Faith

last week last week was one of the hardest weeks I've had in a while the reason was because Judy was out of town. Judy actually went to Atlanta for this women's conference and what made it hard is she took our two oldest daughters but she left me with Mercy the two-year-old and the week generally went okay you know I went shopping and the guy the the the checkout clerk asked me he said your wife out of town I go the same guy every time and I said why do you ask and he said because you've never come through here before and bought a case of macaroni and cheese and ramen noodles and today pal my kid I'll take care of her and so you know the week went fine you know it's sort of spent the week trying to get work done on one hand and cleaning up after Mercy on the other hand because if you know Mercy very well she tends to be messy and the night before Judy came home right at like a good husband I said when Judy gets home I want her to be so happy and so surprised and I want the house to be utterly spotless and perfect right as I understand spotless and perfect but nonetheless so I stayed up all night and I all day and I cleaned the floor spotlessly I waxed and polished all of our hardwood floors I vacuumed I washed the dog everything was perfect and it was spotless and that night I gave Mercy a bath and we brushed her little teeth and I took her in her bedroom and I laid her down to change her I I changed I laid her down on the floor and as I was changing her you know I have the the talking powder and I you know sprinkled a little on her bottom and she at that time she grabbed her Mickey doll and she says I changed him daddy and she grabbed Mickey she tried to grab the talking powder and I said no no Mercy you don't touch the talking powder you this is not your thing and so I set the talking powder down on the floor and I put Mercy down and I went to bed very pleased with myself I thought this is so beautiful not only the house perfectly clean but all I have to do is wake up in the morning feed Mercy put her clothes on and drive to the airport and get Judy simple enough well about 6.30 in the morning I heard a sound from Mercy's bedroom and she was going I changed him daddy I changed him daddy I changed him I changed him and I heard this sort of theme the theme from Helter Skelter started ricocheting through my head and I ran to her room and I slid the door open and every single inch of her room from the ceiling to the floor all of her toys her bed and Mercy and of course Mickey was completely covered with talking powder and she was standing at the door with grinning from ear to ear when you know all four of her teeth showing with Mickey in one hand in the powder and the other hand and saying I changed him daddy and you know to tell you to let you know how sick I am the first thing I said was Mercy don't move don't you move and I ran downstairs and I got a plastic bag because I thought you know I'm gonna need evidence no one's going to believe how badly I really had it the whole place was like that so I put Nikki in the bag and then I came back and when I got back Mercy was actually going like this she was patting her sleeper I changed him in the whole room and I stood there at that point and I literally had tears in my eyes I said how in the world am I going to clean this up how am I going to fix this how am I going to bring it back to the state of perfection that I had it in the first place right and that if you remember last week is the story of Genesis remember the first chapters of Genesis we're preaching through the life of Abraham but the context is the first eleven chapters and remember in the first 11 chapters God created everything and it was utterly perfect and he placed Adam and Eve in the garden and he said everything is perfect let's just keep it this way the only thing you don't have to do is don't touch this tree don't eat it what do they do the eight of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil when they ate of the tree it would be one thing if just it affected that tree as it's Mickey I wouldn't have been very upset if it's powder was only on Mickey but when Adam and Eve sinned it affected every aspect of creation everything from ceiling to floor everything that was touched was completely and utterly covered and affected by sin and so the question of course is how am I going to fix this how is God going to take care of this and right as soon as it happens we have this sort of veiled promise and the veil promises this you remember God says you know the seed of the woman will come and he will crush the head of the serpent and the head of the serpent will strike his heel and you know and you say okay so God has promised he's going to fix it and immediately after what happens it doesn't get better it gets worse remember can enable king kills able and after that you think okay God's gonna fix it now after can enable this was really bad and what happened it's just that God looked down upon the earth and saw that every thought of their man's hearts were only continual continually so what does he do we see Noah right he preserves Noah in the ark but he brings judgment on everyone else and we can call beautiful Noah Noah's gonna fix everything and as soon as Noah gets off the ark what happens you get drunk right you can imagine being cooped up on an ark for a year you get drunk as well but nonetheless he got in trouble because of his drunkenness and then after that you say okay well maybe he's gonna do something there and then you have the power of bable and it only gets worse that the nations now instead of having this one thing in the middle that's going to save them they're completely spread out over the face of the earth and you say what's going to happen now it's sort of like dynamite you know I don't expect many of you have worked with demolitions but it let me explain to you when you light dynamite when you light a few the danger thing is give a long few is when you light it sometimes as soon as you light it it looks like it goes out but really what's happening is it's burning on the inside and the danger that people always make is it's burning on the inside and you don't realize that so they