Faith: The Now and the Not Yet (Hebrews 11.32-40)

Introduction

We’ve been looking at what faith is these past few weeks. All of Hebrews 11 is about people who we are told lived “by faith.”

So far, we’ve heard nothing at all about the doctrines they believed in. We don’t know anything really about which theological schools they identified with.

Don’t get me wrong; the content of what we believe is of crucial importance. Churches that welcome and spread ideas contrary to God's word become unhealthy and slowly die. God save us from embracing any other gospel!

But just holding onto correct beliefs is not what living by faith in Hebrews 11 is about. Living by faith is not about the propositional truths you personally assent to, it’s about decisions and practical actions you take in life.

So, as we’ve seen, for Noah, faith meant getting out his tool kit and building an ocean liner in a dry, landlocked country.

For Abraham, faith meant leaving behind a cushy retirement and literally stepping out into uncharted territory.

For Moses, faith meant rejecting his identity as a privileged Prince of Egypt and identifying instead with a nation of slaves. It says he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. “That’s not who I am” he said, and it changed forever the direction of his life.

So faith is much more than something you think. Faith is above all something you do and who you are - and it usually involves adventure and risk.

What are you doing in your life at the moment that requires you to take a step of faith?

Only twice in the gospels do we read that Jesus was astonished. Jesus knows everything – so it takes a lot to surprise Jesus. But he did show amazement on two occasions and both times it’s to do with faith. Let’s have a quick look at them.

Firstly, (Mark 6.1-6) is when he goes to his home town of Nazareth and no one believes in him. There is no faith there at all. There is just hardness of heart everywhere.

“Oh, this is just Mary’s son, we know his brothers and sisters.” They take offence at him. And it says he was amazed at their lack of faith – and that he couldn’t do any miracles there except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.

To be honest, I’d settle for that, wouldn’t you? To lay hands on an invalid, a blind person and a deaf-mute, and actually see them healed straight away is a great Sunday for me. It would all over Facebook!

A normal day for me is when I pray for someone with a bad cold and catch it myself through the laying on of hands!

But sometimes I do see people healed or much improved when I pray for them and when that happens no one is more surprised than I am! On the outside, I try and look calm and humble and give God the glory – on the inside I’m punching the air!

But seeing a few healed is a footnote on a really bad day for Jesus. That’s one of the many reasons we worship him and not me. If ever you think I’m acting a bit full of myself, you have my permission to say to me “John - the Lord has already appointed his Messiah – and it’s not you.”

The second time Jesus was astonished (Luke 7.1-10) is when he meets a Roman Centurion. This time, he is amazed not at the absence of faith, but at the evidence of it.

The soldier’s servant is at death’s door. The Centurion meets Jesus and says, “Look, you’re Jesus, you don’t even need to come all the way to my home to see him. You’re a busy man. Don’t waste your time. You just give the order right here - that’s all it takes. He’ll be fine.”

This time, again in his amazement, Jesus says, “I haven’t found faith like this anywhere.”

If Jesus were to be amazed by meeting you, do you think he would be more likely to be impressed by your great faith or shocked by your lack of it?

Maybe for most of us the honest answer is “it depends what day it is.” That would be my answer, truth be told. I want to learn more about faith and I want to grow in it – I hope you do as well.

The Now Crowd

Hebrews 11 wraps up by introducing us to two contrasting groups of people. It’s not people who had amazing faith and people who had little faith. They all had great faith.

The first group is in v32-35 and these are people who, through faith, saw awesome signs and wonders, amazing miracles and did great exploits.

This is what it says: “I do not have time to tell about Gideon, [he defeated the formidable Midianite army with just 300 losers using bugles, candles and jam jars].

Barak, [he was the first black President of the United States – actually, that was another Barak; this one refused to go into combat without the prophetess Deborah and, acting on her prophetic word to the letter, he won a mighty victory].

