and 17 through 23, Lord of the Lord. By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore, from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as of the stars of heaven, and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promise was in the act of the offering, was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, through Isaac, shall your offspring be named. He considered that God was able, even to raise him from the dead, from which figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. By faith, Isaac invoked future blessing on Jacob in Esau. By faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing and worship over the head of the staff. By faith, Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave direction concerning his bones and by faith. Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king's edict. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Tell me your name. Hey Scott, thank you so much. I appreciate that. The book of Hebrews is a marvelous text. Many consider it to be the crown jewel of Scripture. I don't know what your favorite book of the Bible is, but Hebrews is one which, if I understood better, would probably be my favorite book of the Bible. Hebrews does a tremendous job of teaching us about the permanence of Christ and the excellence of Christ, doing so by comparing Christ and contrasting him with the beauty of the truths of the Old Testament. You know, one of the things that the author of Hebrews is seeking to do is to teach us that though we can't see God, he's with us. Reminds me of a little game I play with one of my grandchildren, Ava. When Ava was about six months old, we played a game called Peacaboo. I don't know if you've ever played that game before, but Peacaboo is a great game because when kids are about six months of age, if something is removed from their sight, they think it disappears. And so you can just simply play Peacaboo with them. And every time you remove your hand or you remove your sermon notes from your face, she just explodes in the laughter thinking, oh, where did you go and now you're back again? Well, in the 1900s, a child psychologist and researcher, Jean Piaget, he'd titled that particular behavior of a child. He wanted to identify what was really going on there and he called it object permanence because once a child gets to be about nine months of age or maybe even a year old, they don't play Peacaboo any longer because they know the object didn't disappear. They have the sense that the object is permanent even if they can't see it. And so if you try to play Peacaboo with a child that's one or two years of age, they'll just laugh at you and think you're crazy. Like, don't you get it? And that's what the author is trying to accomplish in Hebrews chapter 11, the permanence of the Christ. We can't see him but by faith, we can grasp him. Look at verse one of Hebrews chapter 11, it says simply, now faith is the assurance of things hoped for. The conviction of what? Things not seen. The conviction of things not seen. We are so tempted to live our lives as if God can't see us. And so today I want to talk a little bit about object permanence, the reality of the Christ, even though we can't see him. The first point I would like to make is that faith is lived and practiced in the present. Sarah and Abram were given a promise of God. And at an age, an age that they were so advanced and as Scott read this passage for us, we got this sense that even beyond the age where normal people have children, look at verse 11, by faith Sarah herself received power to conceive and then this little parenthetical comment, even when she was past the age. And you get this sense that, oh, this is an impossible situation. How, how are they ever going to have a child? And so they're living in this moment and faith is required of them there, there to believe, there to trust. But I want you to notice that it's real for them. Sometimes when we read the Bible, it, we kind of don't get our foot completely into the sandal of the Bible character. And we just have the sense of the Bible character, Abraham, Sarah, promise, they end up with a kid named Isaac, we get it. I want you to just slow down for a moment and realize they're living in real time. They were really in a position of needing to trust God. And I just wonder, I just wonder where you are in the process of trying to trust the Lord. Have a wonderful definition of optimism that was offered by a past president of Moody Bible Institute, there in downtown Chicago, George Sweating. He gave this memorable definition of optimism. Optimism is when an 85 year old man marries a 35 year old woman and moves into a 12 room house next to an elementary school. But my friend Kent Hughes, who wrote this particular book, Kent says this, he goes, I have a better definition for him. Optimism is when a 99 year old man and his 90 year old bride hear God say they're going to be parents and believe their offspring will fill not a schoolhouse, but the whole earth. That they will be as numerous as the stars in this guy and as countless as the sand of the sea shore. Now there's optimism, there's faith, there's real time, faith. When I don't trust the Lord, there's something that goes off inside of me. When I was learning to drive my father taught me to look at the dashboard and he said, if a light comes on in a dashboard, a red light, it probably means there's a problem. Maybe the red light comes on and you need oil, or you need more water. My father called those idiot lights. He said, son, if your idiot light goes off, pull over and address it. I shared with the staff on Tuesday that my idiot life is anxiety. When I feel anxious in my heart, it's the Holy Spirit allowing me to recognize I'm out of control. And when I'm out of control, my idiot light goes off. I become anxious. And I have this moment of truth. This moment of truth when I can well up all that I know about the Lord, and I can trust Him afresh in the moment. Or I can continue to be anxious. Anxiety has never done a thing for me. Other than it's