Faith Withstands Danger

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors. Select a time to jump to that point in the recording.

0:00It's great to be together, isn't it? God is good. It's so good to be together, to learn from Him, to worship Him. He is great and greatly to be praised, and He is purposed today to teach you something, to impact you exactly where you are in your life today. So a long time ago, I was about eight years old, and I was out with my brother in a field behind our house, and he was hitting around some golf balls, and because I was the younger brother, I probably was going to fetch them for him.

0:32That's probably what was happening. But what I remember was a dog came up from the neighborhood that we were in and ran towards us, and a kid was like, followed after him, and said, grab his collar, he's loose. So he runs up to me, and he was like about this high to me at that time. And I, not knowing any better, I slipped my hand under his collar, and he looked at me and he goes, and he just lunges at me, tackles me, biting, clawing at me. He bit off part of my ear, actually.

1:03And you can look at the rest of the sermon today and try to figure out which one it is. But, um, so ever since, for a long time after that, understandably, you know, dogs rush at people. Most of the time, they're friendly, they're just excited to see people like dogs are. But for a long time, as long as the dog was anything bigger than, like, a chihuahua, if a dog rushed at me, I would have an immediate reaction, right? It's a gut reaction. We all know it, the fight-or-flight reaction, right?

1:35Do I run away, hide behind my parents, or do I, like, put up my dukes and try to kick this dog before he gets to me? That's what I was feeling, and you've probably felt that, too. You've probably been in situations where danger comes at you, and you're just immediately struck with that feeling. You're trying to decide, which one do I do? Do I try to defeat this danger, or do I run away from it? Well, not every danger that we face in life can be solved that way, right?

2:04Those are not the only two, both of those things are not going to work. Some dangers we can't get away from, no matter how much we try, and some dangers we just can't defeat on our own. So how do we deal with those dangers? How do we deal with a life that's, frankly, filled with dangers like that? Well, here's the good news that we're going to get into today. The faith that God gives us gives us a new way to deal with dangers. Dangers like that that we can't get away from and we can't defeat on our own.

2:36The faith that God gives us allows us to face them, to withstand them, to pass through them, and ultimately to endure through those dangers. That is what today's passage is all about. Now, we are continuing in a sermon series in Hebrews called Toward an Enduring Faith. We're in chapter 11, chronicling the people of faith that went before us. And what we see today is that God has not given us a useless faith. It's not a faith that we put on a mantelpiece or hang on the wall and we just look at every now and then.

3:12He's given us a weapon, a shield, very practical faith. Our faith has a real answer, church, to the threats that we face in life. A real answer. It's good news because we live in a dangerous world, right? We all know this. We need to be reminded of the resource we have, of our faith in Christ and how that changes how we approach a dangerous world and a dangerous life. So let's turn eagerly to chapter 11 of Hebrews. Let's see what the Lord has for us today.

3:48He wants to feed us. He wants to strengthen us. He wants to nurture and strengthen the faith that we have so that we leave here today differently than when we walked in here. How many people in here want that for themselves? You want to leave here today differently than you walked in? Well, God wants that too. So let's come to Him eagerly to receive what He has for us in Scripture. This is Hebrews chapter 11, starting in verse 23. This is the Word of God, first of all, the most important thing.

4:22It's without error. It's reliable. It's true and trustworthy. And it's in your bulletins that you can read along. It's up on the screen behind me. So please follow along with me as I read it to us. 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. By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

5:02He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. By faith, he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. By faith, he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them. By faith, the people crossed the Red Sea on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned.

5:35By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. By faith, Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. Pray with me.

5:57Lord God, thank you for not just calling us to yourself, but teaching us, equipping us with your spirit, illuminating our minds so that we can see and understand what your word is all about, and enlivening our hearts and our wills so that we want you. We want to follow you. And we want to put these things in practice in our lives. Lord, do good work in us and among us. I and everyone here, we are all ordinary people, clay vessels. But you have purposed to sanctify and set apart people such as us for holy purposes.

6:36And so continue that work today. In your name we pray, Jesus. Okay, faith withstands danger. In a threatening world, look to God for strength and salvation. Verse 1 of this chapter says, Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. That describes every story and person in this chapter. Today we're going to focus on the people of God in between the time of Egypt and their entry into Canaan. There's seven stories here in this passage.

7:14And we're going to wrap them all up in the theme of danger. By faith, these people, they withstood three distinct dangers. By faith. Let's look at them one by one. First, the danger of harm.

