Bible Study

Wednesday night Bible study. Someone mentioned to me before I came up that if you grill it, they will come. So we're glad to have the room full tonight and also glad to have all of those who are joining us online or we'll be watching this at a later time at their convenience. We know that a lot of people do tune in to us from distant places for these webcast Bible studies. We're glad to have all of you wherever you may be for the study here this evening. And as well, all of you here in Cincinnati this week. We began our 15th session of the Ambassador Bible Center. A number of those students are with us here tonight. We're glad to have them out as well as members from the congregations here in Cincinnati and other visitors. So welcome to all of you. We're going to be continuing our study into the book of Hebrews here tonight. And make some headway into the chapter 11. So we'll probably not finish it. In fact, we'll probably pick it up at our next Bible study, which will be after the Feast of Tabernacles. And we'll probably finish it at that time. So don't expect for us to get through the entire study tonight. I don't know if you noticed this week, wherever you may be or looking outside, but I noticed that there's a full moon out there, which tells us that in about four weeks, we will be at the Feast of Tabernacles. So four weeks, I think from tonight, is when the Feast of Tabernacles begins. Two weeks from tonight is the beginning of the Feast of Trumpets. So the Holy Days are upon us, and I think the Feast Fever and excitement and anticipation for the Holy Days, and especially for the members of the Feast of Tabernacles, is beginning to get us excited about that as the Feast falls early this year, and we're looking forward to it. So hopefully the study tonight will get us into a little bit of a frame of a festival spirit. If we get to a certain section, that kind of lends itself to the Feast of Tabernacles. We'll see how far we get. If you will bow your heads, I will ask God's blessing on the study, and we'll jump right into it then. Our gracious and heavenly Father, we bow before you this evening, giving you thanks for the opportunity to gather in midweek and study your word. Thank you, Father, for our calling, for the life we have, and for the shared spiritual experience of the calling to faith, to your body, to the body of Jesus Christ, and to the work that you're doing at this time, and you've given into our hands to accomplish. We ask for you to be with us tonight, and, Father, help us be motivated and inspired by the examples of those that you inspired to be put into your word to teach us matters and lessons of faith. We pray for your blessing, your guidance now, and commit this study into your hands, and we pray in Christ's holy and righteous name. Amen. All right. Hebrews 11 is where we are, the subject for tonight, and I think all of us realize that Hebrews 11 is a chapter that is often called the faith chapter.

It deals with this very, very important, very large, all-encompassing matter of faith. It's a long chapter, placed as a kind of a break after the dissertation that Paul has been going through in the remainder of the book of Hebrews up to this point. Some pretty deep matters of the spirit of the Old Covenant, the New Covenant, the temple, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, all of that has been covered in detail in the Melchizedek priesthood, the high priesthood, the role of Christ as our high priest, and some pretty deep matters that are covered in the book of Hebrews. And now we come to chapter 11, and it's a change of pace because all that we have been building upon to this point now comes to a point where Paul is going to try to conceptualize and take some of the matters that are spiritual, a bit intangible, a bit invisible, and hard to understand in terms of our physical life, and he's going to put some people around it, some personalities. And we're all creatures of the same nature about our human experience. We like stories, and we like stories about people. I love to read biographies of people, presidents, statesmen, leaders, historical figures from the past. I've always loved to delve into a good biography and a good story about someone. Well, that's what Paul is doing here in chapter 11 as he begins to expand on the stories of well-known individuals and some not known because they're not all mentioned as we will see when we get into it at that point, but the big ones, the big ones such as Abraham, Noah, Moses, and their lives are brought out to illustrate this concept, the spiritual concept called faith. So let's get into it here. Let's begin and look at the first couple of chapters, first couple of verses, chapter 11, and exactly what is said and begin to understand where Paul is going to go with this and why. Because in verse 1, he says right off the bat, now faith is. All right, here we go. Straight up definition. No better way to jump right into it. Faith is. Bated breath, we wait. What is faith? And then he says something interesting. He says, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, for by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith, we understand that the world is reframed by the Word of God so that the things which are seen are not made of things which are invisible.

What's that all about? Substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Two interesting words, substance. The substance of something is the reality of what it is, the core, the pithy, meaty substance into which you delve to understand what is and what works. And then he mentions, the evidence of things not seen. What's that all about? You go to a court of law and people present evidence in a case. They will usually bring in item number one, item A, item B, and it's a gun. It's a candlestick, if you're a fan of clue.

