Fall About Faith Week 2

All right, welcome everybody to Fall About Faith,

week two.

Last week, we kind of introduced ourself

into the topic of faith in Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

We talked a little bit about what faith is,

and we looked at a few of the Old Testament figures

that the author of Hebrews focuses on.

We looked at Abel,

we talked about what it means to give by faith.

We also looked at Enoch,

we talked about what it means to walk by faith.

We looked at Noah,

we saw what it means to live by faith,

to trust in God and do what God says,

even if it may not make any sense,

even if everybody else is around us,

we wanna be those who have a strong enough faith

to do what God calls us to do.

So those were our Old Testament figures

that we looked at last week from Hebrews 11.

But also every week,

we're gonna look at a more modern example

of someone who lives by faith,

who walks by faith.

And so last week, we talked about George Mueller,

and we talked about him being a man

who really gave everything to serve the Lord,

and particularly in the area of serving orphans.

He started some orphanages

and served thousands of kids in his lifetime,

but he always trusted God with his needs

and never made his needs known to anyone other than God.

So that's a good example of someone,

a little more modern, that walked by faith.

And so tonight we're continuing on in Hebrews 11.

We'll start in verse eight,

but before we do, we'll pray, and then we'll jump in.

God, we come to you, we thank you for this series.

I pray that it would help strengthen our faith, dear Lord,

that we would be men and women who walk by faith

and who live by faith, that we would trust you, dear Lord,

that even when times get tough,

that we wouldn't doubt you,

that we wouldn't just cave in, dear Lord,

but that we would be men and women of faith.

And to be men and women of faith means that we do hold firm,

that we don't give up on you, that we don't doubt you,

but that we trust you even in the most difficult times.

So I hope that our faith will be strengthened

through looking at these biblical figures

and others that we talk about

that have been such great examples of what faith is,

that they would be great examples to motivate us

to be men and women who live by faith.

I pray that you'd hide me behind the cross

as I preach and teach that it would be for your glory.

And I ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, Hebrews chapter 11, verses eight through 10.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

This first section here,

we're going to talk about going by faith.

We're talking about Abraham.

Abraham is a pretty important figure in the Old Testament.

Abraham started in the Ur of the Chaldeans,

which would be Mesopotamia back in those days in that area.

That's kind of where Moses's, excuse me,

Abraham's story starts.

And the Bible says that Abraham and his family go to Haran.

And there God reveals to Abraham this promise

that he's gonna bless him,

that he's gonna take him to a land

that's gonna be his descendants

and that all nations are gonna be blessed through him.

And so Abraham goes from Ur of the Chaldeans up to Haran

and then down into what at that time was Canaan

and made his way into Egypt.

But in this journey, it's when God reveals to Abraham

what's going to take place.

And it says in the scripture

that Abraham believed what God said

and it was credited to him for righteousness.

So here we see in Hebrews 11 verse eight, it says this,

by faith Abraham, when he was called,

obeyed and went to a place

he was going to receive as an inheritance.

He went out not knowing where he was going.

By faith he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise,

living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, co-heirs

of the same promise.

For he was looking forward to the city

that has foundations whose architect and builder is God.

Now, we don't see too much information

about those events here other than Abraham had faith.

What does it say?

When he was called, he obeyed

and went to a place he was going to receive

as an inheritance.

But then listen to what it says.

He went out not knowing where he was going.

Now, I don't know about you guys

but I like to know where I'm going.

I want to know where I'm going,

what's gonna happen when I get there,

what are the arrangements gonna be,

where am I gonna be staying?

Well, I wanna know everything.

How safe is the place?

How close is the closest hospital?

How long will I be there?

I wanna know all kind of information about a place

before I go to a place.

But oftentimes when God wants to use us

and God calls us to serve,

God doesn't give us all the information.

He didn't give Abraham all the information.

He told Abraham to go.

Go to a land that I'm gonna show you,

you just go to this land, you just trust me.

Now that takes a lot of faith

for God to tell us to go somewhere and for us to go.

Now, oftentimes God may call us to go somewhere.

He may call us to go minister to somebody

that's two doors down from us.

And we don't even wanna do that.

That's too scary for us.

And so we sometimes may like to think

that our faith is strong and maybe in some areas it is.