Samson, [you know about him from Sunday School] and Jephthah, [he overcame family rejection to become a mighty leader] about David and Samuel and the prophets, [you know about them as well] who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, [that was Daniel] quenched the fury of the flames, [that was his three friends] and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; [there’s Samson] and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies [there's Gideon and Barak]. Women received back their dead, raised to life again.” [Elijah and Elisha both raised widows’ sons from the dead, such was the incredible anointing on them].

We read all this in Hebrews 11, and when we hear similar reports of signs and wonders today, and we can all say “Praise God!”

My friend Mark Aldridge got off a plane a few years ago in Siberia and met the leader of a church where he was going to do some Bible teaching. His first question to Mark, before “How was your trip?” was “How many people have you raised from the dead?” Mark wondered if getting teenagers out of bed might count but he had to admit that he hadn’t ever raised anyone from the dead. The pastor looked at his shoes and said in disappointment, “I’ve only raised five.”

I suppose the most amazing healing miracle I’ve personally witnessed is in the life of a cockney friend of mine called Arthur, who went to be with the Lord a few years ago. But about 30 years before that he was healed of spondylosis. This is a painful condition of the spine resulting from the degeneration of the vertebral discs. Arthur used to be bent over and in constant pain and was only able to move slowly and laboriously. He was prayed for one day in the name of Jesus and he was instantly healed.

Kathie and I are witnesses of the before and after. When I went to see him, he looked at me with a big grin and said “Watch this.” Then he ran up and down the stairs of his house shouting “Look, I’ve been ‘ealed, ve Lord Jesus ‘as ‘ealed me!” It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

People sometimes say that the day of miracles is past. But in reality there has never been a 'day of miracles.’ There's only a God of miracles; he’s been doing them since the beginning of time when he spoke a word and made everything out of nothing. He’s still at it today, and he says in Malachi 4 “I am the Lord and I do not change.” Hebrews 13 says “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.”

The Not Yet Crowd

But, as Louie Giglio says, “When you get to the New Testament, most of the good guys die, and those who don’t suffer terrible persecution.”

Starting with Jesus – they tried to kill him as soon as he was born. Several times in his ministry people tried to kill him. People actually got together and looked for a way to do it. In the end they did kill him.

Stephen was the first follower of Jesus to be killed – stoned to death.

According to the most reliable traditions we have, all but one of the twelve disciples were murdered. Paul was beheaded. Dozens were thrown to the lions in the Coliseum. Others were used as human torches to illuminate Nero’s palace garden at night.

And in Hebrews 11, after talking about great signs and wonders, the tone changes abruptly. Verses 35-38 are about the second group of people who, by faith, get absolutely battered and who die violent deaths. No sign and no wonder delivers them from peril.

It says, “There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.  Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated - the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.”

A group of 12 Syrian followers of Jesus working with the Christian Aid Mission were serving Christ in villages near Aleppo this summer and, despite the obvious dangers, they all chose to stay in order to provide aid in the name of Christ to desperate people in that city.

Their ministry director wrote a few weeks ago, “I asked them to leave, but I gave them the freedom to choose. As their leader, I should have insisted that they leave. Every time we talked to them, they said, ‘We want to stay here – this is what God has told us to do. This is what we want to do.’ They just wanted to stay and share the gospel.”

The team leader on the ground led nine house churches and he helped to establish all of them. In a place like Syria – that’s one anointed guy. His son was two months away from his 13th birthday.

On August 28 this year, some Islamic State militants found them and asked them if they had previously renounced Islam for Christianity. They said that yes they had. The militants demanded that they return to Islam. They all replied, including the boy, “We will never renounce Jesus Christ.” That sealed their fate.

They were separated into groups of four and eight. Before a gathered crowd, they cut off the boy’s fingertips one by one and beat him severely. Still the boy refused to deny Christ.

They told the boy’s father they would stop if he returned to Islam. He refused too. So they tortured and beat him also and the two other ministry workers. The three men and the boy were then crucified and left on their crosses for two days. No one was allowed to remove them. They died beside a placard branding them as infidels.

