-Transcript-
00:35 Amen. Thank you for joining me. Good to be here today.
00:42 Welcome to the cafe. We are in our study here of Hebrews 11 talking about faith, getting kind of a deep picture here into what it means to have faith and why God wants us to have faith and how God uses people in His Word to portray principles that are so important to us today. See how I used PPP people portray principles? Okay, I was pretty proud of that there.
01:07 So, we see here how good God is by helping us understand a very difficult concept. Hebrews 11:1. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. As in, we are to hope but we can’t see.
01:24 And it’s hard to have faith, isn’t it? You know, what do people put their faith in today? All kinds of things. They put their faith in people. They put their faith in possessions, money, and so forth, materials.
01:37 They put their faith in academics or in medical professionals or in all other kinds of gurus and masters of this, that, and the other. And yet they have trouble putting their faith in God. And we can understand that we all have to have faith in this world.
01:54 Think of going to order a meal at a restaurant. Did you go to the back and watch them prepare it? Have you ever cooked a meal and not fully been sanitary in cooking a meal? I mean, think about that. Who’s preparing your meal? You have faith that you eat it.
02:08 Or if you’re on a plane, you have faith that the pilot knows what they’re doing. Or on a train that the conductor. Or I can go on on a bus that the driver.
02:16 You have faith. All of these people won’t do something that will hurt you, but that they’re doing something that’ll help you. And yet we say we can’t have faith in God.
02:26 We can’t believe that God’s going to supernaturally do things for us. And God, I believe, will allow trials. The Bible says God cannot tempt.
02:35 He’s not a tempter. That’s the devil’s job. But I believe God will allow trials.
02:40 He’s sovereign, so he allows trials to come our way to see where our faith is at. Amen And we have to understand that. That we need to get our grips on faith and understand what it means to have faith.
02:53 And we need to not forsake the idea of having faith for any kind of religious ceremony or routine or anything like that. We have to truly have faith. You know, the Bible says in Hebrews 11, we’re now in verse 6 here, but without faith it is impossible to please Him.
03:11 For he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them thatdiligently seek him. Now sometimes with citations, sometimes not. I often quote Hebrews 11:6 because it’s an incredible verse.
03:26 It tells us several things. Number one, that it is impossible to please God without faith. Did you know that there’s something that’s impossible for God? It’s impossible for him to be pleased with you if you don’t have faith.
03:39 Amen But without faith it is impossible to please Him. For he that cometh to God must believe that He is. Okay, so the first part of this verse says to please God, we must believe that He is God.
03:53 And people say, oh yeah, I believe in God. Or they’ll say, oh I’ve asked Jesus to save me. Okay, well if you believe He’s God, then why are you living for you and you won’t ever turn to him or his word? How come you don’t ever want to really look at what sin is and if you have it in your life and why it’s such an abomination to him? How come you don’t really want to spend time trying to research why it is that Jesus had to die for all mankind to be saved? Why is it that you don’t want to be involved in Christian missions or Christian service? Or why is it that you don’t want to give a tithe? I’m just asking these questions.
04:26 They should probe you. They should pinch you a little bit. They should cut a little bit.
04:32 The Bible is a two-edged sword. It cuts coming and going. Amen? And we need to understand that without faith it’s impossible to please God and you must believe that He is God.
04:38 And believing that H05:05 e is God is more than verbally expressing that he is God, right? I heard a Bible teacher, Les Feldick, one time say, I believe it was, that a ship is sinking or someone was drowning and they didn’t know that they were drowning. And so they believed that there was a possibility of drowning, but they didn’t realize themselves. And so if you’re on a sinking ship and you believe a ship could sink, but you don’t realize you’re on that sinking ship, that’s a problem.
05:06 You have to believe that God is who he says He is. I think that believing corresponds completely here, as the Bible backs up, with action. Does that make sense? Believing and action, they go in hand-in-hand, in tandem.
05:24 Amen James, I’ve been studying that book here recently, my morning study, writes about how faith without works is dead because your works define your faith. And so if you have no action to your walk with God, if there’s nothing about you that screams Christian, if you were in a court of law you couldn’t be convicted for being Christian because they had no evidence to convict you, then you have to look at what’s wrong with your faith. Hebrews 11:6, but without faith is impossible to please him, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and I love the second part, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.
06:02 God made us, he knows our psyche, he knows our DNA, he knows that we oftentimes need an incentive, we need a reward. You know, rewards have gotten a bad name. I mean, people say, oh you’re bribing kids if you give them candy to learn a verse or something.
06:17 No, we’re not. We’re incentivizing it like anyone would want to be incentivized. Have you ever filled out a survey for a gift card, or let somebody be on the parade or something with a table and they’ll give you some, you know, plastic cup that’s worth like 10 cents, and you’ll give your name and your email and your phone number and anything else just to get that cup, right? We as humans respond to incentives.
06:39 I work in the, you know, my other job here when I’m not preaching, which is my most important job, I work in digital marketing and so forth, and all day long there has to be some incentive, some reason that we have to present why someone would want to buy a product or service, and you have to make it compelling, and God knows that. And so we see here that God says, without faith it’s impossible to please them. We understand we have to have faith, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is.
07:07 We have to understand we have to truly believe, as in that’s an action step, and that he’s a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. And so he rewards them that seek Him, and then I love this word, diligently. The hallmark of Christians, I believe, is diligence.