But maybe in other areas,

our faith is not nearly as strong as it should be.

Especially when you look at these examples

that we see in scripture,

that these people really did have to trust God.

Here Abraham was told, go.

And what did Abraham do?

In faith, he went.

And sometimes we need to remember that in our life.

That there may be times that we just really feel

like God telling us to go.

And we may think of a lot of excuses.

Well, God, it's gonna take a long time to get there.

It's gonna be expensive to get there.

I don't know what kind of situation I'm getting into.

I don't know the language of where I'm going

or I'm gonna face difficulties when I get there.

We come up with a lot of reasons,

but there may have been times

and maybe even right now in your life

that you really feel God calling you to something.

That you don't know what God wants you to do.

You don't know how he's gonna use you.

You don't feel qualified for whatever it is,

but there's something in your spirit

that God is speaking to you in your soul

that you feel like God is saying, go.

And so instead of making excuses

as to why we can't go or shouldn't go

or God, you're gonna have to give me more information.

We need to be more like Abraham

and we need to be one who goes by faith.

Now God had great plans for Abraham

and God was going to bless Abraham and his descendants

and all of us and all of the nations of the world

through him if Abraham was going to go when God said go.

What about you and I?

Are there ways that God may want to bless us

and bless those around us

and bless those who will come after us

if we would just do what God calls us to do?

Now it may be scary.

It may take us to places we don't necessarily want to be.

It may put us in situations that are very scary.

It may put us in situations

where we experience a little discomfort,

where we don't get to experience all the luxuries

that we have here in these United States.

But nonetheless, there may be times in our life

that we really feel that God is telling us to go.

And if that's the case,

then we need to be men and women of faith

and we need to be willing and able and ready to go.

Even if we don't understand why God's calling us there,

even if we don't feel like we're the man or woman

for the job.

If God's picked you for the job,

then you're the man or the woman for the job.

And who are we to argue with God?

So we want to be those who like Abraham go by faith.

All right, the next scripture we're gonna look at

as we go on down Hebrews chapter 11,

Hebrews 11:11–12

verses 11 through 12, we're gonna talk about waiting

by faith.

Now we're gonna talk about Sarah here a little bit.

And Abraham too, this idea of waiting by faith

involved both Sarah and Abraham.

And we see in Hebrews 11, verse 11,

Hebrews 11:11

by faith even Sarah herself when she was unable

to have children receive power to conceive offspring,

even though she was past the age,

since she considered that the one who had promised

was faithful.

Therefore from one man, in fact, from one as good as dead,

came offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven

and as innumerable as the grains of sand by the seashore.

Now here we see Sarah looked at and kind of a good life.

And what does it say?

That she had faith that the one who had promised

to give her and Abraham offspring,

that God was able to do what he had promised.

Now, when we go back and read the story

about Sarah and Abraham,

there does appear to be some doubt in Sarah's life.

After all, when she hears this message, she laughs.

And then when God calls her out on it,

she says, oh, I didn't laugh, but she did laugh.

So obviously there was some doubt there,

but what we see here in Hebrews

is that there was some faith there.

And obviously her faith was pretty strong.

Even though there may have been some momentary doubt,

there was faith in her heart that she believed

that God could do what he said he could do.

Now, Sarah and Abraham were very old when all this took place.

They were getting on up there.

They were 90, 100 years old.

They were very old.

You don't have children when you're that old.

Obviously not even in those days.

Now, we go back and look at the scriptures.

We see that people were living a lot longer

back in those days.

But nonetheless, by the time we get to Abraham,

those lifespans have shortened.

And even by the time we get to Abraham and Sarah's age,

that's an old age to have a child

when you start getting on up close to 100.

When Abraham first received this promise,

he was 75 years old.

And so 25 years went by before Abraham

actually received the child of the promise.

And so can you imagine God making such a wonderful promise

and then having to wait and wait and wait?

And maybe sometimes we question God.

Maybe there are times that, like Abraham,

God tells us to go and we joyfully go.

And we think, okay, God's gonna do this great thing.

He's gonna work in this great way.

And then all of a sudden we wait.

And it doesn't really seem like anything's happening.

It may even seem like things are getting worse

than they are better.

