The Ultimate Fulfillment

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Transcript:

Well, several years back, I lent a book to a preacher friend of mine, and he promised he’d get it back to me. Y’all already know where this is going. He promised he’d get it back to me.

And years went by, and he didn’t. I figured he’ll get it back to me sooner or later. I wasn’t too worried about it.

As I said, several years went by. I even moved out of state and totally forgot about it. And then one day while I was back in Oklahoma visiting my parents, he came and brought me two books.

One of them was Beaten Up and looked like it had seen better days. And the other one was brand new. And this had been several years.

And it turns out what had happened was he intended to return my book. But just like all of us, he’d gotten busy. But he had in the back of his mind, I’ve got to return that book.

Well, he lost mine. And he lost it. That’s all there was to it.

So he went and bought another one. And he was going to give me that one. But he just never thought about it, never got around to it, until one day my book, my book, my original book, turned up somewhere in his possession.

I don’t know where. It looks like he left it out in the barn or something, let the cattle run over it. But he found mine and said, you know what, I’m just going to return both of them.

And it took several years, but he kept his promise. And my book was returned to me, and then some. It was, you know, now I have two of them.

And it’s really not that bad. It’s just you could tell it was a little worse for the wearer. But now I have two of them.

And that story reminds me of two things. It reminds me, first of all, I have several books on my shelf that I’ve promised to return and need to do that with. But it also reminds me that sometimes it takes a while to fulfill a promise.

Sometimes it takes a while for a promise to be fulfilled, but if you’re willing to wait for it, sometimes the fulfillment of the promise can be better than you expected, and it can be more thorough than you expected. And it may take years, and it may get to the point where you think, okay, is this promise ever going to be fulfilled? You know, it’s taken all this time.

You may even forget about it. You may even just put the promise aside because you’ve forgotten about it, but a promise can be fulfilled even years later. and Hebrews chapter 11 talks about God fulfilling his promises and God has a track record ladies and gentlemen of fulfilling his promises it talks about how he fulfilled his promises and and it talks about how people believed those promises even though the fulfillment took a while see when God made promises throughout his word it didn’t always happen that he fulfilled it the next day.

And yet we see over time that God has a track record of doing what he says he’s going to do. Now, because of the length of chapter 11, chapter 11 of the book of Hebrews is one that you kind of have to take all together. I was looking at ways to try to split it up and make it into more manageable bites where we could do it over a couple weeks.

But you kind of lose something if you stop halfway through or you start again halfway through. So it’s one of those that’s ideally you want to take in one setting, but it’s so long that we’re not going to have time to look at every single verse in the chapter. There are 40 verses.

So, I mean, we could give you the quick overview and hit the most important points, or we could stay here until dinner time if you want an in-depth look at all 40 verses. So, what I’m telling you is we’re going to hit the highlights, and I encourage you to go back and dig into the middle part for yourself. We’re going to focus in on about three verses at the beginning, Two verses at the end, a couple will hit along the way in the middle, but the rest of it, I encourage you to go read it for yourself and look at it more in depth.

So let’s start with looking at verses 1 through 3. It says, Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, 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 things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. And now as I read through this chapter, there are several questions that came to me. And those are the questions that are on your shortened outline in your bulletin this morning if you want to follow along with those questions and answer them as you see the answers in God’s word.

But some questions occurred to me that I think we need to start out with. First of all, it asks, what is faith? I found myself asking, what is faith?

Because faith is one of those words that we use and we think we know the meaning. But you get to reading about it in the Bible, and it seems like it’s a little deeper than just, you know, I believe that might happen. You know, I have faith that my truck is still going to be in the parking lot when I get done at church today.

I have no reason to think that it won’t be, but I also have, I mean, nobody’s assured me that it’s going to be there. My faith is based on nothing other than that’s generally what happens. I see you looking back there.

Is it still out there? Okay, we’re good. If not, somebody call the sheriff and I’ll deal with him after I’m done with the message.

