Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Faith and reason, they actually go hand in hand, as pastor Bill Lubkeman explains.

Bill Luebkemann: You know, you hear sometimes a debate faith and reason, faith and reason. Faith is not contrary to reason. They are coexistent, supplemental. Faith does never contradict reason. They can coexist together. Faith says we got here by God creating everything. There's nothing unreasonable about that. A scientist who's not a believer in the world today will say that's unreasonable. It's reasonable to believe that we evolved from nothing. But the truth is it's totally unreasonable to believe that. In fact, most people do not believe in evolution.

Guest (Male): Greetings and welcome to Hope from the Word with Bill Lubkeman. On behalf of Calvary Chapel of Marlton, it's our privilege and pleasure to have you with us as we explore some more great examples of faith. The Bible is full of stories of men and women who trusted in God even when their circumstances seemed impossible. We can learn from their experiences and be encouraged to follow God ourselves. When we were last together, we were looking at Hebrews 11 and today we'll pick up where we left off as pastor Bill continues his survey of the Bible. Here he is now to get us started.

Bill Luebkemann: One guy that I read, he said physical eyesight produces a conviction or evidence of visible things. So your eyes, your eyes produce this in your mind. Your eyes produce a conviction or evidence of things that are visible. And this guy said faith is the organ which enables people to see the invisible world. So your eyes are an organ in your body. Your ears are an organ. Your nose, your tongue, okay, your touch. I guess your skin is an organ, the biggest organ in your body, right? Isn't your skin an organ? You're a nurse. You know that, right?

Okay, I'm pretty smart, right? I So look, um just joking. But you have five senses. Well, this guy said really you have six senses. Um I'm not giving any credit to that movie, by the way. But faith is a kind of an organ and it allows people to see the invisible order. And if we say we're aware of the physical world because of our five senses, then we are aware of the spiritual world because of our sense of faith, if you will. If you have proof by way of your five senses of something, then you don't need faith.

Faith is another sense that operates in another realm that allows you to see another kind of order, the invisible order. And you can talk to someone who doesn't have faith, who doesn't believe in faith, and you can say well, I believe in the invisible order. I believe there is a God. I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe there is a devil. He's real and personal also. I believe in you know the angels. I believe in the fallen angels, the demons. There's heaven, there's a hell. All this stuff that the Bible says and they can say that's a bunch of holy hogwash.

You know, when we die, there is nothing after that. Their viewpoint is also based on faith. And I might point out that their viewpoint requires more faith than yours because believing that we just all just evolved from nothing by some scientific progress, by some random chance and permutation. That's really hard to believe. Really hard to believe. You know, it's funny how you hear this thing in science. They say the debate is over. The debate is over with global warming. The debate is over about global warming. You hear the people say that that believe in global warming.

The debate is over. Global warming is a fact. The debate is over. You hear that with evolution. We evolved. Mankind evolved. The debate is over. Their creation didn't happen. You know, evolution is how we got here. The debate is over. Now you never hear them say that about anything that is commonly accepted like the fact that it snows in the winter. You never hear them say the debate is over that it snows in the winter at the North Pole. You never hear them say the debate is over that people go to the seashore in the summer.

The only time you ever hear the phrase the debate is over is when the debate isn't over. Whenever you hear that phrase the debate is over, your antenna should go up and you should ask what do they have to hide? If they have to say the debate is over, then the debate isn't over because you wouldn't have to say it if it was really over. There there would be more to it than that. If the debate was over, nobody would be arguing. You wouldn't have to tell people. See? And so you have people all the time who say the debate is over.

We're just here by evolution. We just got here by naturalistic means. Well, we're going to get to that in a few more verses here. Faith is a bunch of baloney. It didn't happen. Faith is this. It is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. We can be absolutely positive that these things in the Bible exist. How? Because of faith. Someone says that's circular reasoning. No, it's not. It is faith. And faith is a sense that we have given us by God that allows us to believe these things.

Furthermore, this is what the ancients were commended for. Some translations say for it for by it the elders obtained a good testimony. This is the way we can please God by our faith, obtaining a good testimony. The elders obtained a good testimony. The ancients, if you will, in the NIV here, the elders in some translations. It's always what you see people commended for throughout the scriptures. A good testimony in God's sight. And as you read through Hebrews here, we're not going to certainly not going to get very far today, but if you want to have some great reading, go home and read chapter 11 here of Hebrews and see how God commends these people.

He doesn't commend them because they won wars and built great armies and and big cities and fought battles and conquered continents. He commends them for their faith and the simple things that he called them to do. Simple things. Abraham lived in tents all his life, commended for his faith. We'll see that. We might make it Abraham. I doubt it, but we might. This is what the ancients were commended for, this simple thing of being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This faith that we have, this sense that we have given us by God, if you don't have it, you need to ask him for it.

