Fellowship in the Word

Jason Gebhardt: Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bil Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ.

Bil Gebhardt: Notice the conviction that Enoch had. I'll not only walk with God, I'll serve God. This generation needs to be preached to and I will preach to them. That's Enoch's faith. Notice both of these do something. Abel simply did what God told him to do. He gave an honorable offering to God. Enoch on the other hand walked with God, but also he proclaimed or preached God to a lost generation of people because both of these men had the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

Someone as brilliant as Soren Kierkegaard came and some believe reading him, and it's hard when you read him to understand, he may have been a believer. But he's the first guy that used the term called the leap of faith. You have to take a leap of faith. Now, he didn't mean what we would hope back to Jesus Christ or something like that. He meant that in order for it to mean something to you, every human being has to take a leap of faith and whatever you take a leap into is fine. It can be completely irrational. It could be completely unexplainable. It could be completely insane and it wouldn't matter at all. You took a leap of faith.

That persevered for a while, but a new group came and they were called the existentialist. And the existentialist viewed everything in a much more pessimistic way. They believed in rationalism to a degree, they believed someone in empiricism to a degree, and they believed you had to take a leap of faith. But the whole idea is that it really doesn't matter what you take because there's no meaning in life anyway.

An existentialist bumper sticker would be this: life stinks and then you die. After all the thinking, that's what they came up with. Life stinks and then you die. In fact, Camus or Sartre, some of the French existentialists, say the only decision you should ever make in your life is whether to kill yourself early or not because nothing else matters. No matter what you've done in life, it doesn't matter. Nothing means anything. And you could see how that becomes a problem.

I can remember when I was at Pitt, I had to read Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell wrote a little book called *Why I Am Not a Christian* and here's what he said in it: "I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. The whole conception of God is derived from some ancient Oriental despotism, a conception quite unworthy of any thinking free man."

That's Bertrand Russell. Well, I had other students that I knew, and they were like, "Man, we love Russell. He's really got it." Except they didn't follow it to the end of his life. He died in abject depression and misery. He said he was completely disillusioned about everything he believed and he died. It didn't have any answers at all for him.

But all men experience faith. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Verse two is an important verse: "For by it the men of old gained approval." How do you gain God's approval? He says by faith. What else can you do? Nothing. You mean I don't gain God's approval by effort, by works, by religiosity? No.

In fact, take a look at two and now look at six: "And without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him." Without faith it is impossible to please God. And he says and with faith you get God's approval. The idea of faith is an extremely important thing. That's the way this thing has to work for all of us. Only faith, and it's not faith in faith. The only value of faith is the object of faith, and the object of faith is Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross. Then you can have God's approval.

Then he says something quite interesting: "By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, and that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible." This is a pretty intellectual verse, the latter part of it especially. "By faith we understand that the worlds..." It's not *kosmos*, it's not the normal Greek word for this world. It's *aion*, and *aion* is a word for the whole cosmos, the universe. It's got time in it. So let me put it this way: "By faith we understand that the universe was prepared by the word of God."

That's not the *Logos* from John 1. In the beginning was the *Logos*, and the *Logos* was with God, and the *Logos* was God. It's the *Rhema*. It's the speaking of God. God spoke and the universe existed. Now what's really interesting is the latter part. He said, "So that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible." What an interesting thought that is. What is seen, this whole universe... And understand they had no understanding of what the universe was.

The universe now we understand has billions upon billions of galaxies with billions upon billions of stars in each. It's so vast that it's almost beyond our imagination. We can't fathom it. What we call the edge of our known universe right now, it appears to astrophysicists that the edge of the universe is moving away faster than the speed of light. Well, nothing can be from our science point of view faster than the speed of light. So we have no idea how far this goes.

So we believe something. We believe God did this. Now what does science believe? What does the rationality of science believe? I'll simplify it for it so you understand it the best way that I possibly can: nobody plus nothing equals everything. That's what science teaches. Nobody plus nothing equals everything. You think there's some faith involved here? That's an amazing statement. It's a very difficult thing.