Rolling pin, rock. This is the weapon, Your Honor. This is the evidence, and it's hard, it's concrete. Paul says it's the evidence of things not seen, but it is the substance of things hoped for. I'm not going to go into the Greek so much tonight to try to get into all of that, but if you look at this word substance, what the word is really meaning and telling us is that there is something at the core, there is something that forms the foundation of faith that is substantive. It's solid. It is real. It is there. It is very real.

That's what Paul is saying, that faith is the substance of things hoped for. It is what we can see that is there for us to understand. It is something that we might look at that is hopeful, that builds hope for us, of things hoped for. And it is an undergirding of reality that is still not quite seen or understood. Now, the evidence of things not seen can be any number of things that are not seen. When you think about what it is that we have as our faith, our walk of life, our body of belief and what we hope for, think about how much of it is hardcore evidence that you can see it's like this. It's this color. It's this shape. It's this big. It's this small. What are the things that we deal with in our spiritual life? Well, there's the kingdom of God.

Have we seen the kingdom of God yet? No, we hope for that. But we believe that it is real.

We deal with the concept of eternal life. That is our great hope. What does that mean? Have you ever tried to conceptualize eternal life? When I was learning about the church as a kid, the ministers would talk about eternity.

What is eternity? And I remember trying to think about it, my little wee brain.

And the only way I could think about it then was in terms of a day, a month, a week, and the sun coming up and going down. And it going on and on and on forever and ever and ever.

And I would try to think it through. And I remember a few times thinking, Ooh, that's scary. I don't know that I can understand or that that's far too much for me. But even that's not eternity because eternity is a whole different experience, a different realm, a different dimension. We hope for eternal life, but we haven't seen it yet. And we have to think of that as best we can at times from our own physical limitations. And yet there is an evidence there. We spend our life dealing with things such as righteousness. We talk of righteous character. We talk about sin. We can define and act as sin. But every year we go and keep the feast of the unleavened bread, and we put out of our lives a leavened product, which is only a type of sin. And God gives us that puffed up piece of bread as a type to illustrate to us something that is eternal or spiritual in the sense that it's a spiritual concept. And we then eat a thin piece of unleavened bread. We were trying to conceptualize this one time in some of our work in the media department. That's a piece of unleavened bread. Kind of flat. What does that mean? It pictures a sinless life to us. And we eat that every day during the days of unleavened bread to picture a sinless life, Christ's life in us. And we eat that by God's command, but it's flat. But we eat this matzo, this piece of unleavened bread, and it only shows us something that we can we can't really see, but God gives us that symbol as evidence of that which is not seen. We could build a whole list on this side of spiritual matters that we deal with from the Bible and our walk of faith that we talk about, define in certain ways, but you can't put a piece of it on a table like you can a cup and say, this is it every time in every way.

But yet, He says it is the substance of things hoped for. And there is an undergirding reality, is what Paul is saying here, of things that are indeed real. They're spiritual. They are life living, giving to our faith. They are the realities on which we have no tangible evidence, but they are real. They are spirit. And because they are spirit, they are no less real than the things that we can see. In fact, if we really do break it down, the spiritual, the spirit world, the spirit dimension is far more real than this piece of wood or anything in this physical dimension. That's in this clumsy language that Paul had at his disposal and we have through an English translation is what is being described of things that are substantive and that are solid evidence. And he's talking in this chapter of this matter of faith. Now, how is he going to do it? How is he going to tell you and I what this great spiritual concept of faith is? It's big. It's bigger than sometimes we may have imagined it.

It's more than just one dimension. It's more than just one action. But it is at the heart and core of who we are and what we do. Now, in verse 3, he mentions that the worlds were framed by the Word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. This is not double talk. The things that are seen are not made of things that are visible, which is another way of saying that the things that we don't see, indeed, are invisible. And yet, they are substantive. There's evidence there, and it is very real. In one sense, Paul was counteracting an idea of the time that the Gnostics had that all this physical world was created by mistake out of something, and by some inferior God being, that was a mistake, and that the physical is something far inferior, not intended. And he's saying that no, it was by intent, and it is made out of something that is invisible, and yet it is very real. You can't see it, but it is real. That's what he is saying. And even as it comes out of the spirit dimension, it is very real. And this is where he begins to begin this dissertation on the matter of faith. Now, what he's going to do, beginning with verse 4, is to march us through a number of different examples of people from the Old Testament that were familiar to his audience in the day. These figures were the people of their national history, their whole national experience. For us, they are the patriarchs. They are the people of the Old Testament that we find, in some cases, quite a bit about, information about, and others only a snippet of information. And what he is doing then is beginning to offer us a framework around which we can build faith by looking at the examples of people who have gone before, like Noah, like Abraham, like Sarah, and what they did, and through their lives and their examples, he is going to teach us what faith is. Again, that's why I like to read biographies.