07:22 Those that are just very thoughtful, conscientious, they really go through the details, they’re diligent, they’re not in too big of a rush, they’re not too important to talk to you or whatever, they’re very meek and humble, and they’re diligent. And God’s saying, that diligence that I gave you, you go ahead and apply that to seeking me out. But without faith it is impossible to please him, for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He’s a rewarder, that He’s a Now I’m just gonna take God at his word, because that’s what faith is, and say that if I diligently seek him, if I study His word like I would a very important book for work or school or what-have-you, and if I study it, if I don’t can’t read very well, if I listen to a lot of messages, or I listen to a lot of Bible reading, Alexander Scorby’s King James Bible reading is fantastic, you can find on YouTube, you can get apps, I believe you get the CDs, DVDs, and so forth.
08:18 So you listen to it, or you read it, you get into God’s Word, you immerse yourself in it, and you ask the questions. So if you read something and you don’t understand it, yes you’re keeping preachers like me busy, because then I’m trying to articulate it for you, but God wants you to go ahead and learn it. James 3, I think it was verse 1 or 2, it was a very profound verse, but it didn’t make sense to me.
08:44 I said, well James 3:1, I finished reading the book of chapter 3 there, and maybe chapter 4, and I said let me go back to 3, and let me go back to this verse here that was hard to chew on, and let me start reading this. And I searched up on Google some commentaries, King James, I just would type in the verse, James 3, 1 if it was, KJV Commentary, and search it up, and I start reading what others wrote. Doesn’t mean that these commentarians, I guess you’d call them, have some special revelation, it just means that maybe they also have researched this, and it means that they’re obviously very bright people if they make it to the concordance, or they make it into the official commentary of a certain Bible, and so forth.
09:24 And again, their take may not always be right, and as I’ve preached more and more years, I kind of spend a little less time in the commentaries for that reason, because sometimes they’ll be back-to-back, and they’ll contradict each other, or won’t quite read the same interpretation, which leaves me to think that, hey, some verses maybe man just has trouble understanding, but oftentimes you’ll get enlightened, and you’ll say, oh, okay, that’s what this verse means. And in case of that verse in James, it had a very profound meaning about being very careful if we elect ourselves teachers, that we are then called by God to be teachers, because if we’re not called by God to be teachers, then we are in a big trouble, because we’re going to be judged by God, and God has a very serious and high standard for those that teach His Word, not to pervert it. And you could see that with the scribes and the Pharisees.
10:12 One reason why Jesus was so infuriated with them, because I kept wondering why this group, why this group, was that they were in charge of teaching the Scriptures at that time in the temple, and at that time it was more verbatim. They would just read them out loud, and try to kind of give their take on it, I guess, here and there, but it wasn’t like preaching today. And they were saying as fact, or as gospel, if you would, untruths and manipulations to lift themselves up, and to make the burden on people harder.
10:41 And that’s, I believe, what infuriated the Lord, amen? And all of that dovetails into the verse in James, which is about the idea that be careful if you teach, and you speak, because you’re being judged of God, and it is a fearful judgment. Make sure you’re called to do that. And you see, I could have passed that verse and had no idea what it meant, because it was somewhat convoluted.
11:01 It was somewhat hard to discern. But owning the idea of Hebrews 11: 6, that it’s impossible to please Him without faith, and that we must understand that He’ll reward us if we diligently seek Him, then that’s how we need to be diligently seeking Him. In His Word, in our lives, in our conduct, we need to look and say, well, what would God have us to do? How would the Lord react? We have examples through Jesus’ earthly ministry.
11:28 We have the Holy Spirit living within us if we’re saved. And we have repentance. We can go to God to repent and get close to Him.
11:36 We have prayer, Amen We should pray without ceasing, and kind of synthesize all these things, the prayer and the Bible study, the examples given in the Word, godly counsel and wisdom. Synthesize all these things to make decisions, important decisions, about what God would have us to do, and have this idea that we are diligently seeking Him in our conduct, as well as in our Bible study, as well as in everything in life. We are diligently seeking the Lord.
12:00 He desires that of us. He’s fully capable to fulfill that. He is God.
12:05 He’s all-powerful. He’s all-knowing. I know that that kind of is hard to understand.
12:09 I’ve asked God, God, how can you spend a lot of time with me and also with this other person, with this other person, this other person? And no, I don’t have any great answer for that other than He’s God, and He’s all-powerful. And He’s revealed some things to us, enough for us to understand, but there are things that we don’t understand, Amen But we have to have faith. That’s where faith kicks in, and have faith that He wants us to seek Him, to diligently seek Him, and to be about His business in these last days, not being all caught up in the things of the world.
12:38 Because if we’re diligently seeking Him, right, if we’ve made that a priority in our lives, in this day and age when everyone is so busy, if we’ve made a priority of seeking Him, along with providing for our family, along with spending time with the ones we love, along with sleeping properly, and eating properly, and getting exercise, and all of these fundamental things that we should do to stay healthy, along with that diligently seeking Him, we’re not gonna have time to get yoked up in the gossip party. We’re not gonna have time to have problems with a bunch of people, and drama, and so forth. It’s just not going to be on our radar, and we’ll be convicted because we’ve been seeking God by the Holy Spirit not to speak evil of anybody, and to love our neighbor, and to turn the other cheek when they hit us on one, and to give them our shoes if they take our socks, you know, all of this stuff.
13:23 We will be living for God better, and be rewarded here if we diligently seek Him. Will we be rewarded in heaven? I believe so. Greatly rewarded for diligently seeking Him, and having that faith, because the faith is the engine.
13:39 The faith is the motivation to get us to seek Him, right? We would not seek Him. We would not exhibit godly conduct if we don’t really believe in Him. Amen? So that belief in Him is what fires us up to seek Him, and then that fruitful cycle allows us to be blessed, and be rewarded both here on earth, and in heaven with Him one day.
14:02 What a great, wonderful verse. What an exceptional verse worthy of many, many messages being preached on it. Own that verse today.
14:09 Hebrews 11:6. Thank you so much for listening. Take care. God bless, and Amen.