7:33One of the most basic human needs is to be safe. A person will do whatever it takes to protect themselves and their loved ones. We do it instinctively, without even thinking about it. We evaluate our surroundings and we make adjustments for our well-being all the time. That's why there's fences on properties and locks on doors. We are hardwired for safety. But the people that were living in Egypt, God's people, at this time, before the Exodus, they were not living in safety.

8:11The threats around them had increased. They had grown so large in the generations after Joseph had died that just to control them, because the Egyptians feared them, feared that they would be outnumbered, out-muscled by the Hebrews, Pharaoh and his people enslaved the people of God. Put them under forced labor. But the Hebrews only grew more and more. So, Pharaoh commanded the midwives to do something horrible. The midwives that helped to bear the babies of the Hebrews.

8:51Pharaoh said, I want you, if you see a boy coming out, I want you to kill that child. But the midwives refused to do it. They feared the Lord more than they feared Pharaoh. So then Pharaoh finally told his own people, every son that is born to the Hebrews, you shall cast into the Nile River. Take them. My own people, I want you to go to those Hebrews. Take those male children that are born by force and put them in the river. Into this hostile, oppressive, dangerous situation, a baby boy was born.

9:30They called him Moses. Right away, his parents saw there was something special about him. He was beautiful. And probably not just that feeling that every parent gets about their child, but there was something about this one. It's marked off. God has special purposes for him. And they had a choice right away. Do we allow our baby boy to be taken so that we can remain as safe as possible and not invite punishment to ourselves? Or do we resist this evil thing that Pharaoh was doing and risk retribution?

10:12What a choice to have to be made. They made this decision, friends, not by what they could see, but by faith. By faith, Moses was hidden for three months by his parents. They saw something special was intended for Moses and they recognized that Pharaoh's command was wicked. It was evil. And resisting it was morally right and it was obedient to the invisible God. They were looking by faith and they were acting by faith. And so, the Scriptures tell us they weren't afraid.

10:52They wanted to fear God rather than fear this King on earth. The world that we live in it's already filled with threats to our safety and church, you know this to be true, but let me remind you, the closer you follow God, the more hostility you will face.

11:14There will come a point where Christians will be told and indeed, the point has already come. You can't do that. You can't say that. You can't think that.

11:30And it's not just social pressure. That's been around for a while, but I'm talking about actual laws. In December 2022 in Great Britain, a woman named Isabel Vaughn Spruce was arrested outside an abortion clinic. But what she was arrested for may surprise you. She was arrested for praying silently. You heard that right. Praying silently.

11:59She had violated an order for expressing any expression of disapproval of abortion, including silent prayer. So the authorities said, they asked her, what are you doing? And she said, praying. And they arrested her.

12:20She was arrested for a thought crime. Friends, it's coming. That's Great Britain. It's coming. She was acquitted and released. And then a month later, she was arrested on the same charge. God bless her for simply praying outside an abortion clinic. Times have changed. We are no longer in a society where Christian beliefs and Christian practices are cheered on or even tolerated. No. First, we're told to be quiet and then we're told to get in line.

13:02If we don't comply, there will be consequences. This is hard because like anybody else, we want to be safe, don't we? We're hardwired for safety. Just like pulling your hand back from a hot stove, we are designed to pull back from threats. This past week, I had these terrible knots under my left shoulder blade. And I was having Nikki bear down on them and rub them. And every time she got to this part where the knot was, I just was like, I wanted, my whole body wanted to just retreat from her, pull away.

13:44I knew that she was not going to hurt me, that this was actually helping me, but every time she got to that point, I was like, no. Instinctively, we pull away from danger. How can we face this danger of harm? Because it's real. It could happen. We face it by looking with eyes of faith. Trusting the care of the Lord. He is our unseen safety. He is your unseen safety. Look at Psalm 56.11. The psalmist says, In God I trust. I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?

14:23Ultimately, what can they do to us? Nothing. Nothing. When your faith is in God, you are safe. You might lose your freedom, but the one that you follow has got a greater freedom to give you. A greater freedom that is yours. You might lose your life, but the one that you obey and you put your faith in has got a greater eternal life to give you.

14:53Jesus faced the threats and the hostility of this world, and He proved it. He proved that the Father's unseen safety is real and true. When you look at your life and you think, I'm just not so sure if God is going to protect me, look at your Savior, at His life. He fully entrusted Himself to the Father. He remained faithful all the way to death. And He was raised.