robbed me of joy. It's robbed me of hope. And it's an insult to God. You imagine having a God who takes such good care of you and you're anxious in his care? Some of you know that I got home from Dallas at 2.35 this morning. I was in Dallas officiating a wedding for a little girl that I've known for about 20 years. And I had committed to do that wedding and our search committee as we were negotiating our deal said, it's okay, you need to honor that. And you do that, but just make sure you're back here Sunday to preach. And I said, you know fair enough, I like that. That's a good deal. And some of you think, you know that's crazy. You know crazy and faith look a lot alike. And I just want you to answer a question, is there anything in your life that's a little crazy? That's out of your control because you're pursuing Christ in the moment because you're willing to stand in this culture and say, I might look crazy and I'd love Christ when I'm following him by faith. So go ahead, be crazy. Be crazy, Paul says in 2 Corinthians I may appear to be beside myself. It's a little Greek phrase, that means you just look crazy. What's on your plate right now that has gotten your idiot light lit up? Trust the Lord in that, take it to him. Take it to him and trust him in the midst of this. So faith has not only lived in the present. Secondly, faith requires an object. Faith, hope, love, the greatest of these is love. Why is that? Faith requires an object. You walked in here this morning, you surmised that the pew would hold you. You sat down in it, right? Faith has three components, knowledge, ascent and action. So you walked in and you surmised that the pew would hold you. So that knowledge ended your mind and then you agreed with it and not only did you agree with it, you acted on it, you sat down and it held you. That's faith, knowledge, ascent and action. Obedience. This object of faith is not God's promises. You might think, well, no, wait a minute, Pastor. We're to trust God's promises. I want you to return to the text and I want you to see, I'll begin in verse 11 again and I want you to get this sense. By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was past the age since she considered him faithful who had promised. She put her faith in the one who made the promise, not in the promise and I want to ask you, what's the object of your faith today? What was it this past week? Who was it this week? And while the promises of God are wonderful to trust in, the reality is your trust is really in the one who made the promises. Christ is the gold standard behind the currency of his promises and I want you to honor him and worship him and enjoy him. Some people are so gullible and misled that they actually put faith in their own faith. They say, I believe it, therefore it's true. We live in that kind of world by the way. We live in a world where people create their own truth and they say it's true because I believe it. That's unbiblical. It's also unbiblical to say, because I have faith, it's gonna happen. That's putting faith in your faith. Our faith, the object of our faith is none other than God himself. Thirdly, while faith is lived and practiced in the present, and faith requires an object, I want you to recognize that faith is strengthened by the past. Faith is strengthened by the past. Remember what? The people of God did when they crossed the Jordan River. They got across the Jordan River during the flood season. If you remember back in Joshua 4, they crossed, what did they immediately do? They sent a representative back from each tribe. They picked up a stone. They picked up an Ebenezer, a stone of remembrance. The past strengthened their faith. They were able to say, you know, God's done it in the past. He can do it again. They compared their struggles, not to their resources. They compared their struggles to God. If you're overwhelmed, more than likely, you're comparing and contrasting your struggles with your resources. And if you will turn your eyes from yourself and see the glorious riches in Christ, your idiot light will go off, and your heart will calm. And you'll have not only the peace of God, you'll have the God of peace. The same God who walked his people out of captivity and into a promised land by taking them across a river and sending them back. Get some stones out of the middle of the Jordan because I want you to see them over the years. And I want you to remember that I'm a great God when you experience the power of God. It changes your life and it gives you confidence and that confidence is rooted in the past. But you know what, you can't live in the past. You can't live in the past any more than you can drive a car only by looking through your rear view mirror. It's possible to drive a car, my only looking through your rear view mirrors. I don't recommend it, but if you're curious, try it today when you leave the church, don't look ahead, simply look at your rear view mirrors and drive on. Maybe you'll see the lines behind you and you'll have a sense that you're in the road, but you won't see ahead of you. You won't have a vision for the future. You'll simply be looking backward and you won't see the river coming. You won't see the turn coming. You won't see the opportunity on the corner coming. Faith is being practiced in this moment by this generation in this church. We are standing on the shoulders of great men and women. We are in the debt of men and women. God has used to build this church in a magnificent way and we will never forget the faithfulness of God to those people. But we won't rely on them. We'll be encouraged as we look back and we'll say, dear God, would you move in us the way you moved in them? Could we have the sense of reality of who you are in the midst of this? It happened to me this morning at 145. I'd left the Nashville Airport and was heading down Highway 24. I came to a mountain, it's called Mont Eagle.
