A Transformational Conversation about Faith and Trust | Losing My Religion (Part 5) | Stephen Feith

If it's your first time with us and you're watching online, Ron welcome and you're welcome you and say thanks for spending a little bit of your week with us.

We are in this series called losing my religion. We're going through the middle part of the book and the New Testament called Hebrews. And what we're learning together in this series is how following Jesus releases you and I from religious obligations. Each week, we've been talking about how we are challenged to lose our religion so that we can experience fuller and better life through a relationship with God. It seems like the author of Hebrews is saying that back in the past, you had the system of religion, but now in the present, and in the future, you have personal relationship. And so today, we're going to chapter six, verse 13, if you want to follow along in your own Bibles are on the smartphones, go ahead. And if you haven't been with us, and this is your first Sunday, don't worry about the past few weeks today will still make sense to you. But here's a recap of where we have been. About a month ago, four weeks ago, when we started this series, we did two weeks where we were reading and discussing how Jesus is the new, better priest, which to those of us in 2021 doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If you come to a non denominational church like Madison, you might actually think when you hear the word priest, you think of the Catholic Church and how they have priests and how those are kind of their pastors over the congregation's. But what the author of Hebrews is talking about goes back to Leviticus how there is a high priest, there's somebody who has been anointed and appointed to represent the people to God to be able to go into the place and experience God. And this high priest was the only one at the time who could experience God. And they went and represented the community of God to people knows, you know, that could be a good thing. Like, hey, God, we're really going while out there, the community is high five, and it could be a bad thing. Sometimes God was not happy with the community and told the priest, I'm not happy with the community. And this is what's going to happen because I'm not happy. But because Jesus comes he kind of tears down this old system of priesthood and, and this temples kind of lifestyle that we needed. And Jesus says, instead of representing new to God, I'm representing God to you. And instead of only one of you being able to experience me, now any of you can experience me. And that's kind of right there.

We're talking about the difference between a religious system and a relationship with Christ. And then the last two weeks, we take a detour. And if you live in Wisconsin, you know, we have two seasons, right? We have winter and road construction. And so you're all very familiar with detours where the road you want to take the straightest or most effective, the quickest route to your location, all of a sudden you see signs, those horrible little orange arrows, telling you that there's going to be a detour and part of you dies a little bit, as you're taking this detour you and everyone else. And that's what happened the last couple of weeks, we had a detour in the book of Hebrews, because the author has been talking about this new priests, better priests than this new system and how we're going to do this, but then they go off on a detour, they confront and warn us, not just us, but anyone who reads Hebrews and even an original audience 2000 years ago, about their spiritual growth, specifically, the lack of spiritual growth. He compares them to babies. And he warns them that if they don't begin to grow spiritually, if they don't begin to mature and step into the life that God has for them, the warning is that eventually they could drift to the point where they could reject God and reject their salvation. And what the emphasis had been the last two weeks and is on us as people. Because up to this point, in Hebrews, we've been talking a lot about Jesus, who Jesus is, what Jesus did, what his life means, what his death means, what his resurrection means, and how you and I today can experience God and what that means for us. But in this detour, the author of Hebrews says, By want to make sure you know, this isn't about saying a nice prayer, being confirmed in the church, being baptized, and then bada bing bada boom, see it twice a year at Easter and Christmas. And, you know, that's Christianity.

Quite the opposite. The author of Hebrews is saying, that's not it at all. If that's what you think it is, you've missed the point. Jesus has done all of this disgrace, love and forgiveness comes to you absolutely free. But your response then, and our response should be to follow him. And following him requires us to grow and to mature. And so we went on that detour, we have choice people, we have choice.

Even after you accept Jesus, you still have choices. And those choices can take us closer to God or further to God. But complacency is not an option.