I can read a biography of someone, and I can get a better grasp of what a great leader makes, what makes a great leader. I can get a better understanding of what this intangible quality character or integrity is all about. As I read, perhaps, the story of George Washington, or Booker T. Washington, or Abraham Lincoln, or any figure that you might pull from history, you begin to read about, by their life, what courage is all about, and by what they did. And this is what Paul is doing with these examples. He is showing us not statesmen that we relate to, statesmen his audience related to, but also to us, the men and women whose lives of faith, as they journey toward the kingdom of God, tell us what this faith is all about. And then we can begin to take that lesson, that example, and we can get a better grasp of the substantive issue of faith and have more evidence on which then to build a life of faith by looking at their lives. It's not an exhaustive list. There are many, many more people that are left out, as we know from...as we look through the Old Testament.

At this point, it is good, I think, because I was looking at this...I looked ahead. See, we'll turn over to chapter 12. I think we need to frame this discussion from chapter 11 and verse 4 on through to chapter 12 and verse 1, because the thought is truncated by the chapter markings that are put in here, but in reality, what is here applies to us. In chapter 12 and verse 1, he writes, therefore we also...this is after he's gone through this grouping...since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. So great a cloud of witnesses. I'd like to put up here kind of a heading over it all that we have a cloud of witnesses. This is the terminology that Paul uses.

Witnesses goes over the unleavened bread. Okay. But we have this cloud of witnesses through their lives and their stories that have gone before us. And he says, we're surrounded by their stories and their legacy. Let us then lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author, and the finisher of our faith, for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

So he frames it by calling all of this people a cloud of witnesses and then capping it off with a reference to Jesus Christ. If you go back and as we will look at these stories, these individuals walked a very, very precarious balance beam in their lives. And they stayed true to their calling, even at moments when they almost fell off.

You know, every four years when the Summer Olympics come along, one of the big draws for my wife, and I get drawn into it through her usually, is the gymnastics. And you watch them do all the things that they do, and you marvel that human body can do those things. But one of them that really captures my attention is the balance beam. When they walk that balance beam and they do what they do on that balance beam, I am totally a stony. They're just amazing. And when they stay on it and fulfill their routine without falling off, sometimes you'll see them do their little flip and their pirouette, and they'll go about like this.

But then they'll pull themselves back up. They walk that balance beam and they get their routine done. These people, these men and women in Hebrews 11, they walked a balance beam, a very tight balance beam of life called faith. And they finished it. They stayed true to it. They had a fine sense of integrity, honor, loyalty, confidence, hope, courage, and they stayed on the beam and they finished their routine, to borrow a phrase. And this is where He's taking us.

And He's taking these examples and He's building a story around us around which we can then put some flesh around these bones of faith and understand it in a far better way. So let's jump into verse four. And let's look at Abel and what we can discern here from the story in verse four. By faith, and that's the phrase that is used as we go through here, by faith, Abel, who was one of the sons of Adam and Eve at the very beginning.

And we know that story quite well, offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous. God testifying of his gifts and through it, he being dead still speaks. So living example, and a righteous person who dies in God's eyes, he says that it's a blessed thing, far different from the way we look at it.

But for a person, a saint who has died in the faith, keeping the faith to the end of their life, whether it's Abel, Abraham, or someone in our own contemporary experience to God, they've taken their last breath. God knows their memory. God is going to resurrect them. But in God's perspective, they may be dead, but they still speak. They still speak. And through their lives, they speak to us of this example.

Now, we know the story of Cain and Abel, the two brothers who brought a sacrifice to God. And one was accepted, the other was not. Abel's was accepted, and Cain's was rejected. We know that Abel was a herdsman. Cain was a farmer. They brought two different types of sacrifices to God at the time. And one was accepted and the other was not. Now, at the heart of the story is a sacrifice that was accepted, one rejected, and then Envy came in.

And anger, and Cain rose up and killed his brother. And it is a fabled legendary story. That's not legendary. It's true. But as it has come down, it's been told and retold in many different forms by authors through the years. There was a book written a few years ago by the English novelist, Geoffrey Archer Cain and Abel. And it was set in a modern setting about two brothers and the fortunes of a great family in England, I believe.