go and try and light it again and as they're lighting again and what happens it blows up on their face and that's what was happening in Genesis 1 through 11 that God came with that initial promise he says I will the seat of the woman will crush the seat of the serpent and he and and he lit the fuse if you will to redeem to redeem us and then all of a sudden it looked like it had gone out but really it hadn't it was burning on the inside ever so slowly and then in Genesis 12 what we have is if you've ever seen a fuse burn all this you have these flares where it's really big and you know it's you know it's happening now and in Genesis 12 what we have is Abraham God coming to Abraham and he starts it baby that's where everything starts if you remember last week and in the life of Abraham what we see is Abraham was this was this pagan it was a pagan in the land of Error of the called these and he came from a family of moon worshippers and he had a very comfortable life and all of these things his only problem was that his wife was barren she couldn't have children it's what God does is he comes to this pagan and out of nowhere and says Abraham follow me he says I want you to go to this go to a place where I will show you he says I want you to leave your country and your relatives and your household everything and follow me and so the call of Abraham we saw that established last week but what does God do as well he doesn't just call him to obey something amorous he calls him and says go to this land and I will do something for you he promises him something he says I promise that I will make you a great nation he says I will bless you and I will make your name great and he says Abraham I will make you a blessing to all people all the families of the earth Abraham will be blessed in you and whoever blesses you I will bless and whoever curses you I will curse and we remember last week we saw what this established this established the promise of God and in fact it established the coming of Jesus because Jesus came and what did he say he said remember the promise the God made to Abraham that he would be a blessing to all nations he says I'm it maybe and Jesus comes remember the Jews didn't believe him and they said we don't believe that what have you got to do with Abraham and Jesus said what he says your father Abraham looked forward to my day and was glad and he saw it and rejoiced and they said who how did Abraham see you you're only 50 you're not even 50 years old in Jesus said before Abraham was I am boom boom boom and so last week we saw this thing called the gospel sort of established that God is setting in this plan of redemption that is about him calling us unto himself and in the process he makes us certain promises and so what we're going to see today we're going to look at that same passage the same passage Genesis 1 through 12 1 through 3 except instead of looking at it directly we're going to look at the same passage through the eyes of the New Testament through the letter that was written to the Hebrews and so all of that said we're going to look at that what we're going to look at basically what Abraham's life not established but what Abraham's life model for us Abraham's life model something huge for us and what it models is this thing called belief in the gospel believing the gospel you hear me say that all the time I know if you come here on any regular basis what Abraham's life models for us is what it means to believe the gospel and if I define that further what I mean by that is what it means to trust the promises of God and if you're thinking about the Christian faith at least faith is believing the promises of God every other religion sort of faith is sort of a leap in the dark if you will it sort of look I'm gonna jump out there and we'll see how it goes Christian faith is not like that what faith is is that you believe that God has made certain promises and not only that but you believe that he is able to keep them it's what we're going to see this morning really is Abraham's faith and what that models for us and basically we're going to look at three things this morning basically that Abraham's faith and therefore our faith is first of all it's evidence by obedience okay it's evidence by obedience it's tested by adversity and it's motivated by vision okay so all of that said let's let's look at Hebrews 11 and your text let me read it to you Hebrews 11 8 starts by saying by faith Abraham when he was called obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance and he went out not knowing where he was going by faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise in a foreign land dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob fellow heirs of the same promise for he was looking for the city which has foundations whose architect and builder is God so the first point this morning if you're a note taker simply this that faith is evidenced by obedience now if you think about this think about what Abraham must have felt like God came to him and his comfort and said to him Abraham I want you to go out into a place that you do not know I just want you to go so here's a God first thing Abraham has to decide is if this God is even worthy of obeying what gives him the right to even make a command what gives him the right to to be obeyed the second thing he had to consider was our is he trustworthy and so Abraham had to think to himself this God has come to me and he has called me out of my bondage if you will and he is he is saying he's going to need to go to some place that I've never seen and he is promised to make me a great nation remember I said last week it takes two things to be a nation it takes a land which Abraham did not have and it takes people which Abraham was not able to produce because his wife was barren and so what Abraham had to do was sort of mull over this promise now how silly would it be how silly would we think Abraham was whether you're a Christian or not if you read this story and God came to him and said Abraham I want you to go to this place and I'm going to make you a great nation I'm going to give you airs I'm going to do everything and then what if Abraham would have