15:24His Father saw Him, protected Him. Not a hair fell from His head without the will of His Father. And the same is true for all of His children, all those who put their faith in Him. This unseen safety is the same thing that guided Moses. When he left Egypt, Pharaoh was really, really angry about all the plagues that God had inflicted. But Moses was, it tells us in this passage, he was not afraid of the danger of the king, for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.

16:02When the people of Israel got to the Red Sea, it seemed like they were trapped. Pharaoh's army on one side, a body of water on the other. And then God made a way. How many people here know that God makes a way? Isn't that good news? He made a way. But, think about that way for a second. Imagine yourself an army only being held back by a pillar and by fire. And the way that God has made for you is deep down in a channel on a muddy bed that just moments earlier was covered by meters and meters of water.

16:46And you've got to walk down between that with walls of water held up beside you. The wind blowing keeping those things up. It's intimidating, right? God makes the way but sometimes that way is like, am I going to be safe on this way? But by faith people cross and by faith you too can cross. They trusted their unseen safety and they walked forward. Think about that. Imagine that. It gives new meaning to the verse from Psalm 23, right? He leads us beside still waters.

17:24I know we like to think of a peaceful stream. A forest glade. The birds chirping. That's great. Sometimes the still waters that He leads us behind are walls of water held up by His power with the wind blowing around us. He leads us beside those still waters too. Do not be afraid people of God. Go forward by faith. entrust yourself because we are safe. He will protect us from harm. Even though we might face physical harm and even suffer it, we know that our lives are in His hands.

18:14Now here's the second danger that the people of God face. The danger of rejection. Another need that everyone has is to belong. We all want to belong. We want a community. We want to be accepted. We want to be included. Often times it's during school that you realize this for the first time. In elementary school kids usually play together, right? Especially in the younger elementary school. But as you get to middle and high school distinct groups begin to form.

18:53There are the jocks, the nerds, the bad kids, the band kids. At lunch time all of the groups and the segregation between them is evident, right? And it's better to be in a not so good group than it is to be in no group. Once a person is locked into a certain group that's it. That's the group you're sitting at. If you go and sit at another group's table they're going to be like what are you doing here?

19:27Those groups form something like a caste system in like middle school in high school, right? With each group having different status and privileges, right? I knew the group that I was in. I knew the girls that I wanted to ask out and it's just not going to happen. They're out of my caste system.

19:51When Moses was a young man he was in the best group. He was in the highest social class. He had basically won the lottery. Not when he was born but afterwards because he should have been killed as a baby, right? If he wasn't going to be killed he should have been enslaved. But he was adopted by Pharaoh's daughter. He was in with the royals. This Hebrew boy was in the richest and most powerful family in the known world. He had no responsibility in every luxury.

20:27Whatever food he wanted, whatever recreation he wanted, whatever he wanted to do with every minute of every day. He could do it. He could have it. But when Moses was old enough to make his own decisions he shocked everyone by giving it up. He went back to his people. Not to visit, not to be a tourist, but to stay. He chose to be mistreated with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. Now most people would say, come on Moses, that's not sin, that's the good life.

21:07God gave you all that stuff, just enjoy it. But Moses said, no. No, I will not indulge myself and ignore God with food and drink and worldly recreation. I won't do it. It is fleeting, it will vanish, and it is sin. It is sin to ignore God and medicate myself with all of this luxury. Instead of living that way, Moses chose, he made a radical decision, he chose to follow God. To Moses, the greater wealth is the reproach of Christ. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt.

21:52Just like Jesus, Moses valued being identified with God, being aligned with God, being among God's people. Even when it met scorn and mistreatment, he didn't know who Jesus was, but his faith agreed with what Jesus said. Look at this in Luke 6. Jesus said, blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy for behold, your reward is great in heaven.

22:33As a high school kid, I would never dream of whatever my lot was, whatever group I was in, I was not going to join a group that was going to get mocked more than mine. Who would do that? Moses did it. He went from the very top to the very bottom to follow his Lord. He wasn't aligning himself with his heritage, with his lineage. Don't make that mistake. He was aligning himself with God. That was the reward he was looking to, to be aligned with God, to belong to him.

23:10Moses said, I would rather be a poor man serving God than a rich man serving myself. So he took off his robe took off his jewelry, put down his goblet, and he said, I am one of God's people. I'm unafraid of what's going to happen to me next. Because it's worth it. It's worth it. Even though it meant being a slave instead of a prince. Even though he would feel the whip instead of wield it.