And so maybe we begin to question God and say,

well, maybe I need to,

maybe there's something I'm supposed to be doing.

Maybe I need to help God out a little bit.

Well, that's exactly what Sarah and Abraham did.

You may recall the story where Sarah decided,

I'm getting old, I need to have a child.

Oh, here's what I'll do.

I'll tell Abraham to sleep with my servant girl.

And then she'll have a child and then that'll be my child.

But that was not God's plan.

God's plan was that Sarah and Abraham

were going to have their own child.

And indeed they did.

But waiting was the hard part.

And sometimes like Sarah and Abraham,

we don't do so good at waiting, especially now.

You look at our world now.

We have smartphones, everything is so quick.

We got the drive-through window

at the fast food restaurants.

You go to the speaker, you tell them what you want,

you pull around and in 45 seconds,

you've ordered food, you've picked up food,

you're driving down the road, eating your food.

You need to contact somebody, you pick up the phone,

you contact them in a matter of seconds.

Something happens around the world,

you know about it in a matter of minutes.

It does not take long for us to get the things that we want.

Nowadays, there's Amazon distribution centers

all over the world.

You order something that used to take two weeks to get here.

Now it gets here in a day or two.

And so we are really spoiled with modern technology

that we get everything really quickly.

And as a result of that, as a society,

we don't like to wait.

We're not very patient.

We want everything right now.

We want our phone to load right now.

We wanna get our stuff that we want right now.

We don't like to wait on anything.

But oftentimes what we see in scripture

is that God does not act quickly,

at least by human measurements.

Oftentimes God's plans take a long time to unfold,

years and years, maybe even decades to unfold.

So what we have to remember

is that if we're going to trust God,

that we are going to have to wait by faith.

We are going to have to know

that God is always working things together

for the good of those who love him,

that God has a plan for his kingdom,

that God has a plan for souls to be saved,

that God has a plan for you and I,

how he wants to use us to build his kingdom

and to serve him.

And sometimes God's gonna call us

and gonna wanna use us in some ways.

And sometimes we're just going to have to wait on the Lord.

We're going to have to trust the Lord in faith.

And we're gonna have to say,

look, I'm trusting in God.

I have faith in God.

Therefore, I'm not going to rush into anything.

If I feel that God wants to use me,

if I feel that God is calling me,

if I feel like there's something in my life

that I'm praying for,

that is something that maybe is God's will,

well, I'm just gonna wait and I'm just gonna trust him.

And if it is his will, then it will occur.

And we wait by faith.

And at times we will probably fail.

Maybe more times than we'd like to admit.

We'll be like Abraham or we'll be like Sarah

and we want it now.

We want it our way.

We want it the way we think and we want it now.

But God says, no, I'm gonna do it my way, the way I want.

And it very well may be years and years down the road.

So we can learn from Sarah and from Abraham here

that we need to be those who wait by faith.

Now, in the next section of Hebrews,

Hebrews chapter 11, verses 13 through 16,

Hebrews 11:13–16

kind of taking a little bit of a break here

from kind of the way we've been looking at it,

we see another section here

that speaks of some better promises.

So he gives us a list so far of a few people

from the Old Testament.

And then he takes a second to talk about that,

look, these people were waiting for something better

than what they saw.

They were looking past their time.

They were looking to something

that was going to come in the future.

And what they were looking to,

whether they really realized it or understood it

in the way that we do,

is they were looking to Jesus Christ.

Now, how much God had revealed to them

or what they knew at that time, I don't know,

but they knew something

because they were looking forward to something

even bigger than the things that God had promised them.

And in Hebrews 11, verse 13, it says,

Hebrews 11:13

"'These all died in faith

"'without having received the promises.

"'But they saw them from a distance, greeted them,

"'and confessed that they were foreigners

"'and temporary residents on the earth.

"'Now those who say such things make it clear

"'that they are seeking a homeland.

"'If they were thinking about where they came from,

"'they would have had an opportunity to return.

"'But they now desire a better place, a heavenly one.

"'Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God,

"'for he has prepared a city for them.'"

Okay, so these all died by faith,

looking for the promises,

but never really receiving the promises.

Take Abraham, for example.

God said, look, I'm gonna bless you.