stayed in Ur and just said okay I believe that but never went what will do we think of Abraham we would think that was silly because we would say to ourselves Abraham if you really believe this guy this God when he promises you something then you'll simply go you'll act on his promise and that's why faith is evidenced by obedience you see faith without obedience is useless it's not faith at all because what faith is Abraham looked at God and he said I will go and by going he evident that he trusted the promise of God when God said he was going to give him something he brought he believed that otherwise why go okay and the same kind of faith is evidenced by Jesus the same kind of faith is evidenced by Jesus most people don't think of it this way Jesus life among other things was defined by faith most of us look to Jesus and we say you know Jesus came and he had to die in the cross because of our sins and he sort of gutted it out until it was all over and then when it was all over he sort of got to enjoy the fruits of his labor and you know what the cross Jesus did have to go to the cross to pay for sin the cross was a necessary evil but Jesus didn't gut it out Jesus did not gut out the cross in fact what enabled Jesus to go to the cross was his faith what enabled Jesus to go to the cross was the fact that he believed the gospel that is he believed the promise of God God promised Jesus when you were lifted up I will draw all men unto yourself and you will go down and you're going to live this life of misery and you're going to die a miserable death on the cross and after three days I will raise you I will not let my holy one see decay and so Jesus had this had to thank to himself either my father means that or he doesn't mean that and if he does mean that then what I must go and so Jesus believed the gospel if you don't believe me if you have Bible look at that first Peter I've read this to you before but it's very instructive first Peter chapter 2 Peter says for you have been called for this purpose since Christ also suffered for you leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps who committed no sin nor was any deceit found in his mouth while being reviled he did not revile in return while suffering he uttered no threats now it would be very easy for us to stop there and say you know what when life gets hard when God calls you to do something hard you just need to suck it up and fake it until you make it but that's not where it ends he says that he uttered no threats but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously and he himself wore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness for by his wounds you were healed you were continually straying like sheep but now you have returned to the shepherding guardian of your souls and what Peter is saying at this this is the example that we follow the example that we follow is the example of Abraham and the example of Jesus that to obey God's call is not to gut it out it is not to be duty driven to obey God's call is to entrust yourself to him who judges righteously it's to say God I know you have called me and I believe that you know now what does that mean you see some of you I know we're not Christians and so what that means is for you you have to consider the sort of the initial call Jesus comes to you and he says follow me remember the passage from Revelation I'm the first in the last the beginning in the end I was dead but now I'm alive forever more and I hold the keys to death in Hades he says follow me do you believe that do you trust that and he says evidence it by turning from your sin and coming after me some of you need to consider do I even believe a the Jesus is the right to make that promise to me on the other hand if he does have the right what does it mean for me to trust him it means to obey his call now for everyone else you see you don't get off the hook either in fact it's worse for you you see if you have trusted Jesus if you say I believe the gospel then you've got to ask yourself do I still trust him now do I still trust him now certainly I trusted him to deliver me from my sin but do I trust him now in the middle of my life in the middle of hardship in the middle of everything you see the gauge to which you can see you can you can gauge the extent to which you believe the gospel by simply looking at the extent to which you obey the call of Jesus so if you're a Christian you have to ask yourself that to what extent do I obey the call of Jesus because that is the extent to which I really trust in his promises and you see if you remember the old testament that's where Israel dropped the ball remember God delivered them from Egypt and and they got he came to them and he says I promise you I'm going to deliver you from bondage and I'm going to get you into the promise land I promise I'm gonna I'm gonna finish the job and Israel went out from Egypt and as soon as they got into wilderness what did they start to do they complained and they grumbled and they began to turn the self-sufficiency into idols you see they did not believe the promise of God they certainly believed that he delivered them from Egypt because they were not no longer there but if they looked to the promise land they really didn't believe he would do that and so what they did was they complained about all of their hardship and you know what he Bruce 4 says about them it says they did not enter the promised land because they did not believe what the gospel preached to them they didn't believe the gospel and you see that's where Israel drops the ball but I'm you know not hesitant but you know that's where we dropped the ball as well you see we trust Jesus and then as soon as we trust him we spend most of the rest of our lives going why is all this hard stuff happening to me you know why do I struggle with my sexuality you know I thought if I became a Christian that all of a sudden I'd be better you know you look at your children and you say you know the Bible says you know raised up a child in the way he should go and then when he is old he will not depart from it you know I'm my child children only five years old and I've already lost them God what is going on