And this all brings us to the second reverses we're studying this week. So whereas the past couple of weeks has been all about us and and our responsibility that can lead you and I to begin to feel like maybe salvation is a little fragile. Maybe it's like a really nice Christmas ornament you want to have two hands on, and then you don't want to drop or a glass box, a giant Lego sculpture that took hours to make, and you put it up somewhere where it's going to be protected. And all of a sudden, you begin to think that Wait, is my salvation? Is my relationship with God like that? Is it fragile? Could it get bumped off the wall fall and hit and smash and go everywhere and, and I have to rebuild it off to start back from day one. And today, the author is here to reassure us that no, that is not the case. When we read verse by verse, and word by word like we do in these types of series, it's easy to get locked in one part of the entire chapter, one part of the entire chapter. And we have to be reminded that we're reading a book. So it's not just the sentence, it's the paragraph. And it's not just the paragraph, it's the chapter. And it's not just the chapter, it's the book in the New Testament.

It's not just what this book in the New Testament, it's the entire New Testament. And so when we come in, we read the text, we have to consider that.

When we come in for a close look, that's okay, let's do that. But we have to back out sometimes, and that's what the author of Hebrews is going to do. Now you and I have security because God promises that we have security, God promises you and I that we have security. And in today's verses, we're told that the reason we have security is because God is eternal.

Therefore, God will always be here to fulfill His promises. So you might live and die over the course of one of God's promises to someone somewhere, but God is eternal, the promises that he made yesterday, he will be around to eventually fulfill.

The other thing that we learned is that God has unlimited power, he is God, and therefore there's nothing too big for him to do.

So if God makes a promise, and we say, Wow, that's a big promise, I don't know if that could happen is an issue with your faith, not God's power, because God has the power to do anything he promises. Finally, we also learned that God's not a liar.

So if God makes a promise, not only does he have the power to do it, not only is eternal, and will have the time to do it, but God is not a liar, and that these things are never more relevant than when it comes to our salvation. So let's read Hebrews six, beginning with chapter, Hebrews six, beginning with first 13, the author writes, for example, there was God's promise to Abraham. And since there was no one greater to swear by, God took an oath in his own name, saying, I will certainly bless you, and I will multiply your descendants beyond number. Then Abraham waited patiently, and he received what God had promised them. Now remember that this letter, this book was read to a Jewish audience, and they would have had a lot of regard for people like Moses, and like Abraham. As a matter of fact, to them, there was not a better example, and all of the Old Testament and all of history and all of their culture for perseverance, then Abraham, if you were going to talk about somebody who stuck with it, and was steadfast. And if you are Jewish in the first century, you would most definitely bring up Abraham. And if you're unfamiliar with the story, I'll just recap this for you. Abraham lived 1000s of years before this letter to the Hebrews was written, Abraham was 70 years old. When God comes to him and says, Abraham, I want you to go to a place I will tell you at a later date, that itself can be an entire teaching series. But God says, Abraham, I want you to go, I'll tell you when you get there, where you're heading, but you got to leave everything you've ever known behind. Okay? Now, most of you in the room, and watching online are probably not 70 years old.

But I want you to imagine you are 70 or more, you're seven years old. And God says to you, how want you to go, we're going to go somewhere you've never gone before. And you say, well, where are we going God and God says, I'll tell you when you get there. And we'd be like, you lost me. Because at 70 we're thinking about our 401k we're thinking about a retirement, we're thinking about our senior living, we're thinking if you're me playing a lot of golf, and finally not having to work a lot. Like we're thinking about all of these things. I forgot to tap you and say, the greatest journey the best adventure of your life is just about to begin and if you'll take this For a lot of us, I think we would say, you know, I'm good. Abraham doesn't. Abraham says, okay, that's okay God, yep. All do that. Abraham doesn't wait just one or two years, he doesn't wait five or 10 years. He doesn't wait 20 years. But Abraham waits about 30 years for God to fulfill his promise to him. Can you imagine being 70 years old, having the faith to step out and obey God, and then having to wait another 30 years for God to come through on his promise, some of you aren't even 30 years old. And that's how long Abraham waited for one promise of God to come through.