But I wanted to go a little deeper as I’m reading what the Bible says about faith. I realized that a lot of times our ideas of these biblical concepts like faith and hope, our idea of them, the way we use those words in our typical everyday language, is a lot more shallow than the way the Bible uses those things. So as I started reading this chapter, I got to thinking, what is faith?

At least from God’s definition. What is faith according to the Bible? Because it answers this or it explains it in verse 1, that it’s the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Well, I had to go a little deeper and try to put that in more everyday terms just for my own understanding. And when you dig into the meaning of those words, faith is not just, well, I assume this is what’s going to happen. You know, I assume my truck’s going to be there.

Well, these days I may walk out and the truck’s gone. But I assume it’s going to be there. It’s more than that.

Faith means being convinced of things that we haven’t seen yet or haven’t received yet. There’s a conviction. There’s faith.

Faith is conviction that I know this is true. Do I have proof beyond a shadow of a doubt? No.

But I’m convinced that these things are true. I’m convinced my wife loves me some days more than others. but I’m convinced she loves me.

I see evidence of it. Now, could she back in the far recesses of her mind be saying, I really can’t stand him, but he’s got more money than anybody else I ever dated. Could she be thinking those things?

Could she be thinking those things? It’s possible. I don’t see any evidence of it.

So I assume, based on evidence, that my wife loves me. I’m convinced of it. because there’s evidence there to show it.

Again, you see the difference between evidence and proof. I don’t have absolute proof of what’s going on in the back of her mind, but based on the evidence, this is what I’m convinced of. And let me tell you that biblical faith is not blind faith either.

It’s not blind faith. It’s based on evidence. Yes, we’re called to make a leap of faith, but it’s not just a blind leap.

It’s not just blind belief. It’s based on evidence. And in our case, faith in God and faith in God’s promises is based on God’s track record of being faithful.

He has a long track record of being faithful, and chapter 11 sort of covers the highlights of that. If there weren’t any need for evidence, if there weren’t any need for evidence, then chapter 11 is completely unnecessary. And I’ve heard Christians say this, because I’m very into apologetics, I’m very into the arguments for our faith, and the evidence for our faith.

I have never seen anybody argued into salvation, but one of the things I think apologetics does is it breaks down some of the objections, some of the walls that people put up, these objections that say, well, I don’t believe in God because of this. If you can begin to dismantle that and you can begin to plant that seed in somebody’s mind that maybe this is not crazy after all, that Christians aren’t just foolish, but that we have reasons for what we believe, I think the Holy Spirit, you make a little crack in that wall, and I think the Holy Spirit blows it wide open. It’s sort of like the Berlin Wall.

They started with little hammers and then people are driving bulldozers through it. You know, the Holy Spirit is that bulldozer and can get through there. If it’s not based on evidence, if God’s track record, if we don’t have the evidence from God’s track record, if our faith has no relationship to evidence, then there’s no reason for chapter 11 and for the writer of Hebrews to go through this list of all the ways that God’s been faithful, all the ways that people have believed God’s promises and how it’s turned out for them.

And not only chapter 11, but the writer of Hebrews has spent the last 10 chapters, many of which we’ve looked at, he’s spent the last 10 chapters building a case systematically on God’s track record and on Jesus’ track record. You go back to the very beginning, he’s worried about these Jewish background believers or some who were just on the verge of believing. They might have had an intellectual belief without being supernaturally converted.

And he’s worried about them drawing back into unbelief. Does he tell them, shame on you, you just need to have blind faith here? No.

He goes back to the scriptures and he goes back and builds the evidence. And he says, look at this that Jesus did. Look at this scripture and how it corresponds in the Old Testament to what Jesus did in the New Testament.

He builds a case based on evidence. And so our faith is not blind faith. It’s not blind belief.

It’s conviction based on evidence. Not necessarily with proof, but based on evidence, with reason. We have reason to trust God, is the point here.

