be removed by the seed of Eve!

“All these died in faith, not having recieved the things promised”

And yet! And yet. “All these died in faith.” They had high hopes! And yet “they did not receive the things promised.” What? How can this be? Didn’t God promise to conquer sin and death? What’s going on here?! Do you see the tension here? God has promised something so great, and yet this life can be so difficult.

What’s going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on: It’s disappointment. It’s difficulty. It’s the “What If” world coming frighteningly true.

Learning from their example.

So what do we do with faith in the face of disappointment and difficulty? What can we learn from the example of these men and women?

Faith doesn’t always become sight in this life.

There are two things I want us to walk away with from this Text. The first is that Faith doesn’t always become sight in this life. Even for these heroes of the faith that we read about, they never recieved what God had promised in full.

I have always found this so amazing. You have these men and women who lived their entire lives wandering the earth waiting for God’s promise, and then they die. And it seems like such a sad ending! It seems so unsatisfying!

But they died “in faith.” Which tells me that even to their last breath, they knew that no matter what was going on around them, no matter what a “What If” World would throw at them, they believed that God would be faithful to Him promise, even if they themselves didn’t get to see it.

They were so confident in the faithfulness of God and in His promises that they “greeted the promises from afar,” like a sailor passing by a grand country they would never get to explore, like Moses climbing a mountain to get a glimpse of a Holy Land he would never inherit.

They didn’t receive the promise. But they had faith anyway.

The question before us today is, would we? Would we have faith anyway? Even if the promise is long in coming? Even if things didn’t go the way we expected? Even if God doesn’t move in our lifetimes in the ways we hoped He would?

The thing about “What If” questions is that they reveal what is truly important to us.

They reveal to us why we have faith. They reveal why we’re following Jesus. See because if we follow Jesus because of what we hope He will do for us, or because we think it will improve our lives, or because we think we stand to gain from the transaction, or because we think it is the best way to have the life we always wanted, if that is the primary motivation then our faith is not about Jesus at all, but about us!

If we’re following Jesus only if we get into the college that we want, only if we find a husband or a wife and live happily ever after, only if we make the starting basketball team, only if we achieve straight A’s, only if it will advance my social status, then what we really value isn’t Jesus at all but the kind of life we think He will provide for us.

And in the process we fail to recognize that Jesus is more interested in having us than he is in sending us away with our arms full of worldly treasures. Why? Because He knows that we can have a life full of treasure and distracted happiness and spend eternity regretting every moment of it because we’re apart from Him. Because He knows that the one thing we need most desperately is not more time, rest, wealth, or status. What we need is Jesus.

The whole book of Hebrews is build to persuade the reader that Jesus is better than everything else.

The thrust of the book of Hebrews is that the heavenly things are greater than the earthly things. That it is better to live in the reality of the things not yet seen than to grasp at the things that are seen but are passing away.

So, is your faith, is your life with God, is it grounded in things that are confined to this life? Will you stop following Jesus when the “What If’s” come knocking? Is there anything that could happen in the next year that would cause you to walk away from Jesus?

And it’s important for us to consider this question because faith does not always become sight in this life. Jesus Himself said to His disciples, “in this world you will have trouble.”

So how do we live with faith in a “What If” World? Let’s go back to the Text.

Faithful people have their eyes on the right prize.

We read that these people…

admitted that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one.

These men and women had faith in a What If World because they knew that this What If World was not all that there is. They knew that because of sin, this world was not their perfect home anymore! They were looking for something far, far greater than Ivy League colleges and happily ever afters. They had their sights set so much higher than bank accounts and basketball games. The second thing we take away from this text is that faithful people have their eyes on the right prize.

And what prize was that? It was the prize that God had promised: to live with Him forever.

You see the prize is not what God will do for us in this life, although He does and will work so mightily here on this earth providing for us, protecting us, guiding us, healing us, walking with us. But the prize is not the blessing God provides. God Himself is the blessing! Look at the conclusion here: “Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

The most beautiful words, the ones we long to hear, are “well done, good and faithful servant. Come and share in your master’s happiness.”

But if you’re anything like me, you doubt very much that you could ever earn those words. You look at yourself and your life, and you think, “God must be ashamed of me.” And this is where the biggest “What If’s” come into play: What if I’m too far gone for God’s love? I may believe in God, but what if God doesn’t believe in me?

The reality is that we can’t earn those words. But the beauty of the Gospel is that Jesus Christ came to this earth to earn those words for us. And that because of His death in our place, those words can be applied to us with His blood. And because of His resurrection from the dead, we too can have a hope that goes beyond the horizon of what we can see.

Conclusion

Yet these “What If” moments will continue to come.

But what I’ve found is that these “What If” moments are just as much opportunities to grow our faith as they are threats to undo our faith.

The thing about the “What If” World is that it gives us “even so” opportunities. Every time we face a “What If,” it’s an opportunity for us to say that knowing Jesus, being found in Him, is surpassingly greater than anything else. It’s an opportunity for us to count everything else a loss for the sake of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

Every “What If” moment is an even so opportunity. And so moving on from this day, we can say…

BIG IDEA: When I experience disappointment and difficulty, I will seize the opportunity to trust Jesus all the more.

This is so real for me.

I could have lost my wife and my child. Without modern medicine, my wife would be dead.

“Even so” are some of the hardest words to say. But my faith has grown the most in when I have turned “What If” moments into “even so” opportunities.

I’ll close with this thought. Faith will not always become sight in this life. But faith will become sight! God is faithful to His promises! And therefore we do not lose heart. For though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For these light and momentary struggles are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory. So we can set our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. Because what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Let’s pray.

O God, I confess that I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next year. I don’t know what sorts of highs and lows are around the corner. I don’t know what the journey is going to look like for myself or for anyone else in this room. But Lord, even if things get worse before they get better, I want to follow You. You are the One that matters to me! So God whatever comes my way, I will choose to trust in You. Like these men and women, no matter what the future holds, may it be said of me that I died in faith! That I trusted You to the very end! Not for a moment, but my whole life long. And when the “What If’s” come, give me the strength to take the opportunity and say, “Yes Lord, even so, I will follow You.”