But Abraham finally does he gets this son, this was a God's promise, I will bless the world through your descendants Abraham's 100 years old, he has a son. And then 15 years later, God comes to Abraham, and God says, Abraham, I want you to sacrifice your son to me. I want you to prove your love and loyalty to me, by giving me Isaac. So Abraham was seven years old, God says go God, Abraham goals, waits another 30 years for the promise, God finally answers the promise at 100 years old. And then 50 short years later, half the time Abraham waited for God to answer the promise. God says, I think I want Isaac back. Abraham has another choice. You can say No, that's okay. Not gonna do it.

Not gonna do it. Abraham faithful, perseveres, trusting God house faith takes Isaac to the place where he's supposed to sacrifice them. And God at the last moment, after Abraham has already tied up Isaac and is ready to sacrifice him. God says, whoa, whoa, whoa, there, I see you will be faithful. Now on to your son. And here's a ram to offer me instead.

And we read actually, in Genesis that the reason that Abraham did this wasn't because he didn't love his son. But we actually read that Abraham thought he believed that if he killed Isaac, God would bring him back from the dead. So even in this great test, Abraham's like, you know, if I do this, I believe that God is going to bring him back from the dead. Instead, Isaac just has some major PTSD, and will never ever go camping with his dad, ever again, is how the story goes. But when we, what we find out is then through Isaac, we have this great generation and generation after generation in which people identify as being a son, or a daughter of Abraham, and God came through so when the author of Hebrews is talking about Abraham and the promise, he's saying, Don't you forget that if God has made a promise, God will come through, whether that's 70 years, 30 years, 15 years, whether it makes sense to you whether it doesn't make sense to you whether or not he tells you how the miracle is going to happen, or he just says, Go and I'll tell you when you get there, they says, you can trust God when he makes a promise. Our job, then, is to persevere. Our job is to be faithful and to trust in Him. We keep reading in verse 16. Now when people take an oath, they call on someone greater than themselves to hold it. Without a question that oath is binding. God also bound himself with an oath so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind. So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchanging, because it is impossible for God to lie.

Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. The author is saying that when you and I make an oath, we often swear on something or someone else. This is kind of like when someone says, I swear on my mama's grave, I'm not lying to you. It's like, I'm serious, serious. I'm not even swearing, like I promise you, I'm saying, I promise you, my kids, I promise you on my mom, like, I'm so serious. And what the author tells us is that there's no one greater than God, sewing, God swears and makes an oath, it's by his own name, and that there's no greater name out there. And so when God makes an oath, when God makes a promise, we can have faith in it because God is never changing. God doesn't wake up and have a bad day. God doesn't wake up and say, you know, you finally did it. This the last time that I'm going to trust you, this is the last time God is not changing.

His character is unchanging. He will always love forgive and show us grace. He is unchanging and his character, he is unchanging in his purpose. And this is encouraging to us as an audience that maybe God made a promise to you a long time ago and you knew it, you felt that and you're still waiting on God to come it through with that promise. And you might be wondering as I did, God, where are you and God Why aren't you answering my prayers? Why does it always seem like the bad guys will God. And when we get into that mindset, we have to remember that God is good. And God isn't changing. And therefore, no matter how dark and bad, it seems out there or in here, that's remember that our perspective may not be the reality. And oftentimes, we believe that our perspective is the reality. But I'm here to say, and the author of Hebrews say, that may not be true, no matter what you're looking at the situation and the circumstances, you change, and you change your mind, and you wake up and have bad days you wake up, and you don't feel good, but God doesn't. And so it's always important to remember that when we're looking at a situation, this is what I see. But what does God See? And what is God doing? Then the author continues, verse 19, this hope, the hope that we have is strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls, it leads us through the curtain into God's inner sanctuary. Jesus has already gone in there for us, he has become our eternal High Priest, and the order of Melchizedek. Again, Melchizedek comes up, we are going to eventually talk about him, not today. But we're told that we have this hope, this promise that we have about our salvation, and our security to be saved, is strong, and it's trustworthy. And it's an anchor for our soul. And I don't know about you guys, I have a good feeling about some of you guys don't maybe not our online audience, but doesn't your soul sometimes just feel whipped around by what life gives you by the storms of life, and your soul just feels like it's up, and it's really great. And then it's down one day, and then it's over here. And then sometimes you're like, I don't even know if I have a soul.