And you can't conjure it up on your own. Someone says they come to faith, it's because God gave them it. God gave it to them. Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. Now I point out something else too. You know, you hear sometimes a debate faith and reason, faith and reason. Faith is not contrary to reason. They are coexistent, supplemental. Faith does never contradict reason. They can coexist together. Faith says we got here by God creating everything.

There's nothing unreasonable about that. A scientist who's not a believer in the world today will say that's unreasonable. It's reasonable to believe that we evolved from nothing. But the truth is it totally unreasonable to believe that. In fact, most people do not believe in evolution. The ones that believe it keep saying the debate is over, the debate is over, the debate is over because they're following that generally taught principle that a lie often enough repeated will become the truth or will be believed to become the truth. Verse three. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

I love this verse here. Now this is one of the things that faith can help us with, understanding how the universe came into existence. Genesis 1:3 Let there be light. God said let it be and it was by the word of the Lord the heavens were made and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. Psalm 33:6 Verse nine says for he spoke and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast. He said it. It came into existence. God created everything. By faith we understand. Look, this means when it says by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command.

Look, just take the first four words there. By faith we understand. You know what that means? That means we weren't there. Anybody there to see it? I wasn't. Okay. Anybody catch the replay on the History Channel? They only go back to like they have a lot of great World War II footage, even a little World War I footage. Even with the Civil War, they show these shows with still pictures. Here's general so and so fighting in the battle. But they don't have any moving pictures of the Civil War. And if you get back to the Revolutionary War, they're paintings, right?

But they weren't there. So by faith we understand what that means is he we weren't there. So we believe by faith. The scientist says it happened this other way. His belief is by faith also. He wasn't there either. And by the way, this does not mean God had faith, by the way. This not talking about God's faith. God doesn't need faith. He was there. We're the one. Don't get confused about who has the faith, okay? God created it. He was there. We have the faith. We weren't there. God gave us the faith. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command.

So God said it, let there be and there was. So that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. Now look, this is I love this verse because the scientists at the time that this was written and look, they had some pretty amazing scientists at this time. You know, they they dug up in the bottom of the Mediterranean about 100 years ago. They were they were digging for something off of some island. And they dug up a device that has been dated to be older than the time of Christ. This this device.

It's called the device. You can read about it on the internet. And they found this device at the bottom of the Mediterranean. They've dated it to like the year 100 or 200 BC. And it's so all caked in mud and everything. They've had a hard time, you know, x-raying it and whatever. But with x-rays and cat scans and whatever over the last 100 years, the technology's gotten better. And they figured out this was a navigational device that was built in like the year 200 BC and it had like 48 gears inside it. And it mimicked the operation of the entire solar system, all the planets, the moons, the tides, and all kinds of things.

It is absolutely astounding. The mathematics that were involved were not known to have been invented until the Middle Ages, like the 1500s. But this device is known to have been made before the time of Christ. They don't know who made it, where it came from, but they found it on the bottom of the ocean and no it was not put there by aliens. If it was, it would have been electronic. Everybody knows aliens have electricity. So so there were some smart people back at the time of you know, there were there was a lot of science back then and some of it was obviously lost over the years and then it was regained at a later time.

We should give these people credit that they knew more than we think they did. Some guy in England has made a duplicate of this device. Spent He spent like decades in his home laboratory machining all the gears to make the device do what this did, just to figure out what it did by trying to duplicate it to try to understand what exactly what this device did. And I've read a lot about it and it is people have done their thesis on this thing. It is absolutely fascinating. What I'm trying to say is the scientists of the time were amazing and they did not believe at the time this was written that the world or the universe was made out of nothing.

They believed it was made out of something. And that's what scientists always believed up until relatively recently. It's only been within the last 100 years that science has come to believe that the universe was created out of nothing. Just in the the 20th century, the Big Bang theory and everything. God spoke, then it was bang. I think that that's a pretty good explanation. That's a pretty good name for Genesis one, the Big Bang theory. And the Big Bang theory as is commonly taught in the classroom today, there was nothing, no matter, no time, no space, no nothing.

There was no matter. God didn't didn't take pre-existing dirt and make planets out of it. There was no matter. There was no time. There wasn't even space. There was no length with height or depth. There was nothing. What does that mean? We can't comprehend it. But God took It wasn't even a vacuum because a vacuum at least is empty space. There was nothing. And God created it and it took 20 centuries for science to catch up with what the Bible says here in Hebrews three. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

20 centuries and now science has confirmed this. And the scientists today still haven't learned to stop making fun of the scriptures. When will they learn? They're going to just catch up eventually to the rest of it. By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks even though he is dead. Cain and Abel, you know that story. They brought their sacrifice. These were the the the two sons of Adam and Eve and they brought their gifts to God.