why is life so hard an answer is simply this is the faith point number two is tested by adversity you see evidence by obedience and that you follow Jesus but faith is tested by adversity look at verse nine and you're in your passage today says by faith verse eight says he went out to a by faith Abraham when he was called obeyed and in verse nine it says by faith he lived in as an alien in the land of promise as in a foreign land dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob fellow heirs of the same promise think about this again think think about what Abraham must have felt like okay first he's he's a comfortable unbelieving taken man in the earth called these you know he has a great job at whatever the call the inversion of Microsoft is whatever it is and God says follow me to the land where I will show you and he gets to the land and God doesn't give it to him he gets to the land and in fact remember remember last week God appears to him and he says this is the land I'm going to give it to your descendants right he I can imagine Abraham would say but but you know I'm here now I obeyed now and I'm here but it didn't work that way it says he dwelled as an alien in the land of promise not only that it says he dwelled in tents remember I told you to watch these editorial comments that Abraham when he went to the land of promise he didn't dwell in mansions of glory he dwelled in tents in fact he was such a stranger in the land of promise that in the land of promise when his wife Sarah died Abraham had to buy a plot of land from the people who lived there just so he could bury her so God promised Abram he would give him in his descendants of land he gets there and all of a sudden it's not what he thought it would be and so Abram has two choices what are they to believe that God is going to be faithful anyway or to pack up his stuff and go home right and that's the choice that you and I have to make every day every single day you see faith is tested by adversity and you become a Christian you say okay I've become a Christian why isn't everything good you know that everything is hard now and the reason we think that is because we have an extremely low deficient view of adversity right we have a low view of adversity we have a low view of suffering you know just just yesterday the the women who went to the conference were meeting they don't they don't know I was going to say this because I didn't know I was going to say it till now either they're in our kitchen they were meeting in our dining room and I was watching the girls upstairs and at one point I walked through the kitchen and I just happened to over here one of them talking about Johnny Erickson Tata speaking and you say no Johnny Erickson Tata and she is a paraplegic she's bound to a wheelchair and basically they come in with something like that when she got to heaven she would thank God for her wheelchair I just heard that passing through and I just began to cry and I just went upstairs because I thought how stupid how could anyone thank God for a wheelchair how could anyone thank God for adversity how could anyone thank God when bad things happen how could anyone thank God when when my children are going to stray how could anyone thank God when I fall over and over again sexually and I don't know what to do and I'm at the end of my rope how am I supposed to thank God for that and the answer is very simple you remember Calvin book three chapter nine he opens that chapter and he says by our tribulation God weens us from excessive love of this present life that God says there is something that is infinitely bigger I have to give to you and your adversity is not something I sent you because I hate you your adversity is something I sent you because I love you so very much that I will not let you be satisfied with anything but me that's the point of adversity and you say how am I supposed to make it through then you know am I just supposed to gut it out and have faith that okay you know I'm just going to believe this that is that how does that make it any better you know basically what adversity is is boot camp for glory if you will adversity is boot camp for glory you know I went to a ranger school in the army about I don't know 10 or 15 years ago in ranger school if you know anything about it it's 58 days long they feed you one meal a day you get about two hours sleep a night and you you march 10 or 15 miles a day and I went in the dead of winter so I got hypothermia twice and I almost died I frostbite on my ears I went home to Florida and people have said why are all your ears black and the question you get over and over again is why would you do that because you know what happens when you graduate from ranger school you get to go you get to go to a ranger retirement just do it for 365 days out of the year it doesn't like it gets better so the question really why in the world would you do that and the reason you would do it is for this for graduation day you put up with all the suffering and all of the misery because there comes a point graduation day that those who have made it stand up there and you are completely dirty I went into ranger school at 155 pounds and I graduated in 123 and so you're standing there looking as if you just come from doc how and you're dirty and you're ugly and you're messy and you smell but when they come to you and they pin that ranger tab on you and in a sense they well done my good and thankful that makes everything worth it and as you're going through ranger school you look forward to the end and you say at the end I'm going to be glorified at the end I'm going to be exalted at the end I'm going to be shown that this adversity in fact will have paid off and that's the point of adversity that adversity is a boot camp for glory that we only have so much glory in this life little little snippets if you will but someday there's coming a time when those little tiny snippets that feeling that I had on graduation day will be all the time it will be continuous and you see that is what motivates us that's the third point that you know that faith is is evidenced by obedience and it's tested by adversity but it is motivated by vision faith