Faith

I've never been through such a week and such a day in all my life, and I'm not going to preach tonight. I'm going to read some scriptures and give you a little thought or two, and we'll have our business meeting. The preacher is up. One of my preacher friends called me this week, said, heard you sing on TV last Sunday night. Said, did you get any money? I said, well, not much, but I did get an offer for 400 a week to sing at the Blue Goose Lounge. I don't know who said, go down to First Baptist, you never know what's going to happen next. Next Sunday night, Gerald Ray is going to preach. Now, how about that? I don't want you to feel too bad about not hearing a sermon tonight. I'll tell you the truth. I am not ready to preach. I'm just not ready to preach, and I'm not going to try to put on you that I am and just go through some halfway something, because I've just about expended all I've got today. But I want to encourage you by telling you some previews of coming attractions. Are you ready for this? Next Sunday morning, I will preach on As the Angels of God. Do you ever hear a sermon on the angels of God? Well, I can't wait to hear that. That's got to be good. Next Sunday night, I'm going to preach on the secret of happiness. The morning of the 27th, what think ye of Christ? I've been preparing that for a long time. A week from Sunday night, two weeks from the night, how to be great. Jesus tells that in the 22nd chapter. So that's what's coming. I want you to look with me for a moment at a couple of passages of scripture, and we'll have a different kind of service, just praise and fellowship and let the word speak to our hearts. It won't take much interpretation. And then maybe later, Gerald, we can sing a couple of extra choruses, and I won't have an invitation either tonight. I don't know how many people joined the church this morning. I think there were seven or eight or ten on profession of faith and numbers of families. My boy, Carlos Morris has a hobby. He counts the choir every Sunday. He's been doing that for 40 years. And you can tell you how many have always in the choir. My boy, Tony, has a hobby. He counts the additions. He said there are 33 up here this morning, Daddy, or 32. And that was a wonderful, wonderful thing. I think I have never ever in 22 years in the Lord's service experienced as a great blessing as I did from 11 until 1 today. And I know you're rejoicing with me. Hebrews, please. Turn to the book of Hebrews. Now, they can't find Hebrews. Just go to Philemon and turn right. It's right there. Chapter 11. I'll talk to you about faith for a minute. Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Our religion is called the Christian faith. Faith always comes to the end of the diving board and says, I think so. I hope so. To the best of my ability, I believe so. Here goes and jumps. It always trusts God. Why does it do it? Because it has an image in its mind that is as real as the actual, physical, tangible seeing with the eye of the real thing. It has a hope and a dream that it believes is as good as done in the mind of God. Jesus was slain from the foundation of the world before the first sinner cried out, I have sinned. What shall I do? God had already crucified his own son in his own mind. It was done. And if you can hook in to faith, to a dynamic of believing God to do anything, then God puts all of the powers of his great granary barn of heaven to work, to arrange the circumstances of your life to bring to fruition that which you hope for and believe. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it, the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts. And yet, and by it he being dead, yet speaketh. By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and was not found because God had translated him. For before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please him. For he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for inheritance, obeyed and he went out, not knowing whether he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as God, as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable. That's what Abraham's seed is. That's how many they are. These all died in faith, not having received the promise. That literally means not yet having seen it, but having in their mind, that is, seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed them. They acknowledged that it was as good as done, that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Verse 17, By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac. And he that received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said that in Isaac shall thy seed be called. God had promised him, I'm going to do what I promised to do to you through your son Isaac. And then God said, Go to Mount Moriah and slay Isaac. Accounting that God was able to raise him up, he believed he would give him a resurrection. Even from the dead, from whence also he received him, in a figure, or so to speak. By faith then, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph, and worshipped, leaning up on the top of his staff. By faith, Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel and commanded God concerning his bones. By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents because they saw he was a proper child and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. Through faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them. By faith they passed through the Red Sea, they didn't die in it, they passed through it, as by dry land which the Egyptians, as saying to do, were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they were compassed about seven days. By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace. And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and of Samson and of Jephthah, of David also and Samuel, and of the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again, and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder. These are the saints of God. They were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise. God, having provided some better thing for us, they without us should not be made perfect or complete. You see, what they did is not finished. There's something we have to do. It's not complete yet. Wherefore, seeing we, modern day Christians, we, 74 patriarchs of the faith, are encompassed about with a great, so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Looking at the right hand of God, of the throne of God. Genesis chapter 22. Let's look for a moment at just one of these men of faith. And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt. That word doesn't mean induce to evil. It means test and try. Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham. And Abraham said, Behold, here I am. And God, he said, Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah. And that same mountain is Mount Calvary today. And offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains, which I will tell thee of. And without a word of dispute or question, Abraham rose up early in the morning and saddled his ass and took two of his young men with him. And Isaac, his son, and clave cut the wood for the burnt offering and rose up and went into the place of which God had told him. And then on the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it upon Isaac, his son. And he took fire in his hand and a knife, and they both went, both of them together. And Isaac spake unto Abraham, his father, and said, My father. And he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold, father. He is saying, The fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. So they went both of them together. And they came to the place which God had told him of, and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his son, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. and he said, here am I, and he said, lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him, for I know that thou fearest, that means trust of God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns, and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah -Jirai, as it is said to this day in the mount of the Lord, it shall be seen. We are heirs of the promise of Abraham, of spiritual prosperity and physical blessing. And God said to Abraham, I am going to do that for you through your seed, Isaac. And he was the son of promise, not born until after he and Sarah were too old to have children, but they continued to believe God. But if he was to be the father of the faith, his faith would have to be tested and tested again. And I don't believe the First Baptist Church has seen her last critical hour. There will be plenty of them in the next 50 years. There will be some more all -night prayer meetings, some agony and some soul -searching and the call to the ultimate commitment, a lot of more times. And God said to Abraham, I promised through this son to bless the world with millions of sons seed after you. And Abraham, I want you to take some wood and some fire and some sticks and Abraham and go and Isaac and go to the top of Mount Moriah and kill him and burn up his body. Now that just doesn't make any kind of sense. Abraham trusted God. He went to the mountain. He raised the sword to slay his son because he believed God. And when he started to thrust it in, God said, wait a minute, I just wanted to know if you really believe me. And he believed him. I want you to go back and look at verse number five again. And Abraham said unto his young men, abide ye here with the ass, with the donkey, and I'll be back in a few minutes. No, no. Did you see it? He said, I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again unto you. He said, we're both coming back. He didn't know how and he didn't have to know how. His was to provide the faith. God's was to provide the offering. He provided the faith. God provided the offering. Well, I ask you to change your whole lifestyle this morning and said that our father owns all the wealth in the world to come. He wants it. And this, he wants it all in circulation. It all belongs to me as his child. The secret to getting it in circulation is giving it. And that we give not from a reason perspective of our obvious resources, but of a revelation from his actual resources. I ask you to do that. And we receive most of our offerings through the Sunday school, about 15, sometimes 12, sometimes more regularly, 16 or $18 ,000 a week for our church's ministries. And about $200 in the plates on Sunday morning. But this Sunday morning, you put in $21 ,000. My phone's been ringing. God's already at work. And $41 ,000 additional dollars in pledges has been called in. And we haven't even given it to our biggest TV audience, which is coming on the air in just a few minutes. And already $916 ,000 has been pledged. And I believe, if I believe anything in the world, it'll be a million by Wednesday. And we're going to come to a special call business session at this time. and I want to bring you up to date and try to tell you where we are and answer all of the questions possible that I could in advance and explain it in perspective. Now, this is not legal talk. Legally speaking, it's a layman to other laymen, and if I can understand it, I'll try to explain it in words, in terms that you can understand it. Our deacons have voted on a secret ballot to recommend to the church that we enter into a contract with a spa -glass construction company and that construction begin in the month of November. The contract will call for 600 days, which means just about smack dab on the 4th of July, 1976. We can be dedicating that building, and you talk about some fireworks. You talk about a church picnic. I know one firecracker that'll go off that day for sure. It's just going to explode all over. Now, let me explain to you what this is all about. By leaving out the chapel, the prayer tower and the family center, and we have not bid yet on a parking lot or shrubbery, but I know from a couple of sources that that's going to come rather reasonably for us. We have gotten down to the essentials, the finest education building, which will hold 2 ,000 to 22 or 300 in Sunday school, an auditorium that seats 3 ,400, room for chairs around the back for about 300 more, and 300 in the choir, and you can put 4 ,000 folks in it, and 30 offices, and a kitchen, and a dining hall. And we have had to make some other changes. None of them are critical. There are changes of this type. Instead of indoor -outdoor carpet throughout the building, it will only be in the auditorium, in the nurseries, and in the hallways. The rest will be vinyl. Instead of three coats of paint, there will only be two. Instead of wall -hanging water coolers, they will be seated on the floor. So, unimportant relatively, things like that. There is nothing that the church needs that cannot be added in later, through the years as God provides. Now, we received, through the personal negotiations of a very special financing committee, subcommittee of our building committee, in cooperation with our church finance committee, a commitment for Gibraltar Savings and Loan for eight and a half million dollars. Now, we've already approved that. That's water under the bridge. That was several months ago. You did that unanimously one Sunday night, as I recall. We received, through the personal negotiations of a very special financing committee, subcommittee of our building committee, in cooperation with our church finance committee, a commitment for Gibraltar Savings and Loan for eight and a half million dollars. Now, we've already approved that. That's water under the bridge. That was several months ago. You did that unanimously one Sunday night, as I recall. That provides for about a million and a half for the land, six million dollars for a building, and about a million dollars to provide a cushion for as much as needed, if necessary, up to all of the interim interest, such that it will not be necessary during the two years for the church to pay, from its own budget, any principal or interest. Then, the first three years we're in the building, interest only, and we won't even start paying on the principal for five years. And there is a no prepay penalty. I believe, in light of this