23:46Friends, what reward are you seeking? Is it money? Is it a great reputation? Is it a great career? Is your reward to be included in a certain group here on earth? Is it to have an easy life? Is it to get a hundred likes on every post that you put up?

24:12Is it to have a parent or a boss tell you good job? What is your reward? Those rewards will not last. They will never endure. But I know one that will. To know and be known by your Creator. To have His approval and have His blessing. That is a reward that will last. It will last. Look at Psalm 147. The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him. In those who hope in His steadfast love. That's the reward. Lord, isn't that good when your Father smiles on you and says, well done.

25:02I see you. I see your hope in me. And I take pleasure in you. I'm so pleased with you. That is a reward that will never, ever leave you. Don't be afraid, my friends, to identify yourself with Him. Remember your Savior Jesus who was unafraid to move towards sinners like you and me. The religious leader says, why does this man hang out with sinners? This is unbecoming. How dare he do this? They scorned him for it, but Jesus said, it's sinners that I came for.

25:45They need me. Jesus identified Himself with you first. Before you identified yourself with Him. Before you knew anything about Him, before you loved Him, He moved towards you. He moved towards you when it brought Him scorn.

26:07He wasn't afraid of that because He came for sinners like you and me. 1 John 4 says, we love because He first loved us. Come to Him in faith. Come to Him and align yourself proudly with the One who proudly aligned Himself with you first. He didn't wait until you were cool. He did not wait until you had it all together. Until you were popular. Let's face it, those things were never going to happen. He came to weak and helpless sinners. Though it trashed His reputation, that kind of alignment with God, with the One who aligned Himself with us, that's what Rahab did.

27:02She lived in Jericho, but she heard about the Israelites. She heard about the one true God. She heard about the conquest that was happening. How God was giving them city after city. That God was giving them this land, the land of Canaan. So when Caleb and Joshua showed up in Jericho as spies, Rahab saw her opportunity. She helped them. She hid them. And she enabled their escape. This was incredibly risky for her. Did you know that the king of the city himself came knocking on her door?

27:36The king himself and said, Rahab, we all know that they were here. Give them up. Where are they? Talk about danger, right? She risked it all to make a bold choice to leave her family, her people, her culture, everything, and identify herself with the God of Israel. She did it by faith. And her faith was rewarded with a new community, with the Lord's pleasure on her, and even a legacy that outlived her. Her great, great grandson was King David. And so that puts Rahab, this prostitute from Jericho, in a direct line with our Lord and Savior.

28:24How amazing, because she made a bold choice to risk it all, threats alienation to align herself with the Lord and with His people. The rewards of aligning yourself with God, they are great. They're far greater than anything that you'll lose when people reject you.

28:50Here's the third danger. The third danger that we can face with God's help through faith is the danger of judgment. It took a long time for Pharaoh to be convinced to let God's people leave Egypt. The plagues were just raining down on them, one after the other. The plagues were escalating warnings, but they were also escalating acts of judgment. Judgment for the oppression of the people of Israel. For the enslavement of them. For all of the wickedness that Pharaoh and his people had done.

29:33For a while, the plagues only affected the Egyptians, but then something happens when the tenth plague comes. Plague number ten, the death of the firstborn, unlike the others, that plague would impact the Israelites too. Because just like the Egyptians, the Israelites were sinners too. But God graciously made a way to shield them from that judgment. Each household had to sacrifice a lamb and paint the door frame of their house with blood. The blood of that lamb.

30:11This became the beginning of a ceremony called Passover. And Moses had to keep the Passover, the text tells us. The first Passover. And tell each household what to do. God's promise was that this would spare them from His act of judgment so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch them. The lamb was a substitute. A substitute sacrifice so that their firstborn children would be spared.

30:41But don't you think there might have been a skeptic among them? Right? Who says, Moses, you can't be serious, right? You want me to kill a lamb and then paint my door frame with blood? That's supposed to keep this plague from happening? How is that supposed to protect us? This doesn't make any sense.

31:08But that was the rescue that God had planned. Sin puts us all in danger of God's judgment. Many people believe that there is a God who will judge, but many of those same people also believe, well, it's not that they don't believe it, but they just don't like the deliverance that God has provided. They just don't like it. They turn their nose up at it. I know I've done some things wrong, but I think I'm a good person. I've tried my best. And God's going to see that.