Your descendants are gonna be established in this land,

and I'm gonna bless all nations through you.

Well, Abraham never saw that come to fruition

in his lifetime, not in the way that it ultimately would be

when God's people would come back into the promised land

after getting out of Egypt.

And then ultimately in Jesus Christ,

when Jesus Christ would come,

but nonetheless, they still had faith

that God was going to keep his promises.

And so they were looking forward to better things,

not just the earthly land that was going to be given to them,

but it says that they were temporary residents on the earth.

Even these of faith realized that there was something else

that was far better.

Even if God was going to give them a promised land,

even if God was going to bless them,

they understood and recognized that the promises of God

were better than just the earthly things.

Now, the earthly blessings were fantastic for God's people,

and God still blesses us in many ways today,

praise the Lord.

But there are better promises

that come through Jesus Christ.

And even Abraham, even these Old Testament figures,

it said that they looked forward to something better

that was to come.

What does it say at the end of verse 16?

Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God,

for he has prepared a city for them.

So we see this idea earlier in this passage,

this idea of them seeking a homeland.

But the author of Hebrews says,

yeah, they wanted to go home,

but they realized that home was not somewhere in this world.

He says, look, they could have gone back to where

they came from.

If Abraham wanted to go home,

he could have just went back to the Ur of the Chaldeans.

No, they're not looking to go back home in this earth.

They're looking to go to a better homeland

to go home and be with the Lord.

And it says that he has prepared a city for them.

Now, we saw that same language

when we talked about Abraham.

If you want to flip back to that passage

that we first started with,

it says in verse 10, Hebrews 11, verse 10,

Hebrews 11:10

for he was looking forward to the city

that has foundations whose architect is the builder, God.

So Abraham was looking forward to a city,

but not necessarily an earthly city,

a city that's established by God.

He recognized that there was something better

and there was something bigger that was to come.

Much greater and much bigger than anything in this world.

So the author of Hebrews,

he talks about these heroes of faith,

and then he pauses for a second to say,

look, these didn't fully receive and see

and understand everything that God had promised them.

Yes, God had made promises to them,

and they trusted God based on what they saw,

but even what they saw wasn't everything

that God was ultimately gonna give them.

But yet they died in faith.

That is to say they didn't turn from their faith in God

because they didn't understand it

or because God was taking too long.

No, they stood on whatever promises they had,

whatever truth they had,

they stood on those knowing that God would fulfill them

and knowing that ultimately there would be something better

than they could imagine that would come.

Now in the context of Hebrews, this is important.

He's telling his audience this to say,

look, these died in faith.

You need to be like them.

You don't wanna be those who give up on your faith

and die apart from God, those who die in disbelief.

You want to be those who hold to the faith like they did.

Now, the author is writing to people in Hebrews

that are facing persecution in difficult times,

but he's telling them there's better promises for you.

Those that came before you,

they had to go through hard times.

They didn't always understand it,

but they stood firm in the faith,

and therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God

because they stood by him.

And therefore, for you and I,

we need to be those that God would not be ashamed

to call our God, that we would be those who don't give up,

but that we hold on to the faith all the way until the end,

that we would be those who die in the faith.

All right, last section we're gonna talk about tonight,

Hebrews 11, 17 through 19,

we're gonna talk about being tested in faith,

tested in faith.

Now, the only way that we can ever really know

that our faith is indeed faith is to be tested.

That's the bottom line.

We can say all day that we have faith, and maybe we do.

We can say all day, I'll stand for God

if something bad ever happens,

if somebody calls me to stand for God or die,

I'll have faith in God and I'll do it, and maybe we will.

But the only way that our faith can ever be proven

is for it to be tested.

Now, you could be a teacher, and you could teach your kids

all the things that you want them to know,

and you could assume that they know everything.

And you may ask them, are y'all getting this?

And they may all say, oh yeah, we're getting it.

But how do you know?

Well, you test them.

You give them a test.

Maybe they all get 100, but probably not.

Some of them are going to fail.

Why?

Because they don't really know the material.

Maybe they thought they knew it, but they really didn't.

The test is what reveals what is known

and what is not known, what is true and what is not true.

And so the only way that our faith can be discovered

or whether or not it's a true faith or not is to be tested.