And as I was getting near the crest of that, I started to get sleepy. Until then, I was in sleepy one bit. I was good to go, I was praying, having a great time and then boom, just hit me. And I said, yes, Lord, this is a crazy thing to do. And as I crested to hill, I saw something that shocked me. It literally took my breath away. I went as I was driving at 145 in the morning. And you know what it was? It was the moon. It was a half moon. And it was huge, and it was gorgeous, and it shocked me. And I thought, you know, if this only happened once, every two or three years, we would probably shut down everything we're doing and stay up all night just to see it because it was magnificent. And in being tired, I saw that and it shocked me and I started to laugh. I started to Isaac. I literally started to laugh because of God's blessing. I said, Lord, I was tired and you've refreshed me. That's what God does. That's why I had Scotty come up here and read the scripture this morning because I wanted you to see what future faith looks like. If you have a child within your view or a child on your arm, I want you to know that when God speaks of this future faith, he's speaking of this hope. We don't say, I hope yesterday was good. We say, I hope tomorrow's great hope is always forward. Faith is forward. Return your eyes to the text. Look at verse 20. I'll begin in 19. He considered that God was even able to raise him from the dead from which figuratively speaking he did receive him back. So we learned a little bit about Abraham as he was going to sacrifice laughter as he was going to sacrifice this boy they called laughter. Why did they name him laughter? He represents the blessing of God. He represents the future. And then listen, by faith, Isaac invoked, look at these two words, future blessing. By faith, he invoked future blessing. And on Jacob and he saw the kids, the kids. Any church that doesn't take wonderful care of their children and young families has missed the mark. Because they're the blessing. They're the laughter. Scotty read it at this service and will read at the early service. I wanted you to see a couple young men who Lord willing one day will be leading this church, serving this church. Maybe they already are. You know, kids have a way of leading us into the future, don't they? I've seen guys who graduated from college with a de-average get excited about education when they have a baby. They get all motivated to be involved in the school board when little Johnny's going off the first grade. Why is that? They want the best for their son or for their grandson or for their daughter or their granddaughter. You see, the Lord knows how we're wired. And so, well, faith is something we live in the moment and faith requires an object. And faith is strengthened by the past. Faith has a future promise to it. And I'm asking God to help us see that for us, for our generation and for the next generation. Because it brings laughter and it brings intimacy and it brings joy. And it brings an energy and a reliance on the Holy Spirit because we're asking him to do something that's greater than we are. We're asking him to lift our eyes up so that we could see our civic duty, that we could see the needs in our community. I was speaking to one of the elders a couple weeks ago on the telephone and he said, Tim, I've always thought that if the tide rises, every ship benefits. That's a marvelous, marvelous way to look at life. I want us to realize that when we serve Christ in our community, the tide rises in Chattanooga, Tennessee and every ship benefits. You know, I've noticed there's a trend in our culture and that is a trend that people have turned their children into idols. I call it kid olatry instead of idolatry. And the family is led by the children in an inappropriate way. When I was a young man, my mother said dinner was at six and if you want to eat, you'll be there. Different culture now. It's more of the honey, what would you like to eat? Honey, what can we do for you? And part of that's beautiful. I don't want to beat the sheep here. I'm not, you know, trying to throw anybody under the bus. I just want you to get a sense of our culture. That our culture is living vicariously through the children in an inappropriate way. As fathers and mothers, we're to lead our family. We don't allow our children to wander through life eating whatever they want to eat, whenever they want to eat it. We're in charge. And do you know what that means? It means you're responsible. It doesn't just mean I'm in charge, I do whatever I want. Being in charge means you're responsible. You're accountable whether you're a member of Christ's body, the responsibilities that we carry, or you're a mommy, or a daddy, or a son, or a daughter. And so I want to encourage us. I want to encourage us to lead our families to read the scriptures together. You know, the staff is memorizing Psalm 121 in the next two weeks. So if you bump into any of the staff members, grab Kelly and say, come on, what is it? Psalm 121? Well, you could do that in your own home, couldn't you? Or if you're a single person, you could do it with your friends. If you're a student, you could do it with the people in the dorm or the people in your class. See, that's being responsible and it's taking leadership because as we increase our understanding of God's word, our faith grows. Remember faith is made up of three components, knowledge, ascent and action. And as your knowledge grows about Christ, he becomes more trustworthy to you. As you sit under the preaching of God's word, as you memorize God's word, as you discuss it this evening in your K-groups, your knowledge will grow and you'll see how trustworthy he is and your faith will grow because of it. It's this process that God takes us on. And I don't want you to give up. I want to encourage you. We started a co-ed softball league in Chicago back in the 70s. We wanted to reach people for Christ in Chicago for thinking, how can we do it? Let's start a softball league. And so we had this co-ed softball league and I'll tell you what, two months of people came out. The league was filled with pagans. It was wonderful. It's like this morning, I'm so glad some of you were here