31:47Or others say, you know, compared to other people, I'm bound to get in. Think about all these people that have done much worse things than me. Still others claim their heritage. Look, my grandmother taught Sunday school. God knows about my family. He's not going to judge me. And a lot of people just say, you know what? God knows that no one is perfect. He grades on a curve.

32:18And yet, if any of those things were enough to withstand God's judgment, then Jesus didn't have to die, did He? And the fact is that He did. This is the deliverance and the salvation that God has provided. And that is what's hard for us because it takes humility. Right? It took humility for the Israelites to say, Moses, I just barely understand what you said about the blood on the door frames. But if God said to do it, then I'm going to do it. If God said this is the deliverance, I trust in it.

32:52I'm not going to wait until it's proven to me first. I'm just going to do it. It takes humility to admit that we can't atone for our own sins. that we can't do enough good work on our own. Oh, how much our flesh wants that to be true. We want to be able to do it ourselves. We want to be able to save ourselves. It takes humility to say, I agree with You, God. I am hopeless and I'm helpless. I need the perfect Son of God to die for me for my salvation.

33:26That was the only way. And praise God that You have provided it. He is my only salvation. We would all prefer a more reasonable and respectable solution than Jesus dying on the cross. He is not the salvation that we would have planned.

33:47That seems weak and foolish. The Scripture that was read earlier, that's what that's all about. Paul is saying, the Jews expected someone stronger and along comes someone who is weak and who dies. They're confused. It's hard for them to accept. The Greeks, meanwhile, they want someone wise. They want a teacher. But it seems foolish. It seems foolish what Jesus said and what He did. It's hard for people to accept. People of all different varieties to look at Jesus and say, I will accept the solution that You have provided rather than invent My own.

34:28Yes, God, I will be humble. But faith accepts God's means of rescue even though it stings our pride. Look at His deliverance and receive it humbly. Admit that you need Him and receive life. To withstand the judgment of God, we have to trust in who He's provided even though it looks foolish and weak and even though it makes us look foolish and weak.

35:00And it does. It's foolishness and it's weakness to the world to trust in Christ. This is the path that we continue to follow as we follow God. When the Israelites came into Canaan, the city of Jericho, God gave them a battle plan that looked ridiculous. It was so foolish and so weak. March around the city once per day for seven days and then on the seventh day do it seven times while blowing on trumpets and then give a final shout at the blast of a horn.

35:38What a stupid looking battle plan. I don't know about you, I would have felt ridiculous doing that, right? That's okay. You're going to feel ridiculous sometimes following Jesus.

36:03That is fine. But keep going. Keep going. Accept that it is weak and foolish to be identified with Him because that's what the world sees. They don't see the Lord's strength, the Lord's wisdom. They discount all that. accept that it is strong and it is wise in the Lord's eyes to follow Jesus. Because when they trusted God's plan, the walls fell down. God tells us turn the other cheek. Foolish. Weak. God tells us love your enemies. Pray for them. Do good for them.

36:46Foolish. Weak. God tells us to forgive radically even when we have not received repentance. How foolish. How weak. And God tells us serve others ahead of yourself. That's ridiculous. All of this looks very foolish, doesn't it? Until we remember, wait a minute, that's how Jesus lived. God's not asking us to do anything that Jesus didn't do. walk that foolish and weak path that the world will look at and mock and scorn. Follow it because Jesus followed it.

37:25Followed it because that is the battle plan that God has given you. And walls are going to fall down when we forgive people. Walls are going to fall down when we love our enemies. When we serve other people ahead of ourselves. If nothing else, the wall of our own heart where we trust in ourselves in some secret way that we haven't seen, those walls are going to fall down. Where we look to our own strength and those walls fall down and we say, you know what?

37:53It is the Lord only that I trust in. Walls are going to fall down when we walk the weak and the foolish path of Jesus. We're promised this, church. We're promised this, brothers and sisters. Look at 2 Corinthians 10. For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

38:27Isn't that good news? It's good news that strongholds are going to fall down. Yes, they fall down when we have a superior argument. We love those moments on YouTube where someone just takes somebody down with God's truth. But the strongholds also fall down when we commit ourselves to the weak and foolish battle plan of sacrificial love, of forgiveness, of serving others ahead of ourselves, of loving our enemies. The walls are going to fall down when we are willing to accept the deliverance that God has given us to walk that path.

39:06And we do it by faith. God will be with you every step that we take by faith. As we face the danger of judgment, the danger of rejection, the danger of mockery, and even the danger of harm. We face all those dangers by faith and by faith alone. God bless us.