And if we go through hard times and we give up on God

and we stop trusting in God,

then our faith was not really faith at all.

And so faith is tested.

And sometimes we go through those tests.

And sometimes, sadly, we fail those tests.

And maybe that's why God allows us

to go through those times, so that we can grow in God.

When we fail, it's an opportunity for us to say,

man, my faith was pretty weak.

I really, God, I thought I was ready to stand for you

and I wasn't.

God, forgive me and help me to be strengthened.

But when we don't fail the test,

when we go through hard times and we don't give up on God

and we trust him all the more,

then we come out our faith as a little stronger.

And so every trial, it proves, okay,

yet we really are who we say we are.

We really are those who trust in God.

And the more we trust in God, the stronger our faith gets.

Now, in Hebrews 11, 17 through 19,

we see this story of Abraham's faith being tested.

In verse 17, it says,

"'By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac.

He received the promises,

and he was offering his unique son.

The one it had been said about,

your seed will be traced through Isaac.

He considered God to be able

even to raise someone from the dead.

And as an illustration, he received him back.'"

Now, this is an interesting story,

and we're not necessarily gonna break this story down

and maybe what all it means and what all it's talking about,

some of the difficulties of it in this study.

But what we are going to talk about

is what it's talking about here in the context.

And that is Abraham's faith was tested.

God tested his faith by calling him to offer up Isaac.

Now, it tells us something here

that it doesn't tell us in Genesis

when this story takes place.

Now, Abraham was fully willing and able and ready

to do what God called him to do.

Now, that takes a lot of faith

if God says, I want you to sacrifice your son.

Now, Abraham, knowing full good and well

that this was the son

that the promise was gonna come through.

So why does it say Abraham was willing to do it?

How did Abraham have faith during this?

Well, verse 19 tells us the answer.

It said he considered God to be able

even to raise someone from the dead.

So Abraham trusted in God so much

that he knew Isaac was gonna be the one

that the promise was gonna come through

and his descendants was gonna come through

that Abraham said, look, whatever God tells me to do,

I'm gonna do it.

Even if that involves killing my son,

God will be able to raise him from the dead.

Now, again, this is a story that really we can talk

and look a lot at the things that go there.

But what we wanna see is,

is that when Abraham was tested in his faith,

even in the most difficult situation,

he was fully willing to trust God

all the way up to the fact of saying,

look, God is able to raise someone from the dead

should he choose to.

Now, this story is certainly a beautiful story

because in a lot of ways,

it's foreshadowing Jesus to his to come.

It's pointing us forward to the fact

that God is going to give his only begotten son,

that God is gonna provide the sacrifice.

In the story of Abraham, God stopped him.

He said, look, don't sacrifice your son.

I'm gonna provide the sacrifice.

Well, that's exactly what God did for us.

God gave his only son who was the sacrifice,

who was the lamb of God.

God took care of all of those things.

And so in the illustration

of what faith looks like for Abraham,

even there it's pointing us forward

to Jesus Christ who is to come.

And that's the important thing about faith.

It's not that we just have faith in anything,

but that we have faith in Jesus Christ.

A lot of people in the world have a lot of faith

in a lot of things.

You're sitting at the red light, your light turned green.

Will you just go?

Why?

You have some faith that the other light is turned red

and that the people aren't gonna hit you.

You may be keeping an eye out to make sure,

but a lot of times you just be bop on down through there

because you have some level of faith and trust

that the light is gonna hold everybody off

and you're gonna be safe.

There are a lot of people that have a lot of faith

in a lot of things,

but a lot of faith in a lot of things

is not what's going to save our soul.

It's our faith in God.

It's our faith in Jesus Christ

that's going to bring about forgiveness of our sins.

That's the type of faith that Abraham had.

That's the type of faith that was tested.

Are we willing to do anything

and everything that God calls us to?

Are we willing to trust God

even in the most difficult situations?

This is the kind of faith that God calls us to.

This is why we read the scriptures.

This is why we talk through series like this

so that we can see these examples of faith

so that when our faith is tested,

that we would be one who would say,

God, I'm gonna serve you.

It's hard, I'm afraid.

I don't understand it,

but God, I'm gonna trust you to do what you call me to do.