It was dealing with the newspaper business. It was quite a good read. And yet, there were the rivalries between these two brothers named Abel and Cain. They made a very good fictionalized story. So it's been told and retold in many different ways. When you start looking at how commentators explain why one sacrifice was accepted and the other wasn't, there are differing ideas about the fact that Abel brought one that was shed blood. Whereas Cain brought a sacrifice of a grain that didn't require the shedding of blood. The conclusion that could be drawn and is by some commentators is that Abel understood far better what a sacrifice was and that blood needed to be shed for true atonement to take place.

And Cain didn't. Others speculate that Cain brought a lesser sacrifice and Abel brought a greater sacrifice. It is interesting with the scant information we have, it's very easy to read more into some of the speculation that one might pile on in an attempt to understand essentially what has happened. But I don't think it necessarily comes down to the kind of sacrifice that was offered. That's not the issue. Probably what was at the very heart and what God could tell from the subsequent conversation that He had with Cain, why to send Liah Judor, was the attitude.

No matter what was brought, it was the attitude in which it was brought that was most likely the one that counted most before God. When you look at other scriptures that talk about the proper attitude to have when giving a sacrifice, regardless of what it is, regardless of what the amount is, an offering or a sacrifice that is not given cheerfully, willingly, from the abundance of one's heart, as Paul talks about in Corinthians, with a contrite spirit is not one that is going to be accepted by God.

Hold your place here, and you might just turn back to the 51st Psalm. Well known here, as David puts it, Psalm 51.

And verse 17, The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart. These, O God, you will not despise. You will not despise these. A contrite spirit, a contrite heart, a broken spirit, repentance, humility. Like the widow who brought her might to the temple, and Christ said, that's the one that's going to be taken. The widow that gives a lot from the least that she has. Other scriptures that talk about this are in 1 Samuel 15 and verse 22. Since we're back there, we could quickly turn to it, 1 Samuel 15 and verse 22.

When Saul tried to excuse his keeping of the herds from the Amalekites and the sheep and oxen that were not destroyed by God's command, and Saul was making sacrifice from it, in verse 22, Samuel said, "...has the Lord so great as greater delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord. Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed in the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the scent of witchcraft, and stubbornness as iniquity and idolatry." Because you've rejected the word of the Lord, He's rejected you from being king. God is more interested in a sacrifice that is given from a humble, contrite spirit, a humble heart, contrite spirit, and comes truly from a genuine attitude such that. That, I think, is what we probably are best and safest gathering from what it was about the difference between the sacrifice of Abel and that of Cain that made it acceptable to God. And as a result of that, envy came in. The story of Cain and Abel in that conflict is it's one of envy in its rawest form, of a brother that would kill his own brother out of the the festering, smoldering envy that took seed in his heart, put down a root, and could not be taken out. Sometimes, enmity between people of the same blood can be some of the deepest.

Look at some of the great controversies of history between individuals or clans, brother against brother in this case, brother against brother in our own American history with the war between the states, the Civil War. People of the same blood, in some cases even. And when spirits become raw, human nature can take over and do exactly what Cain did in this spirit. But Abel offered something that was a more excellent sacrifice. And what he gave, he gave from the best that he had, and it was genuine and it was sincere. Any offering we give should be in that way of our lives, of our substance, at any time and at any place. There are many, many other examples in Scripture to talk about that. But this one seems to be offered up at the beginning, at the top of the list, of Abel giving a sacrifice here.

And that seems to frame what so much of what faith is as we proceed from certainly this starting point in the biblical record, as well as the starting point in this listing of people of faith. Because it's not our tithes, it's not our offerings, it's not a cow that we give, it's not a first fruit that we might pluck out of our garden or a bushel of first fruit corn that we give. Ultimately, as Paul said in Romans 12, it is the sacrifice of ourselves.