We have reason to trust God. It’s important to know where we place our faith, okay? I’ve said for years the true value of our faith is not in its sincerity or in its fervency, but in its object.

We know a lot of people in the world believe things very sincerely. I mean, they’re absolutely sincere in their faith. And they’re very fervent.

I mean, they would die for what they believe. but what they believe in, where they’re putting their faith, is absolutely wrong. I can believe, I can believe sincerely and fervently that I can fly.

I can have faith in my ability to fly. But if I go to Oklahoma City and I jump off the top of Devon Tower, I’m going to learn real quick that my faith was misplaced. My faith in, if the object of my faith is the ability to fly, my ability to fly, my faith is misplaced.

And it doesn’t matter how fervently or how sincerely I believe it. if the object is wrong. The object of our faith is a God who has a track record of keeping his promises.

So it matters. It matters to be able to look and say there’s a reason here for what we believe. But if there’s evidence, then why is faith so important?

Now we’re going to look at verse 6 real quick. One of the reasons why faith is so important, it says in verse 6, but without faith, it is impossible to please him. Don’t miss that.

Without faith, it is impossible to please God. For he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. So what we need to understand this morning, why faith is so important, it’s important that we have reason and evidence, but it’s also important that we’re willing to take that and say, you know what, God, because of those things, I trust you.

I don’t have proof, but I have enough evidence that I’m willing to take that leap of faith and believe you, because without that faith, it is impossible to please God. If you’re waiting on God to prove himself before you’re willing to obey anything he says, God, before I’ll do that, I need you to prove to me that it’s going to work out all right. God, before I make that change in my life, before I take that step, I need you to prove to me that it’s going to work out all right.

If that’s what you’re asking from God, then you’re not going to be able to please him. Faith is being willing to step out based on the evidence without absolute proof, but being convinced that even though I don’t have proof that this is going to work out the way I want it to, I have the evidence that God is faithful. So it’s not that we’re trusting in the outcome, it’s that we’re trusting in God.

And if we can’t do that, we can’t please God. God isn’t looking for people who are going to do great things. God isn’t looking for the most capable.

God isn’t looking for the smartest. God isn’t looking for the wealthiest. God isn’t looking for the handsomest. God is looking for people who are willing to trust Him. God works through people who are willing to trust him. Because the bottom line is if we don’t believe him and if we don’t believe in his promises, then we will never be able to obey him and follow his leadership.

We’re never going to be able to step out and do anything that he calls us to do if we’re not willing to trust him and believe that his promises are true. And then we look back at verse 3. I realize I’m taking some of these out of order.

There’s a reason for that. It says, Through faith we understand that the world’s reframed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. And here’s the thing.

It’s saying, by faith, we understand that the world was created when God spoke it into existence. And what we see was created by things we don’t see. Again, do we have proof of that?

No. I think there’s evidence. I think there’s evidence that God created the world.

Is it proof beyond a reasonable doubt or beyond a shadow of a doubt? No. A friend of mine has said for years that there’s just enough proof, or there’s just enough evidence to convince those who are inclined to believe, and the evidence is just lacking enough for those who don’t want to believe.

That’s where faith comes in. We’re looking at the same evidence and the same amount of evidence, but which way do you think it points? So we’re talking about the fact that God built the world, and the writer of Hebrews was writing to people who understood that and believed that and took that by faith.

And he’s making the point that faith enables us to focus on God’s power. Our faith enables us to see God as this person or this being who created everything that there is. And that if he created everything that there is, even though we don’t see him, there’s nothing that escapes his power.

There’s nothing that is beyond his capability to handle. And so by faith, we can look at God. And if we look at him by faith, instead of looking at our problems, We see his ability to handle them.

We see his ability to handle any circumstance. And it’s easier to trust him when we’re focused on who he is rather than the circumstances that accompany our obedience to him. You see that?