because I identify very strongly with pagans. I is one. So we had this league and it's packed and the stands are packed and we decided that we would just have one pitcher for every game because we wanted everyone to have a great experience. We wanted people to have a wonderful experience and so I was pitching the first game. And the first guy came up and I lobbed one in there and he just murdered it. Just drove it into left center for a double and then up came a girl because we kind of rotated guys, girls, guys, girls and here comes this girl and she gets in there, I lob one in and she just missed it horribly. So I lobbed another one in there and I was she missed it horribly. And I'm like, I lobbed one more, she missed it and she just kind of turned and dragged her back in the dirt and walked back toward the east side and I said, where are you going? She goes three structure out. I said, not in this league. In this league, it's back to your head. Look, get back in there. She got back in there and her swing was in the same spot every time so you know what I did? I hit her back. She was so excited she ran to third base. You know, in Christianity, it's not three strikes in your out. It's back to your head. And so this morning, I don't know where you are. I don't know if you're worn out. I don't know if you're looking back, driving through the rear view mirrors of your great grandfather who was an awesome Christian and you just kind of have this inertia in your life. You remember this church, but you just kind of going through the motions, living in the past. Hey, we are always going to respect the past, but you know what, I'm going to talk about now. I want to talk about your faith in Christ now because it's not three strikes in your out. It's back to your head and the Lord's pitching and he's pitching in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And that might mean your swing is going home and saying, honey, we're going to pray together every morning. Please forgive me. I'm responsible for that as the spiritual leader of this home and I have failed and I ask your forgiveness, darling, but we're going to pray now. Or maybe you go home and you say, you know, we only memorize scripture when they make us do it at church. So we're going to start doing it home once in a while. And so let's everybody memorize Psalm 23, or I just want to encourage you, fresh faith for this generation, standing on the shoulders of those who've gone before us. Now, we're about to take communion. And you know what communion is? It's the Father condescending to His people so that they can taste and they can touch. You know what He's reminding us of? It's called object permanence. You can't see Christ, but He's here. He's here in these elements and we're going to feed on Him by what? By faith. Because our faith is going to grasp this object known as Jesus. And God and His kindness has given us these elements that we might feed on Him by faith in our heart and that we might be strengthened to swing again in hopes that He would hit our back. Let's pray together. Father, we find such joy in your presence and we find such joy in this place and we find joy in your word. Lord, your word wells up in our souls in such a way that it begins to just spill over the brim. It's like flood season when your spirit anoints your word. And Lord, I feel flooded. And I hope my brothers and sisters here feel flooded too. And if there's somebody who isn't flooded, Lord, I pray they'd repent. I pray, oh Holy Spirit, you'd move in their heart in such a way that they would say, I won't with those folks have. Oh Lord, we are pilgrims headed to heaven. Serving our wonderful God, we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the lover of our souls. We pray until the day we see you face to face Jesus. We had served you not out of obligation, but out of joy and gratitude. For you are there, Lord, even though we can't see you, we believe in you. We have faith in you. And it impacts the way we live our life. We make this prayer in your name, Jesus. And all God's people said, amen. Lord's table calls us to remember that Christ's death was offered as a sacrifice for my redemption and for yours. This table has united Christendom for many generations, for many places, and barring Christ returned. This table will continue to unite brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers in Christ for many years to come. It's a family event. Romans 10, 9 says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. If this is you that I would welcome you to come and join us in partaking in the elements of this table this morning. However, if you do not have a personal, saving relationship with Jesus Christ, first of all, let me thank you for being here. You're in the right place. But let me encourage you that this table says something about your walk of the Lord that isn't true yet. Let the elements pass by and as they do, meditate on the gospel you heard this morning. Use this opportunity to give your life to Jesus Christ as we come and we see the words that Paul writes in 1 Corinthians. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you that the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed, took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way he also took the cup after supper saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this and as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Let's pray. Father we come to this table. Let us not believe in the elements that is not believe just in the promises but in the God who stands behind the promises, his faithfulness, his extension of grace and mercy and of salvation. Lord, let us know you, our Father, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. May that be our hearts and soul as we come here in Christ name we ask, amen. From the night before he was betrayed, he took the bread and he broke it saying, this is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. That same evening our Lord also took the cup as Jerry Red from the word earlier and our Lord took the cup.