I've been tithing since I was 13 years old. If I summed it all up, it'd be a few thousand dollars. I wish it would have been a few million because then I'd be, would have had 90% more than that. But at the end of the day, the 10% that God asks of us is very, very little compared to the sacrifice of our whole life, our whole heart, and our whole devotion for a lifetime. That's what He's really interested in. That's what He wanted to see from Abel. He wished he had it from Cain, but he didn't, and he said, send lives at the door. All right, let's go on to the next example here, and that is Enoch, the seventh from Adam, we're told, seventh generation from Adam, and another, told that in another scripture. It's one of these pre-flood figures that we just get a little, not even, I wouldn't even call it a thumbnail sketch of information. We don't even get a little pinky sketch of information of some of these individuals back there. Yet you'd be amazed at the legends that have sprung up about them all and the stories from the mists of ancient legend and myth that surround them. Enoch is one of these. You could do a search on Enoch or go into a Bible commentary, and you'll find references to first Enoch, second Enoch. And it's even mentioned in the book of Jude that Enoch prophesied of Christ coming with 10,000s of saints. And so what he did and what he accomplished is interesting to speculate about. And the little scraps that we get in scripture tell us just, oh so much, and you don't need much to build a whole myth around something that contains a lot of interesting stuff, but probably not all true. One of the principles that you should understand about the people that we read about in the Bible, and certainly even the books of the Bible and and what we have as the Bible, is to realize that as God brought it together, as His inspired word given through the various writers that recorded it, and what we have that has come down to us in these books is what God intended us to have. Now there are all kinds of other Gnostic Gospels and Gnostic writings and books of Enoch and Jared and Jerash and all these other characters and figures, but they, for whatever reason, by the individuals and by those that were led to put the scriptures together, they were not included.

They were not included. And what God has given to us is what He intended us to have. That to me is a far better basis to start a study of the Word of God on without worrying about things that were left out or what other writings might tell us. Enoch is one of those because of what He does have. But let's go ahead and look at verse 5. It says, by faith, Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death. He was not found because God had taken him. For before he was taken, he had this testimony that he pleased God. But without faith, it is impossible to please God, for He who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Now, one of the first books that I remember seeing when my mother came into what was in the radial church of God was a real thin little book called, Where Are Enoch and Elijah?

And in that booklet was an explanation for what happened to Enoch and Elijah.

You see here, and this is the only record that we really have, it says that he was taken away, that he did not see death. And he was not found because God had taken him.

Now, the idea that some people read into this is that he was taken away, kind of a first person to be raptured, as one commentator said, the first of the raptures. And that he was translated, he was taken away, and taken to heaven is the idea. Now, not all commentators read that into it, but many do. And it for years has been a commonly held idea that Enoch was taken up to heaven. He lived at a time of lawlessness in this pre-Noatian world, this pre-flood world. And world was in wickedness, a great deal of sin and corruption leading to the point where God had to eventually destroy the world through the flood at the time of Noah. And that Enoch was this individual who was righteous, although it's not specifically said that he was in the same sense that Noah will be, but he was taken away and he did not see death. If you look in the Jewish publication society, the Jewish version of the Old Testament of the Book of Genesis here, it merely says that Enoch was not. And the phrase as they explain it was that it just means he died. When it says that Enoch was not, it was another way of saying that he died. God took him and he died in a different manner than the men of his age is really the way to understand this. We don't know exactly whether he was taken up into a whirlwind like Elijah was, or did he just walk down a path or up a mountain one day and lay down and die like perhaps Moses did when he, the end of Deuteronomy, when he turns and walks away from the children of Israel and goes away. Beyond that, we don't know exactly what happened. Did he just fall asleep and died? There are those individuals like Moses and like Elijah in the Bible that were taken away and died. They didn't go to heaven. Elijah went up into the first heaven. And it could be that Enoch was taken away in the same fashion. It just doesn't tell us this. But the point is, from the original in the Hebrew here, that he was just removed from his time, from his age, from among his people at that time and allowed to die in peace and in an honorable way in a time and a place that perhaps where he may not have been because of the violence of the times and what may have been directed toward him.