And we wanna ask God to help us to pass those tests.

When we fail those tests,

we wanna ask God to forgive us for our failures

and help us to be strengthened

so that our faith can be like that of Abraham

and these other heroes of faith

that we see in Hebrews 11.

So those are the ones that we're gonna look at tonight

from Hebrews 11.

Now we're gonna take a second

and we're gonna look at a more modern example

of a hero of faith.

That is a guy by the name of Hudson Taylor.

Now, has anybody in here ever heard of Hudson Taylor?

Okay, nobody.

Well, he's an interesting guy

and you need to look him up and read about him.

We're only gonna briefly talk about him tonight,

but you may wanna give him a look

and learn more about him this week.

But Hudson Taylor was a missionary from Great Britain.

But to really understand kind of the situation,

you need to understand what was going on

in the world at this time.

Now this was in the early to mid 1800s

when all of these things were taking place.

Now Hudson Taylor was from Great Britain

and he was a missionary to China.

But there was a lot going on

between Great Britain and China at the time.

They were trading with one another

because Great Britain wanted all of the things

that China had.

Long story short, I'm really summarizing this here.

Ultimately what happened is the thing

that Great Britain was going to trade with China

was going to be opium.

And so they started getting this opium from India,

which was a lot closer to China

and a lot easier for them to get

and just to take on over to China

to trade for whatever it was they were going to get.

And so Great Britain began to pour tons of opium into China.

Well, you can imagine what happened.

The Chinese became hooked on opium

and this was not a good situation for the Chinese.

All of its citizens becoming hooked on opium

and Great Britain using that to their advantage to trade

and to get all of these great materials

and things from China.

And so this led to a war.

There were a couple of these wars in the 1800s.

They were called the opium wars.

And the government of China really was fighting

against Great Britain and ultimately was able

to win that battle, but there was a lot of damage

that had been done to the Chinese

because of what Great Britain had done

in pouring all of this opium into the country.

So you have Hudson Taylor,

who was a man from Great Britain,

who decided he was going to go into China

to be a missionary and to tell them about Jesus.

So you can see why this was a problem.

The Chinese did not like the people of Great Britain.

So Hudson Taylor was not really that well received.

There was a lot of tension between these two countries.

Nonetheless, Hudson Taylor was persistent in serving God.

And so he realized real quickly

that the Chinese were not paying him any attention

because he was dressed like a man from Great Britain.

He dressed like a man, he looked like a man.

And so that was an instant turnoff for the Chinese.

And so Hudson Taylor decided to dress like the people

he was ministering to.

He began to dress in Chinese clothing.

He began to put his hair up like a Chinese man would,

dial Osbert black so that he would look more

like the people he was trying to minister to.

And so Hudson Taylor began to minister to the Chinese.

Thousands and thousands of Chinese

heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And many of them put their faith in Jesus Christ.

Now, during this time, in the years

that Hudson Taylor was serving in China,

he lost a child, he lost a wife.

It was a difficult time for him.

But nonetheless, he loved the Chinese people

and he was faithful to serve the Lord.

Even in the midst of adversity,

he is a good example of one who went

where God called him to go.

Even when it was a dangerous place, a dangerous time,

he could have said, look, God, those people hate us.

I'm not going into China anywhere else.

But that's not where his heart was.

That's not where he felt that God was calling him to go,

was anywhere else.

He felt God called him to China.

That's where the need was.

That's where his heart was.

And so he's a good example of one who went by faith.

He's a good example of one who all of that time,

year after year, he waited.

He continued to do the Lord's work.

He didn't give up in the face of opposition.

He didn't give up even when it was difficult

and there was death of people he loved.

Hudson Taylor continued to serve God

and to do the work that God called him to do.

He's a good example of what it looks like to serve by faith.

We see another good example that most of you in the church,

if not all of you are familiar with,

maybe some listening online are not familiar with,

but there's a group that we've been helping support

and praying for for quite a few years now, 10 or 12 years.

And the name of that group is the Free Burma Rangers.

If you've never heard of them, look them up.

Now, the situation in Burma may not be well known

to a lot of people in this country,

even though this situation has been going on for decades now.

It's been going on forever.