If we’re focused on God who was capable of creating the whole world, it enables us to obey him more than if we’re just focused on how all the circumstances are going to work out. Boy, I feel like I’m talking to myself this morning. Not because y’all aren’t paying attention, but because I feel like this is a lesson I need to take to heart.

And verse 2 says, By it, the elders obtained a good report. It’s another reason why faith is so important. Because those who’ve gone on before us, our forebearers in the faith, have incredible testimonies of the way God worked in their lives and the way God worked through their lives for one reason.

Because they were willing to trust Him. They were willing to trust him with everything, and so they got to see the power of God at work in them and through them. And this chapter, as we go through chapter 11, gives us some of these examples.

Gives us by no means all of the examples of people who have seen the power of God because of their faith, but it gives us several examples of people whose faith enabled them to do things that they could not otherwise have done. And this is where we’re going to just hit the highlights. Okay, let me give you the list. Verse 4, Abel brought God an acceptable sacrifice.

Cain brought God an unacceptable sacrifice. Why was that? Because Abel believed God when he said it has to be a blood sacrifice.

And Cain thought, I can just give God whatever I have left over. See, Abel believed God, and so his sacrifice was acceptable. Verse 5 says Enoch walked with God.

Enoch was one of the very few people evidently who did walk with God during that time. From the time that Cain murdered Abel until the time God looked at man in Noah’s day and said, I’m about done with you people. In the midst of that time, humanity just was on a huge downward trajectory.

It was just more and more evil all the time. We think things are awful today. Go back to that time.

It was worse then. As the Bible says, every thought of every man’s heart was only evil all the time, constantly. And I don’t think we’re quite there.

So it was a bad time. And yet Enoch said, these other people are living in rebellion, they’re doing whatever they want, they’re living however they want, they’re having a good time, no, I’m going to stay over here and walk with God. Why would you do that?

Because you believe God when he speaks. And because of that, God took Enoch to heaven alive without having to go through death. Don was saying earlier, you’re absolutely right that none of us get out of this world alive.

You’re absolutely right, except for Enoch. And I’m not sure how hard you have to walk with God to do it, but there was somebody who escaped what most of us are destined to because he believed God. Then we’ve got in verse 7, Noah built the ark.

Think about that. For 120 years, he’s out there building a giant boat, and it’s not raining, and he’s trying to tell people God’s going to send a flood. God’s going to destroy.

They laughed at him. They ignored him. He kept on building.

I mean, building a gigantic boat in the desert that’s going to fit all these animals. He did it. It sounds like an absolutely insane thing to do, but he did it because he believed God.

I need to hurry up. Verses 8 through 10 talk about how Abraham left home to follow God. God said, get up and go.

He didn’t tell Abraham where they were going, but because Abraham believed God, he said, okay, let’s go. And God led him to the promised land. Verses 11 through 12 talk about how Sarah gave birth at 90 years old.

Now, initially she laughed at the idea that she would give birth because she was that old. But eventually she realized God can do anything, and so God provided the son that he promised to her and to Abraham when she was 90 and he was 100. They had that son that they had always wanted because she believed God.

Then in verses 17 through 19, it talks about how Abraham was willing to offer Isaac as a sacrifice to the Lord. That son that God had promised. That son that God had promised, he was willing to offer him.

Now, at some point, I’d like to talk to you about how people criticize this story. Oh, how awful God was, how awful Abraham was. It wasn’t that way at all.

I’d like to tell you why, but we don’t have time this morning. But suffice it to say, Abraham, it says, believed that God was just going to raise him from the dead. Abraham had absolute, I don’t think he wanted to sacrifice his son, but he had absolute faith that God was able to keep this son alive.

He was willing to trust God. Why was he willing to offer his son? Because he believed God.

Verses 20 and 21 talk about Isaac and Jacob and how they blessed their sons and their grandsons. The only reason they were able to offer those blessings is because they believed that God was going to continue to work in their family. They believed God.