Other scriptures obviously clearly show us that no man is ascended to heaven or in the presence of God. And other individuals like Abraham, like Joseph, like David, whose story is far more detailed in the Bible and whose deaths are very clearly shown as to be what they are and that they died and they were buried, why would it be, though, that God would take this one individual of whom He tells us very little? And He tells him or He takes him to heaven or whatever without really clearly doing it when all the others clearly died. And other plain scriptures tell us the difference. So look at it and understand it in the way that He was not in that He was taken away and He died in a different manner than those in that age. To go off in that direction anyway probably misses the whole point of Enoch's life. I like the way Barclay puts it in his commentary on Hebrews and in that, as he said about Enoch here, Barclay says that Enoch walked with God in an age when men walked away from God. Enoch walked with God in an age when men walked away from God. I like that. I'll put that up here perhaps as what to remember about Enoch. He walked with God. How's your walk with God? You see, you and I live in an age today where people are walking away from God by their lifestyle, their conduct, and their belief in some rather dramatic ways unknown and unheard of in my lifetime and many of yours, as some of us have lived long enough to see the transition that has taken place in just the last 40, 50, 60 years of American experience. We've lived long enough to see things change dramatically. Those of you that are younger don't have that perspective. I understand that. As one of the staff members told me one day, now I finally get it. Why you boomers are so incensed about what's taking place in the world today. You've lived long enough to see the difference, and we have. Trust us, there was a time when it wasn't accepted, when it wasn't done quite as prevalently, when there were certain standards held quite high, when there was more of a talk about God. I grew up saying the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, One Nation Under God, and things like that. We're at a point in the 21st century where people are walking away from God more and more. I'm not saying everyone, there are a lot of good people still yet striving to uphold certain standards, seeking God. That's quite frankly the audience that we really have as our prime audience in preaching the gospel. Are those people who still today believe, believe in God, believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and are seeking, and are seeking for something better than what they have right now? That's our prime audience. We call them believers, seekers, many different terms for them, but those are the people, quite frankly, we will have more success with. Now, there'll be others that God calls to that may come from a totally, total background of unbelief. But our prime audience is people who are trying to walk with God through a fog, and looking for something better. For all of us, you and I in this room and others listening, the main point I think to take from Enoch is that he's an example for us to walk with God in an age when men are walking away from God. And I think that's the best way to understand that example of faith when others are around us. So we can think that our time and our age is one that is quite stark and quite negative, and there are problems, yes.

I don't think we have yet reached the depth of our times that we perhaps will. And there are periods of history in the past, certainly beginning with that at the time of Enoch, where you can pretty well imagine things being pretty bad. We haven't yet come to the time as it was in the days of Noah, as Christ said that it would be, which kind of when I say that at times, I think I probably put a shutter down my throat that I'm wondering, well, how much worse can it get?

Probably a lot worse, probably a lot worse in terms of a morality and a mindset. We just haven't yet come to the point where they're dragging us out into the streets like they did with wanting to do a lot and as visitors in Sodom that night. I haven't had anybody knocking on my door yet. Don't want anybody knocking on my door to do that. But that was a pretty bad time.

In the meantime, while we can, while there's still light, we do our jobs, and you and I have the opportunity to walk with God. And to the degree we do that, we're going to be walking in faith in that way, and we're going to believe that God is. Without this type of a lifestyle, without this confidence, and without this faith, again, verse 6 says, it's impossible to please Him. For He who comes to God, when we pray, when we seek God, we must believe that He is, that He exists. We must believe that God exists, and then seek to understand who God is. One of the great questions of life is, who is God, and what is God, and what is God doing?

These are some of the great questions that, quite frankly, we do have answers to in the Church.

Dr. Ward continually drums this into our minds in some of our discussions on the Council of Elders, and when we get into immediate discussion, that the great questions of who is God and what is God, who is man and what is man, I think he's got it down to about seven great questions of life. And those of you in ABC this year, when Dr. Ward comes to teach his fundamentals of theology, you'll hear that over and over and over again. So you're hearing it here first, perhaps, in this case, unless you've heard him speak about it otherwise. But we have that down. In our understanding of the Bible, in our theology, we know who God is. We know what He's doing. We know that the Father, we know Jesus Christ, we understand that God is not a Trinity. We understand that we can be partakers of the divine nature, that God is in the process of expanding His family, and we can become a part of that family. We know what our purpose and our life is. Those are the matters that we need to just continue to refine and instill throughout our entire message and our being, because we have that unique understanding that does create a distinctive for us in our efforts to preach the gospel. We believe who He is, that He is, and that we know who He is and what He is doing, and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him. Now, let's go into verse 7 then, and let's look at the story of Noah, one of the great stories, obviously, of the entire Bible, Noah and the flood. Noah, who built the ark. Noah, who along with his family after decades of preaching, were the only ones to get into the ark and to be saved from the flood that took place. Verse 7, it says, by faith, Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness, which is according to faith.

All you budding writers, all of you who want to write for the United Church of God publications, take note of brevity. In one verse, what is distilled into a few words of the whole life, teaching an example of Noah. Pretty good. Pretty good. Hemingway couldn't even write that concise.

But Paul could under God's inspiration. Noah, warned of things not yet seen. Again, God said to Noah, there's going to be a flood. I want you to build an ark. He hadn't seen it. There was no evidence. Noah lived in Mesopotamia. Some were in that area. Landlocked. Some rivers, tigers and Euphrates he probably knew about.

I don't think he had an ocean side villa.

And he is told by God, there's going to be a flood. I'm going to destroy all flesh.

Whoa! Noah had never seen that before. In Noah's day, that had never happened. Evidence of things not seen.