And the author viewer says, because of God's promises, and because of the salvation that has been promised to you, rest easy. You have an anchor for your soul. No matter how hard the wind blows, your soul is anchored down to the one that we can trust and and when our souls are anchored down, the author Vbar says, we experience God we go to a place that Jesus has opened the door for us and invites us into Jesus has already gone there for us. So for you and I today, what do we do with all of this information?

Well, to lose our religion means that we need to put our trust in God alone. Because if we don't, our souls will be ripped all over the place. If we don't, we'll believe that only our perspective is absolutely reality. And without putting our trust in God will drift will walk away and in our society in the United States, but I think it's fair to say all Western societies, and I think in a lot of other societies as well, we are driven mostly as human beings by security. And in the western United States, we have things like insurance for unforeseen accidents or tragedies, you can get insurance for almost anything identity theft, your car, your house, said there are laws that require you to have certain kinds of insurance. And we do that for security for the accidents and the tragedies, many of us look at our bank account, we look at that bottom line, we look at the balance sheets of our businesses or organizations to assure us that we are okay. And I know that because I fall into that same trap, too. When I see that at the church, our balance sheets are up, I'm thinking, hey, life is good. We're doing a good job of Madison church, like we can pay our bills, we can keep doing ministry. And when it goes down, I think oh my gosh, there's our security is gone.

And I have to remind myself, even as the pastor of a church, he's looking over church finances. I'm like, you know what? No, my faith isn't in the balance sheet number. It's in God, it's in God. But that's what we do. We look at our bank accounts to assure us that we're going to be okay. Life is absolutely fragile. And we try to do our best to pretend that it's not, we do our best to pretend that life isn't fragile.

So we've tried to save a bunch of money or we spend a bunch of money, we have a bunch of insurance. And yet all of those things could become meaningless.

And just the moment you could get sick this week and go into the hospital and find out you're terminally ill. And then all sudden the number in your bank account won't matter how much insurance you have doesn't matter. Your business could fail could be a moral failure. You could be involved in a bad accident that leaves you disabled. These are just a few example of things that have happened and happened to people and will continue to happen to people in which case it reminds us that not only is life fragile, but there's there's no amount of security that we can have in this world that will eliminate all danger from us.

I've said it a lot to people we've talked about when we're talking about COVID. And the pandemic, I say, I think we should do everything in our power to hide from COVID. So we wear masks, we get vaccinated, I've said, you know, we take precautions with social distancing, we stay home, when we don't feel good, we listen to medical experts, as but sometimes COVID will still find us anyway. That doesn't mean we don't try, right. And what I'm telling you right now is, don't cancel your insurance policies.

Don't leave here and say, Well, I don't need insurance anymore, because it's not going to help.

I'm not saying that I'm not saying go on a spending spree and donate all of your money that's in your savings account, or your 401k, or mutual trust funds, or whatever you have going on. I'm not saying that.

But I'm saying that if you're putting your hope into those things, you will be disappointed, you will be discouraged. And those things will cause you to drift. We need to put our trust in God. When we put our trust into an academic degree, a job or a promotion, a certain amount of salary that we get paid every year or bank account, our spouse, our partners, our kids, our health, our well being when we put our trust into those things, you're setting yourself up from day one, to fail. Because in the world with those things are not our anchor, we need to trust God alone. And when we do that, perseverance becomes very relevant. Because persevering is going to be challenging.