Verse 22 talks about how Joseph, when he was in Egypt, before he died, he arranged with his family to return his bones to Israel and bury them there. And a few hundred years later, when they walked out of Egypt, they took his bones with them. Now, why did Joseph make that arrangement?

Because God had said they were going back to the promised land. And guess what? Joseph believed God.

Then in verse 23, we see Amram and Jacob, even though they’re not mentioned by name, how they hid Moses. They didn’t want to see the government slaughter their child like they had so many others. So they hid him, even though it put them potentially in danger of their own lives with Pharaoh’s government.

Yet they hid Moses because they believed God had a plan for him, and they believed God. Then we see in verses 24 through 28 how Moses left his position as one of the princes of Egypt. He gave all of that up to defend God’s people.

And then when he had to leave Egypt altogether, and he had a new life going on, he was willing to go back to Egypt at risk of his own life because he believed God. We see how Israel crossed the Red Sea. And now that story really has more to do with God’s abilities than Israel, but we see them listed as being faithful in verse 29 because they crossed.

Imagine how frightening it would be to have Pharaoh behind you, but have these walls of water on either side, and you can’t see what’s holding them up, and they could come crashing down on you at any moment. And yet Israel walked across because they believed God. Israel wasn’t always faithful, but there were times that they believed God.

Verse 30, we see how they took the city of Jericho. Again, a story about God’s abilities more than theirs, but God told them walk around the city. That is the craziest way to try to capture a city I’ve ever heard of.

And yet God said it, so they did it. God brought the walls down and they took the city because they believed God. Rahab, who was in the city of Jericho, we see her in verse 31.

She hid the Israelites, spies, who had come into Jericho. Now, she could have been killed for hiding them, But she had heard that God had given them the city of Jericho, and she believed that God was going to do it. And so she said, the only way I have out of here is to side with God and his people.

So if I hide you, please promise that you’ll spare me. When you take the city. I think she had more faith in God’s ability to give the city to the Israelites than the Israelites themselves did.

She and her family survived because she believed God. Verse 32, we can tell that the writer of Hebrews was a preacher because he says, and time runs short. It’s like he got to the end of his time to speak and still had pages of notes left.

So he says in verse 32, and what should I say more for the time would fail me to tell you? And he just lists several guys in verse 32. He talks about how Gideon defeated the Midianite army with 300 men.

He described how Barak launched an ambush against the Canaanites and dispersed them. He talks about how Samson defeated the Philistines. He talks about how Jephthah defeated the Ammonites.

David survived Saul’s attacks and won these battles against all of Israel’s enemies. Talks about how Samuel obeyed God even though it displeased the king. All of these men were willing to do these things because they believed God.

And then he talks about the prophets at the end of verse 32. And as we go through 33 through 35, we see all these victories they won, all these wonderful circumstances that they went through because they believed God. But in verses 35 through 38, we also see the suffering that they went through and some of the things that they endured which were horrible, and yet they trusted God, they believed God through these circumstances.

So we can see from this list, especially the description of these prophets at the end, that faith isn’t just about serving God when things are good. But faith means believing God and continuing to obey God even when things are difficult. So we look at their example and how they demonstrated faith and why it was so important in their lives.

And so then the question that I come to is, how do we demonstrate faith? How can we be like them? Because I think we’re given these examples in an effort by the writer of Hebrews to say, this is who you need to emulate.

This is what you need to be like. Look at verse 13. It said, 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 the earth.

Now faith in the context of our relationship with God means that we believe his promises even before they’re fulfilled. I mean, it’s one thing to look back on what God has already done and say, wasn’t God faithful there? That doesn’t take any faith at all.

That just takes hindsight. It’s another thing entirely to say, you know what? God promised this and I haven’t seen it happen yet, but I believe he’s going to do it.