is motivated by vision it's motivated by seeing something out there that no one else sees look at verse 10 in verse 10 it says well let me pick up in verse 90 he lived as an alien in the land of promise as in a foreign land dwelling intense with Isaac and Jacob fellow heirs of the same promise why for he was looking for the city which has foundations whose architect and builder is God basically Abram went to the land of promise and instead of being in the land of promise and continually looking at his situation and continually looking at his adversity and continually complaining about the fact that he didn't get what God promised him right now Abram said there's something bigger and better that I am looking forward to in fact it is so big and so good that I cannot even see it I don't know what it is but I know it's got to be better than any of this it is another city it's not like the cities around here the cities that are around here just like the cities I left you should realize that it wasn't that you go to the land of promise it would be no different than moving from San Francisco to Seattle or something you still have the same problems you have the same adversity the same troubles it's what Abram did is he went to the land of promise and he said I look forward to the city whose architect and maker is God that motivated him that is what pulled him along if you will and guess what that's the same thing that motivates us and pulls us along that we just like Abraham are motivated or should be motivated because we look to a city whose maker and architect is God but the beautiful thing that we have that Abraham does not have is we have the blueprint we can see the blueprints of this city and it is unbelievable the city that we see is everyone's dream it is it it is the republicans dream right because it there it is it is moral and there's no welfare right it is the liberal democrats dream why because there's no suffering in all tribes and nations and all sects are gathered around the same thing and there's complete unity and there's complete beauty it's everyone's dream what is that city in the bible it's right at the end in revelation let me read it to

you revelation 21 at the end john says this is at the very end of all things he says then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there's no longer any sea and I saw the holy city new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God made ready as a bride adorned for her husband and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying behold the tabernacle of God is among men and he will dwell among them and they will be his people and God himself will be among them and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes and there will no longer be any death there will no longer be any mourning or crying or pain the first things have passed away and he who sits on the throne said behold I am making all things new and he said write these words for they are faithful and true then he said to me it is done I am the alpha and the omega the beginning in the end I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of water of life without cost he whoever comes will inherit these things and I will be his God and he will be my son you see if you've ever read if you're in business at all I'm sure you have read the the seven habits of highly effective people writing what does habit number one begin with the end in mind and if you remember what cubby says there as he says you know look forward to your funeral and your eulogy and think of what you want everyone to say about you when you are dead and you know you want them to say that you're a good father or a good businessman whatever and once you realize what you want people to say about you want your dead then you go back and you begin and you sort of you make for yourself a preferable future you've got out if you will you you you work hard to make sure that the preferable future is obtained you know the gospel says it says the same thing it says we begin with the end in mind but unlike cubby we do not envision a preferable future and then gut it out to get there what we do is we envision a certain future we envision a certain future where there is no more crying where there's no more tears where there's no more mourning or weeping there's no more racism there's no more sexism that you remember at the back the last thing in the book says remember Adam and Eve were barred from the garden they had no more access to the tree of life at the end of the book of Revelation it says in the tree of life was there and all of the nations gathered around and it's trees the leaves of its trees came down and we're healing for the nations that that is where we are going and the beautiful thing about the gospel is because we but Jesus has come now and he dwells in us now if that that is happening now remember the vision for our church even that we've said it talked about several weeks ago the vision of our church is simply this that because of the gospel the city of Seattle will begin to look more and more like the city of God that you can taste that even now and the beautiful thing about it is that not only are we motivated by this great vision but Jesus himself is motivated by this vision the Jesus was motivated by this vision of the great city but we're motivated because we get to go to that city and dwell with Jesus do you know what motivated Jesus that he would get to go to that city and dwell with you that's hard to imagine I'm guessing let me close with Hebrews 12 the writer says this he says let us lay aside every incumbent and sin which so easily entangles us and let us run with endurance the race set before us fixing our eyes on Jesus the author and perfector of our faith who for the joy set before him and dirt the cross despising its shame and sat down at the right hand at the throne of God for consider him who is endured such hostility against sinners himself so that you will not grow weary and lose heart but the primary motivating factor in the life of Jesus was that he would dwell with you think about that let me pray Jesus we thank you that you have seen fit to draw us unto yourself and we thank you that you you