It's a matter of their perspective. I was reading this week one evolutionist said this: "Once I rejected the whole idea of God, evolution was the only alternative I had left. I had to believe in it. I rejected God." It's amazing to me how preposterous it'll get. Stephen Hawking, the astrophysicist from England, a brilliant mind, realized that he could have no clear explanation of how perfect the universe is made. He just couldn't.

And especially how the galaxy is made and where the sun sits and how our solar system is. This becomes mathematically a highly improbable thing. If you remember many years ago Carl Sagan used to be on television, and Sagan would say with great authority, "You have to realize now that we understand the vastness of the universe, there are billions and billions and billions of planets just like ours." So far they haven't found any. And they're amazed at that.

So Hawking's view is, "Well, I know the probabilities of this planet. But here's my explanation: I don't believe there's only one universe, that's the whole everything. I believe there are billions of universes and one of those billions would have to have mathematical perfection in it then and we're living in that one." Does that make sense to you? But that's a leap of faith. That's what happens with science.

And so my point of view is, this verse says to me, "By the word of God, so that what is seen is made out of the things which are not made out of the things which are visible." God said, "I created it." I believe he's right. That's faith. I believe he's right. I have trust in that. That's the whole point. That's the way God works with something like this.

So then he's going to give us two examples. And by the way, all the examples in this chapter are ancient. They're all pre-law. You think there'd be a lot of them. No. In fact, these first two that he'll give you today, they occurred long before Noah and the flood. He says: "By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, and through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts; as through faith, though he was dead, he still speaks." The first example of faith and saving faith is Abel.

Now how did this work? Genesis chapter four. Adam and Eve are the parents. They're out of the garden and we're in Genesis chapter four. In verse two: "Again she gave birth to his brother Abel. Abel was a keeper of the flocks, Cain was a tiller of the ground. So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel on his part also brought a firstling of his flock and their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain, for his offering he had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. And the Lord said to Cain, 'Why are you angry? Why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you. You must master this.'"

Well, that's the issue. When you look at this and read it for the first time, do you think that doesn't seem fair? Doesn't that seem like to you, one's a tiller of the ground and the other has flocks, and then he brought what he had and the other brought what he had and God said, "I reject that." That's because we didn't look at it very closely. The first thing you have is this, found in verse three: "It came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord." There is an appointed place. God told them, "You bring me an offering." They knew this. They brought it to the Lord.

Then notice what else happens. In the same sense, it says, "So it came about in the course of time..." There was a particular place and a particular time that you were to bring an offering to the Lord. And these offerings are an act of their worship to the Lord. Abel does the right thing the right way for the right reason. He does it all by faith. I'm sure God told him. Cain on the other hand decided no.

In Leviticus 19:24, he said, "In the fourth year, all its fruit shall be holy, it can be an offering to praise the Lord." There are grain and fruit offerings in the Old Testament, but never before a blood offering. The blood offering takes precedence. The blood offering is just like the Passover lamb in Egypt. The blood offering is a picture of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. The blood offering was the way in which you dealt with sin. Cain circumvented all of that. Abel did the right thing the right way for the right reason all by faith.

You could even do in a sense the right thing but you can do it in the wrong way or for the wrong reason. Did God tell Israel that they were to worship him in a particular way in the Old Testament and bring offerings to God? Did he tell them that? Yes. Then why is it in Isaiah and Malachi God said, "I hate your offerings. I hate them." Why would he say that? He said, "It's pretty clear. You bring blind sheep. You bring the worst of your flock and you make it..." He said, "Give that to your governor. See what he would think."

You see you're doing the right thing but you're doing it in the wrong way. And through Isaiah God said, "Look, you say with your lips that we're worshipping God, but I say your heart is far from me. And so I don't accept your worship at all." So you can do the right thing the wrong way or for the wrong reason.