But what happens is there's a group of people in Burma

that the government says,

these people are not people of Burma,

therefore they can't stay here.

And so they're trying to run them out of the country

and they run them to Thailand

or whatever other countries are around.

And they say, well, these people are not here.

They're Burmese, they need to go back to Burma.

And so there's a whole group of people

that really have nowhere to call home.

They're being shifted back and forth.

And as a result of the government of Burma

not recognizing them as citizens,

they're constantly attacking these people.

The Burma Army is constantly attacking these folks.

They'll set up a village,

they'll try to set up buildings and grow crops.

And no sooner than they get established,

they are just constantly bombed and shot

and attacked by the Burma Army.

This has been going on for decades.

Now, back to the Free Burma Rangers.

Well, there's a guy by the name of David Eubank

who knew about this situation

and who felt like that God wanted him to go there

to serve those people.

And I think it was about 30 years ago when he first went,

he went there and he began to serve the people of Burma.

Now, he was a former Army Ranger.

So this guy's pretty tough.

He's knowledgeable in these types of situations.

He goes to Burma, he begins to minister

and to serve those people.

And after he goes, he begins to get other people

that get involved more and more.

And their group is formed,

it's called the Free Burma Rangers.

And what they do is they go into the jungles,

they find these people who have been blown to smithereens,

who are on the run, who are fleeing from their life.

And they try to help them.

They try to get them the things that they need.

And they try to serve them as best they can.

They, of course, they can see the love of God

through the acts that David and the others

who were part of the Free Burma Rangers have.

And they've been doing this for years.

They've become so good at this in these war zone areas

and what they do, that they've actually been sent

to other areas where there's conflict and war,

where there are people who are displaced.

And they go right in the middle of the war zone.

They take water, they go in, they try to rescue folks.

They even love on the enemies,

the ones that are trying to blow them up.

I mean, there's beautiful stories

of how they're serving those who were in need

and even trying to serve those who were the enemies

of those who were in need.

So if you haven't ever heard of the Free Burma Rangers,

you can look them up online.

And there's even a documentary movie that came out,

I don't know, probably two or three years ago.

It's worth a watch.

But this is another example,

talking about an example of go,

of going to a place that's scary,

that's on the other side of the world,

that's gonna be difficult to go there

and to live there and to serve there.

Yet David Eubank is a great example

of one who was a man of faith and who went by faith.

And these are just two more modern examples

with Hudson Taylor and David Eubank.

But nonetheless, there are still men and women of faith

in our world today.

We read about these guys that are from hundreds of years ago,

thousands of years ago.

And yes, these are great men and women of faith

in scripture.

But even today, we still see it.

You even probably know some people in your life

that are around you that are just a great man

or a woman of faith.

And that's what we need to strive to be,

are men and women of faith.

That we would be those that it could be said of us

that we have been faithful to serve God

and what he's called us to.

Not that we want any recognition.

It's not that we want somebody to say our name

in a faith series 30 years from now.

That's not what we want.

We just wanna be faithful to God and let God do the work.

And so we've seen some good examples tonight in scripture

and some more modern examples of how God shows us

what it means to go by faith and to wait by faith

and even to be tested by faith.

That we would be those who would pass the test,

that we would be those who would serve God

and grow in our faith.

Let's pray.

God, we thank you for your words.

I pray that you would help us to really examine our lives.

God, I know we like to think that our faith is strong

and maybe it is dear Lord.

Maybe for some of us, our faith is really strong.

Maybe in some areas it's strong

and other areas it's weak.

God, maybe we would be ready to stand for you tonight

whatever may come our way.

Or God, maybe the truth is if we were really tested,

maybe we wouldn't be as strong as we think we are.

But I pray that we would be,

that you would strengthen our faith,

that we would be those, God, that trust you,

that go where you call us to go,

that wait on you, dear Lord,

to do the works that you want to do through us.

And I pray, dear Lord, that we would be those

that would pass the test,

that whatever ways that our faith may be tested,

that we would never doubt you,

but that we would always trust you,

that we would follow these examples from Hebrews,

we would follow these modern examples that we've looked at

and the men and women around us

that we know in our daily lives

that have lived a strong faith in you,

God, that we would be those to follow those examples,

that we would be men and women of faith tonight.

And I ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.