I know he’s going to do it. And many of these people acted on the basis of God’s promises, on the promises that God had made to their family or that God had made to the nation, promises that were eventually fulfilled, just not in their lifetimes. But even though they hadn’t seen them fulfilled, and some of them wouldn’t see them fulfilled in their lifetimes, they knew that God had made promises to their family.

They knew that God had made promises to Israel. And so they said, we’re going to live like these things are true. We know God is going to keep his promises.

We believe these things are going to happen. So we’re just going to live like we believe it. They put action behind their faith.

And I’ve given you the story that I heard years ago. It’s probably not a true story. Just an illustration.

I can’t remember where I heard it. But the people at the little church in the little farming community that was suffering from a drought, and they didn’t know what they were going to do. The crops were all dying.

The animals were dying. and they said, we’ve got to get together to pray for rain. So they met at the church one weeknight and they prayed for rain.

Only one man brought an umbrella. Anybody can pray for rain. Anybody can ask God to do something.

Faith brings the umbrella. And that’s what these people did. They brought an umbrella.

That’s what I mean when I say they lived their lives like these things were true. They didn’t know where it was going to come from. They didn’t know when it was going to happen.

But they knew God was going to keep his promises. And so they made decisions based on that. They brought an umbrella.

they knew that God’s promises were true even if they didn’t see them with their own eyes they lived like God’s promises were true and they made decisions assuming God’s promises were true it wasn’t well if God keeps his promise then I’ll do this it was God’s going to keep his promise so I’m going to obey him here because I know he’s going to work this out and we see the same thing at the end of the chapter in verses 39 and 40 it says and these all having obtained a good report through faith received not the promise God having provided some better thing for us that they without us should not be made perfect. And this brings us into Jesus because this whole series has been about the roles that Jesus plays in the new covenant. This brings us into the idea that Jesus validates our faith.

If we want to know whether we can trust God or not if we want to know whether or not we can believe God’s promises we just have to look at Jesus and realize how much God has kept his promises. realize what lengths God has gone to to keep his promises. It says in verse 39, and these all having obtained a good report through faith received not the promise.

They have an honorable testimony that it talks about in verse 2 because they believed God’s promises even though they didn’t necessarily see them fulfilled. If you go back to what I said about faith at the beginning, it’s being convinced that something is true even though we haven’t seen it or received it yet. And that’s exactly what they did.

They didn’t always live to see the promises fulfilled, but they knew they were true. They believed them. And God promised a lot of things.

When you get right down to it, God promised a lot of things to Israel that were only fulfilled in the new covenant. So they went from Moses to Jesus was about 1,400 years, 1,450, somewhere in there. And through all that time, God made these promises, and it took to that point.

Not because God’s lazy, not because God forgot, but because God was preparing. God was moving all the pieces around on the chessboard until just the right time for those promises to be fulfilled. He promised a lot of things to Israel that weren’t even fulfilled until the new covenant.

God’s promises, ladies and gentlemen, are ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ. All the biggest promises that God made are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. So one of his roles, we’ve been talking about his roles in the new covenant, one of his roles is to be the fulfillment of God’s promises. God promised, again I said, the biggest promises that God made. God promised a Messiah.

God promised somebody who was going to come and redeem Israel. God promised a Savior. He was back to the days of Abraham.

He was giving pictures and prophecies about someone who was going to come and deal with the sins of the people. He promised a Savior. Those things, those promises were fulfilled, but they weren’t fulfilled until the new covenant came along.

They weren’t fulfilled for 1,400, 1,500 years. And that’s why it says in verse 40, God, having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. And we’ve seen all throughout the book of Hebrews how Jesus is the better thing.

All throughout Hebrews, it’s contrasted the old covenant with the new covenant and pointed to how we have this in the old covenant and how Jesus is a better version of that. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s talking about priests. Jesus is a better priest. He’s a better sacrifice.

He brings a better law. He’s a better tabernacle. He provides us with a better Sabbath rest in him.

He provides a spiritual rest. All the things that we’ve explored throughout the book of Hebrews, Jesus is the better version

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