First John 3:12: "Not as Cain, who was of the evil one and he slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil and his brother's were righteous." Cain wanted nothing to do with God. Cain was not a believer and truster of God at all. And that's what ended up happening in that sense to Cain.

Hebrews 11, verse five: "By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God." This is Enoch. This is all the way back in Genesis again. And Enoch's one of those very, very rare people who didn't die. He was translated from this world to that one. It's only a couple times that happens in the Bible. Enoch is a type of the church, us. What happens at the rapture? We leave. We're alive and then we're changed. That's why so many people I think really like to pray for the rapture to occur, not so much that Jesus would come back that they wouldn't have to die. But the point of it is Enoch didn't die.

You learn certain things about Enoch. One, he had faith in God, he walked with God. But there's something else. God rewarded him for his faith. That's what it says. God rewarded him. I wonder what Enoch did that was so different. Understand the culture that he's in. He's before the flood. What do we learn when Noah builds the ark? Man's only thoughts were in evil all the time. This is a corrupt world that Enoch's in. A very corrupt world. And Enoch's walking with God. He may have been the only one or he might be one of a few.

Jude 14: "It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied saying, 'Behold, the Lord came with his many thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.'" You can see the emphasis on ungodly. How many ungodly? What was Enoch? He was a preacher. He preached against that generation. My thought is maybe no one ever believed him. No one. He's telling them, "You're going to get judged, you're going to get judged." And by the way, when Noah came, the judgment came. They were all judged.

Enoch was not only a man of faith who walked with God, but he was a man of conviction who served God and preached the word of God to his generation. It's kind of an amazing thing that Enoch represents what faith's all about. Notice the conviction that Enoch had. I'll not only walk with God, I'll serve God. This generation needs to be preached to and I will preach to them. Enoch's faith. Abel simply did what God told him to do. He gave an honorable offering to God. Enoch on the other hand walked with God, but also he proclaimed or preached God to a lost generation of people because both of these men had the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

The closing principle is simply this: you cannot please God with human effort. It just won't work. We live in a day and age that says you'll please God if you're sincere. As long as you're sincere God is pleased. And you say how far would you take that? It's been taken so far it's almost unbelievable. Many years ago on the local TV I was watching the pastor of Berean Bible Church debating a priest from Notre Dame. And the priest said everyone is saved who is sincere. And so the pastor said to him, "So are you telling me if the man is a sincere atheist he's saved?" And he said, "Yes, I'm saying that." What do you mean? That's his faith. Sincerity rules the day.

But there's no merit in sincerity. Just as there's no merit in faith. It's what's the object of my faith and the object of faith is Jesus Christ and by faith you're not only saved and have the sure hope of heaven but by faith you have meaning and purpose in this life. That's the beauty of faith and that's what's so wonderful about God's short definition of it. It covers now and it covers then.

Father, faith seems so simple and yet we have turned it into something else. If we are going to believe what faith is, we need to believe what you said it is, not what somebody else told us it was. You are as clear as could be. Faith is the assurance of the future certitude that we have in you and faith is our conviction, our purpose for living this life. Father, these are wonderful and thank you for these examples starting with Abel and Enoch and as we move through these in the weeks ahead we will see so many different ways that faith has been evidenced in the lives of your people who endure by faith. Thank you for this in Jesus' precious name, amen.

Jason Gebhardt: You've been listening to Pastor Bil Gebhardt on the radio ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you'd just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called OnePlace.com. That's OnePlace.com and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online. At that website you will find not only today's broadcast but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift.

Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word, 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 70006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bil delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbc-nola.org. That's F-B-C-N-O-L-A dot O-R-G. At our website you will find hundreds of Pastor Bil's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for you can listen online or if you prefer you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember you can do all this absolutely free of charge. Once again our website is fbc-nola.org. For Pastor Bil Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.