Divinely warned of something that had not happened and he couldn't even conceive of happening. The catastrophe, the Holocaust. Put in the word tribulation to bring it up to date for our time.

A time of world trouble. A time of trouble unlike the world has ever seen. God is saying to Noah, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do it through a flood.

Alright, that was the number one thing that he had to wrap his mind around and believe. And have faith would happen even though he had not yet seen it. And then he said, now go out here in the middle of the dry land and start building this boat. An ark.

Here's the dimensions. Here are the blueprints. Start building.

And year after year, for how many decades, how many generations?

I've thought about this over the years and it's fascinated me to think about what work was built up. What sprung up around the building of this boat out in the middle of a field by Noah. This construction magnate. This boat builder. This onassis of his time.

This George Steinbrenner, who was another besides owning the Yankees, owned a lot of boats.

People came to work on that boat. It was a big project in its day. I don't think Noah built it by himself or only with his sons. Materials had to be brought in. Skilled laborers had to be employed. I think people came and worked on that boat for years. I think children were born in the shadow of that boat. I think that disputes arose around that boat. I think better ideas came up around that boat. I think some people said around that boat, whoa, whoa, I can build a better boat. Let's go off over here. Let's take our saws and axes. Let's go build a better boat. I got a different set of blueprints.

And I'll bet some people picked up their toolboxes and moved to another site and started building another boat. That's just my speculation, but I'm like Charles Barkley. I might be wrong, but I don't think so. And I think that's what happened. And I think a lot of people heard Noah for a long period of time warn that something bad was going to happen. And he witnessed to them. He was moved with godly fear. He condemned the world. Not that he just turned his back on him and didn't love them. He condemned them by his example. And he didn't have enmity in his heart toward people. His example, his words, his preaching, his year after year work on that boat condemned the world and his age because it was an example then that people were exposed to.

And as a result of that, he became an heir of righteousness. What he did year after year, and then when it was all done, only eight people were saved. And they were all in one family. How many hundreds, how many thousands of people heard Noah say why he was building that boat, the purpose of that boat, what it was going to do would be a vehicle of salvation, physically, for any who listened to him, engaged with them, and would come on and be a part of what they were doing and in a sense subscribe to and to believe, as Noah did, that what God was going to do. How many heard that message? I think the same message that he gave them was pretty close to what we have been doing for decade after decade after decade and giving a message of warning of a time of trouble to come and how many people have heard our report, to paraphrase the prophet Isaiah. That's how Noah condemned the world in the sense that he witnessed to them. That didn't mean that he just walked away and was not concerned about them.

If Noah had found grace in God's sight, as the account says back in Genesis, that Noah did his work with grace. And I pretty well think that he did it with the fullness of the grace of God that allowed him to just stay at it year after year, even when there may have been a shortage of funds. Maybe the work had to be suspended until some fundraising could be done or whatever it may have been. It's interesting. I think it's a little bit fun to speculate and draw some parallels to what Noah did and what we have been a part of in our experience in the Church of God for many, many decades and what has been done in our lifetime. We've been building something. We've built buildings. We've built campuses. We've built operations. And they've ebbed and flowed, come and gone. But I think that what we are building is an even larger edifice and that it is a part of the spiritual arc, if you will, that God is building and putting together. And we're working on that and have been. And by our example, we have been moved with a godly fear to prepare an arc, a spiritual arc, spiritual work that perpetuates and continues on the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God and a message to repent and to change. For there is coming a time when this age is going to be caught up in a time of trial and suffering unlike any before at the dawn of a different age. Noah did that. He did it for all of his life. He believed and he kept God's Word. It takes a lot to do that. There is a message that God gives to the church back in Revelation 3 that we should note. Noah believed what God said and he went and he acted upon it. That's what faith is. He moved because of what he heard from God in whatever way that God revealed it to him as to what was going to happen. And he believed God. In verse 8 to the angel of the church of Philadelphia, it says, I know your works. See, I have set before you an open door and no one can shut it for you have a little strength and have kept my word and have not denied my name. One of the characteristics for those at Philadelphia were that they kept God's Word. They heard that word. They believed it. You read the Bible. You believe what it says. You act upon it. You obey it. You put it into practice. You understand what works today, what is part of our new covenant experience and relationship with God from the Bible and you live it and you know what doesn't get carried over. You believe God. You employ the spiritual principles of the entire Bible. You use all the Word of God to discern the mind of God and you prove it. You live it and you believe it. And you are like Noah in that you are moved with a godly fear. Noah heard the message and he moved.