But I've been coming to the realization over the course of my entire life, that perseverance doesn't necessarily have anything to do with winning. It really depends on what you consider success. And I'm a person that I like winning. And so when I think of persevering, I think eventually, like an athlete or team that works hard and you lose and you get injured and you battle back and then eventually you get the medal, you get the trophy, you get the honor, you're the Comeback Player of the Year, and you get it and that's what that's my version of persevering. But I've been challenged and studying for this talk that we're having the persevering may mean, you get injured, you fight back, you battle you do everything you're supposed to. And in the end, you still don't get the medal, the trophy. The honor CNR culture, perseverance says that you're going to stick it out until you win. A biblical perseverance doesn't promise that biblical perseverance is about something else. And nobody knew that better than perhaps the brother of Jesus, James who writes, consider it a sheer gift. My friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides, you know that under pressure, your faith, life is forced into the open, and it shows your true colors. If you're taking notes, underline that, you know that under pressure, your faith, life is forced out into the open, and it shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. let it do its work.

So you become mature, and while developed, not deficient in any way under pressure under stress.

When things get hard. The author James, he says, our true spiritual selves come out and for a lot of us, that's not good. Because when a lot of us when we go into trials, and we're tempted, and we're challenged, and we're going through difficulties, if not our best self that comes out is it.

It's not like I was a lousy person. And then all of a sudden, my day got really bad and I became a great person in just a moment. Often times we can put on a face a smile, we can come to church, we can come to small group, we can act like everything is okay with my marriage with my family with my job. But when things get tough, all of a sudden those true colors come out. And they weren't great. That's not what James wants for you. That's not what the author of Hebrews wants for you. That's not what God wants for you. When we're talking about persevering, we're talking about every day when you're going through tough times, sticking it out, why not to win, not for the trophy, not for the metal, for your character, for your spirituality. That's what James says, is a result of hanging in there and persevering. We want to be mature. We want to grow spiritually. And James is telling us that how that happens is through trials and temptations. That when we grow closer to God that is actually the measure of success. And success when it comes to our faith has everything to do with who we are becoming. And this should honestly give us hope.

Again, back to James who writes, anyone who meets a testing challenge head on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate for such persons loyally in love with God. The reward is life and more life. If you and I persevere like Abraham did it like the author of Hebrews is telling us we should. God rewards you with life, and more life. You see, your salvation isn't a glass box. It's not flimsy. And even if you don't get the new job, the new car, the new house, even if you don't get your happily ever after, even if you don't get whatever it is, fill in the blank dream, I really, really want that. We do not lose hope in the God that we serve because our hope is not in worldly things. Our hope is in the eternal God. We are not steadfast so that God will owe us one. We are steadfast because he has already promised us one.

Where do you need to persevere in your life? Where do you feel like giving up? Where do you feel like throwing in the towel?

Where in your life? Are there unmet expectations? Your family, career job, school, friends, church? What will you do? Will you give up because your perspective is what you're trusting in where you keep going? or something else.

Winston Churchill is credited for saying success is the ability to move from one failure to another without the loss of enthusiasm. And I love this quote for many reasons, but first reason is because it places the focus of success really being on the journey and not the end, ending up the finish line. Success is about the journey. Next that addresses that failure is not just a part of life, but failure as a part of success. For us to have success we have to fail. And finally last month, Uzi Azzam is often the cost of not succeeding, and we have to redeem that we have to keep our enthusiasm. So you failed that test. You failed that course.

You were passed up for the promotion again, you lost your temper with your family, whatever it might be easy, it's easy to become cynical, pessimistic, and to complain about everything to find what was wrong and every situation including the really good ones, and when we lose our enthusiasm, we get it replaced with a bad attitude. You might even say it's an enthusiastically bad attitude. And this is not the way that followers of Jesus are to respond at all to loss. We are to consider trials and temptations a good thing, because if we do our part, God will do his part and the reward will be far greater than anything else. anyone in this world can offer.