Abel brought a blood sacrifice because he understood that the penalty, that the price to be paid for sin was the offering of blood. He was obviously taught this by his parents. There's no scripture that explains where he was taught this, but that's the only way he could have learned. So Adam and Eve must have known this, must have taught him this. He understood this. Cain didn't. Cain brought the the fruit of the of the field, the work of his hands. Abel's offering was an offering of faith. And God commended him for it and Cain's offering was not.

You know, Cain killed Abel. Cain got banished. Adam and Eve had to start over again. But even after all these years, even though he's dead, his faith still speaks. How? Well, we're reading about it today. That's how. By faith Enoch was taken from this life so that he did not experience death. He could not be found because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. Enoch was the guy the Old Testament says he walked with God and was not. I'd like that to happen to me, but unfortunately I'm not counting on it.

But he was a guy that was so faithful to God. He did everything so right that God just I like that guy so much. His faith is so great. I'm just taking him right up to heaven. Only him and Elijah in the Old Testament were the only ones whoever were just taken up to heaven, raptured if you will. What a way to go. Who wants to face death anyway? Wouldn't that be better? And Enoch here was taken up by faith. He wasn't the only guy in the Old Testament who had faith, by the way. This whole chapter, everybody here in this chapter had faith.

And they were all or almost all of them, I think, maybe all of them from the Old Testament. But Enoch had so much faith that God took him. He could not be found. He walked with God and was not. Where is he? Where's Enoch? God took him. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek. Another great verse. Without faith it is impossible to please God.

Notice here it doesn't say the task is difficult. The task is really really hard. You know, you can please God by having faith or by you know, giving lots and lots and lots of money to the church. But if you don't have faith, you really have to give a lot a lot a lot of extra money, you know, or by working really really really hard, you know, teaching Sunday school, or by being really really really really really really good, or by being mother Teresa, you know, two times over or whatever. No, it doesn't say that.

Read this real carefully here. Don't get confused. Without faith it is impossible to please God. You know, this hasn't changed in 2,000 years. This is the same Bible that they were reading when I got saved. It's the same Bible that they were reading when you got saved. It's the same Bible that they were reading when DL Moody got saved. It's the same Bible they were reading in the 1500s in the 1200s. It's you know, different translation maybe, different words. Maybe one translation's a little better than the other, a little worse than the other. But it says the same thing.

Without faith it is impossible to please God. Why? Because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Well, you can't believe that God exists without faith because it is the sense faith is the organ that you use to sense this spiritual realm. As I said earlier, you can't see God with your eyes. You can't hear him with your ears. Maybe some people very seldom. There's a few people in the Bible that might have had a vision that maybe they saw with their eyes, possibly, or heard with their ears.

Maybe. Maybe sometimes our senses might possibly be involved in extraordinary circumstances, but not normally. And when they were involved in the Bible, when someone did have some kind of vision or appearance or whatever, they usually had the faith ahead of time. Anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists. Want something from God and you come to God. If you don't believe he exists, he ain't going to answer you. And that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.

By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. There's a guy that spent 100 and something years building an ark when it had never rained before, building an ark and he was not building it near a body of water. Now they you know, they knew what water was and they had bodies of water. So they might have had boats even. But he wasn't building this boat near a body of water. So and he said well, it's going to rain. And what's rain? And there's going to be a flood.

Well, what's a flood? And how you going to get that boat down to the water? And they made fun of him and laughed at him and joked at him for 100 plus years. And the scripture says he was a preacher of righteousness. Well, I don't know if he gave sermons from the top of his boat on Sundays or not or Saturdays maybe. But I do know by his faith he condemned the world because he did what God instructed him to do and God found no one else faithful to do it. By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went even though he did not know where he was going.

God told Abraham get up and go. And he didn't even tell him where he was going to go and Abraham said okay. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents as did Isaac and Jacob who were heirs with him of the same promise. They were promised this whole land for them and their descendants. But they lived there in tents. They didn't have any cities. They didn't have any buildings. It was long after they died and it was 400 years later that the Israelites moved into the promised land and established themselves.

Would you do that, living in a tent in the promised land out in the desert because God had promised it to you so that your descendants could build their homes there? For he was looking forward to that city with foundations whose architect and builder is God.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope from the Word. We're currently in a through the Bible series. You can hear this message or more Hope from the Word with pastor Bill Lubkeman by going to ccmarlton.org or wherever you find your podcasts. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. And finally, if you'd like a CD copy of the message, please call 856 983 1662. Again, that's 856 983 1662. We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 a.m.

and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00. To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org. And if you'd take a moment to write to pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives and we want to pray for you too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856 983 1662. We'll continue our through the Bible series next time on Hope from the Word with pastor Bill Lubkeman, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.