And that's what made him different from anyone else in his age. That's what we should be striving to accomplish as well. The next example is that of Abraham.

Another big one. Another big one. The story of Abraham. It's so big that it's even kind of picked up in another part of chapter 11 as he begins to talk about Sarah. But let's just look at verse 8. We won't cover it all here in the next few minutes, but just to touch on it. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob. The heirs with him of the same promise. For he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Abraham obeyed and he went out to a place that he would receive as an inheritance, not knowing where he was going. If you look back in Genesis 1, when God said, get you to a country that I will show you, says that Abraham went. That's probably the operative word for the life of Abraham. He went to a place that he didn't know where he was going and he didn't know what he was going to find when he got there. But you need to understand about Abraham and what he did. Genesis 12.1 tells us God says, get you to another country and Abraham went.

What he did was remarkable for a man in his age. In Abraham's time, way back there in Mesopotamia, 4,000 or so years ago, give or take a few hundred years, we're still in the ballpark.

What he did, people didn't do in the ancient world. They didn't went. They didn't get up and go. They were born. They lived within a few miles of where they were born and they died.

They didn't take two weeks vacation and go to Jekyll Island.

They didn't decide they wanted to live in Paris for a year. They didn't do those things in that age. They didn't leave where they were. They didn't leave their family. They grew up there and they stayed essentially the way they were. For them, life was in a circle in that world at that time. It was just an endless circle. Just went round and round and round and round. That's what life was. What Abraham did was he broke out of that circle and he went. Didn't know why exactly, except this God that he began to understand and hear and see in a different way than everybody else did, told him to do it. He didn't know where he was going because he didn't have a GPS. He didn't have a map to look at to tell him what the land was like and what to wear.

He went there and he still never really settled into it. He immediately moved on down to Egypt for a period of time and got into trouble down there when he had to lie about his wife Sarah. And he wandered all up and down and around and had issues and matters, as we'll get into a little bit later. But what he did was a remarkable event for a man and his age and in his time, for him to even get up and go. And he never saw his family again for all intents and purposes, and never went back to visit. I think about that a lot in my life. I have lived my life away from the...all my adult life has been lived away from the hometown in which I grew up. I spent the first 19 years of my life in one town. One little corner of southeast Missouri, town of about 30,000 people. You could get across the whole town in about 12 minutes in that day. Today it will take you about 15.

Places I knew, people I knew, my family are still there. I left age 19 and only to visit for a few days at a time have I been back. I've lived in other places, California, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, and Illinois in my adult life. And communities where I don't have any family, and where I didn't go to high school, and when I walked down the street, I don't see anybody that was in my family. And yet, you know, so I think about that a lot. Every time I go back to my hometown and I cross the river out of Missouri into Illinois and begin to move away from it, I look back and I can see across the flat Illinois side of the Mississippi River, which is basically flat farmland, and I can still see the low-lying hills of my little hometown for a few miles perched on the west bank of the Mississippi River. And I can see the dome of the college where I went to for one year. And then just like that, it's gone, and I always turn and look. And I think about the fact that I left. And I kind of think about Abraham. And though I've told totally two different stories, I'm glad that God told me to get up and go, gave me the opportunity to go when I did. And for the life that I've lived since then, I have no regrets. It made all the difference in my life, and it's been a completely different life than what I would have had had I stayed in that town. I hope that I would have kept and remained in the faith that I was raised in, the church, had I stayed. I don't know. I don't know. But I had an opportunity, a calling, if you will, to a different life, and I went.

Others have done the same thing. I'm not the only one. In a larger sense, we've all been like Abraham in that we have gone by God's calling. We went after God into the church, into a life of faith, on a walk toward the kingdom of God. And we have been going toward that which we went out, not knowing exactly what it was going to bring. And there have been turns and twists and ups and downs, but we're still moving in that direction of the kingdom of God, which is what He eventually moves on to and begins to explain here in verse 9. But we don't have the time to get into all of that. So I'll leave that. And if Mr. Meyers gives me the opportunity, I'll pick it up when we pick up the story, when we come back after the Feast of Tabernacles for the next Bible study and move a little bit further into the story of faith of Hebrews 11. But keep in mind that these are the stories that Paul is illustrating and fleshing out to help us understand the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Be careful driving home tonight. We'll see many of you on the Sabbath, others tomorrow here in the building. And all of you that are listening online, I hope you have a good rest of your week. And a good Holy Day season and Feast of Tabernacles.