morning's service, that before that five years is up, there's a strong possibility that building will be paid for. Now, we provided six million dollars in that loan for the building, but it came in at about six, seven, and so we ask you for some more and a little bit contingency, which you have done. The plans are completed. We have a commitment letter from the Spa -Glass Construction Company. The land is ours. The deacons have voted. And we have an anticipated sale, not pending. Our financing committee is working on one or two things. There have been some interest. They're trying to put together a package. And they are encouraged that the possibility, by the time we move out, of having the building sold at about two million dollars. We have nearly four million dollars already in, in pledges from the previous campaign, from the first campaign, and more than that now from this one. So that gives us about six. So we would rather imagine that, and time always shows, preachers always tell you, that any time a building starts actually going up, the money really starts coming in. And we have projected the budget with the building committee, with the finance committee, and with the loan company, an honest, realistic projection over the next ten years of the anticipated growth and income of First Baptist Church. Now, in all probability, unless we do have some miraculous faith giving and pay it all off, from the pledges outstanding from the anticipated faith sale of this building, that we will have about, at the most, a three million dollar permanent 25 -year debt, at the most. This, I understand, and these men will narrow these figures down for you, will be somewhere around 25 to 30 thousand dollars a month. Now, that'll be about 300 thousand dollars a year. We will adopt a million dollar budget this year. Across the board, all pastors, denomination people will tell you that one -third of your operating budget will be budget is red line for how high you can go in debt retirement. We will be at the worst, at the highest, at about 30 percent. So we feel good about our ability to repay. Now, what you are being asked to do tonight is to vote, to authorize the chairman of deacons and or trustees, as is necessary, to enter into a contract with Spall Glass Construction Company to build this building at not to exceed six million seven hundred thousand dollars. Now, we have a letter from them documenting that they will build this building at six million six hundred and forty thousand dollars, plus, due by removing the chapel and some other things, to a change of scope to a change of scope to approximately thirty or thirty -one thousand additional architect fees. Now, what will happen is this. If you vote to do so, tomorrow morning, Mr. Brigman will go to the architects and they will take the changes that have been agreed to and they will be put into the plans in about three to four weeks. We will have the building permit. We will have the building permit. The plans will have been, the changes that have been made will be drawn into the blueprints. The contract will be looked over by attorneys from our church and outside of our church and signed. And the contract, and I've read it, says that within ten days from the time the building permit is given, and that would be about the middle of November, that they will begin construction and they will complete it in six hundred days. That's twenty months. Now, that's about everything I know how to tell you. So, we would have a groundbreaking around Thanksgiving and be in about the fourth of July of seventy -six. We are in order for a special call business session. I'd like to ask Mr. Morris, the chairman of the special financing committee, Robert Brunson, who is the chairman of the church financing committee, Mr. Brigman, who is the chairman of the building committee, to come to the platform, Mr. Pretty, who is the chairman of the deacons, also to come to the platform. We are in session, and Mr. Pretty will read, no, Mr. Brigman will read the recommendation from the deacons. We will, as is our policy, have a motion and a second on its adoption, and then discussion. This from the new building committee and with the approval of the deacons resolved that the chairman of the deacons is hereby authorized and directed to sign and enter on behalf of the First Baptist Church of Houston, Texas a contract with Spallglass Inc. for an amount not in excess of $6 ,700 ,000 for the construction of a new church facility on the property owned by the church at IH 10 in Loop 610 and upon such terms and conditions as shall be deemed acceptable by the chairman of the deacons and chairman of the new building committee and further authorize and direct the chairman of the deacons or the trustees as necessary to execute and deliver such additional documents notes deeds of trust mortgages and similar instruments that shall be necessary to affect the foregoing further the church shall establish a contingency fund of $200 ,000 for use in connection with this contract if such amount is needed this comes in the form of a motion in behalf of the building committee and the deacons from Mr. Brigman and as a member of the church and I entertain a second to the motion all right is there any discussion are you ready to vote you favor the most you will let it be known by saying aye all opposed will say aye the motion is carried and the meeting is adjourned just like that thank you for coming Gerald what might be an appropriate hymn for us to finish with let me tell you something one of my deacons who happened to feel that we should wait a year or two who happens to be one of the dearest friends I have and the most faithful and sweet member of this church stood up stood up and told why he thought we should not do this at this time and came to me before and after and the preacher I'm going to say what I think in deacons meeting but I want you to know something if my church votes to go I'm going with you and that's what makes first Baptist church we may not always agree we are always agreeable and I said to him last Wednesday night deacon I'm telling you something if we vote to stay I'm gonna stay and still be your pastor you'd have to run me off with a big long stick because I know my people and if they don't pledge it it's not because they don't want to but because they simply couldn't they are the most dedicated wonderful in the world and I love them and if we have we have to worship with there's nobody here but me and Aldean and 30 in a tent I'm gonna pass to this church till I die unless I get run off first and that's the way all of us feel and I'll tell you with our faith in God nothing can stop the Lord's people your pastor loves you very very much I want you to think real hard about this morning message and let's plug in to God's giving cycle Gerald onward Christian soldiers would be magnificent page number 412 412 we'll sing all all four verses and that'll be the benediction now listen don't start drooping and sagging in the middle go all four of them wide open get your books up get your heads up and let's sing comes all

Genesis 22 · chapter mention