The eight other ministry team members, including two women, were taken to another site that same day and were asked the same questions. The women, aged 29 and 33, said “We are only sharing the peace and love of Christ.” They were then publicly raped. They didn’t stop praying aloud during their ordeal. So they were beaten all the more.

As these two women and the six remaining men knelt before being beheaded, they were all praying. Some were exalting the name of Jesus, others were praying the Lord’s Prayer, and some of them lifted their eyes to commend their spirits to Jesus. After they were beheaded, their bodies too were hung on crosses. This happened just over two months ago.

The Kingdom of God Is Now and Not Yet

Why is it that there are, at one and the same time, extraordinary advances of the gospel and nauseating atrocities like this?

It's because the kingdom of God is both now and not yet. When Jesus came, he spoke about the kingdom of God. He said it was close. He said it was at hand. He said it was all around. And he said to pray that it comes more and more.

The kingdom of God is a way of talking about God’s sphere of influence. When that is total and complete, as it will be one day, then there’ll be no more sickness and no suffering at all. That’s the future aspect to the kingdom.

It’s not yet here in its fullness. It will be when Jesus returns. He’s coming back one day. There are about 300 references in the New Testament to this. It’s going to happen.

And the Apostle Paul says in Romans 8 that it’s like this: “We groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our redemption.”

We know this world needs sorting out. We know things aren’t meant to be this way. We know there’s something more. But that will only happen in the future. That’s the future aspect of the kingdom.

But, Jesus says, that the kingdom of God also has a present aspect. It’s like you get foretastes of what is going to happen one day.

Last March there was a really warm sunny day. Everyone was walking around in t-shirts and summer dresses, there were one or two butterflies and it felt like summer had come. But it hadn’t; the following day it was cold and wet again. It wasn’t summer; but you knew it was on the way. It was a foretaste.

And when God does something amazing; when someone is dramatically healed, or when there is an extraordinary answer to prayer – that’s a foretaste. It tells you what it’s going to be like all the time one day, and that day is coming.

This is what we call the now and not yet. This is the environment today in which we live out our faith.

You see this man? He’s an Iraqi Christian. Look at his emotion. Look at the passion in his expression. What's this picture about? Is he mourning another atrocity against his people? No.

He is taking part in a 100 hour continuous prayer and worship meeting organised about ten days ago by a group called Burn 24-7. Five days non-stop... He’s praying for the salvation of the jihadis of Islamic State. When v38 says “the world was not worthy of them” this is what it means.

Ending

I want to end by telling you about a man called Mehedi Dibaj. Mehedi was an Iranian Pentecostal pastor who was arrested in 1985 and imprisoned for nine years, where he was systematically beaten and tortured.

In 1994 he finally went on trial for apostasy and his written testimony to the court was widely circulated at the time by the underground church he had led.

It’s 1,300 words long, so I can’t read it all, [a link to the full statement is here] but I want to pick out a couple of paragraphs because they are really powerful.

“With all humility, I express my gratitude to the Judge of all heaven and earth for this precious opportunity, and with brokenness I wait upon the Lord to deliver me from this court trial according to his promises. I have been charged with apostasy. An apostate is one who does not believe in God, the prophets, or the resurrection of the dead. We Christians believe in all three! They tell me, "Return!" But to whom can I return from the arms of my God? I owe him so much for his fatherly love and concern. The God of Daniel, who protected his friends in the fiery furnace, has protected me for nine years in prison. And all the bad happenings have turned out for our good and gain, so much so that I am filled to overflowing with joy and thankfulness. May the shadow of God's kindness and his hand of blessing and healing be and remain upon you for ever.”

He also clearly articulated the gospel, called the court to repentance and faith in Jesus, and testified to miracles he had seen God do.

This testimony was leaked to the world’s media, there was a global outcry, and amazingly he was released in January 1994. Five months later, he mysteriously disappeared and his body was later found in a park in west Teheran.

That’s “the not yet.” But here’s “the now”: in the 22 years since Mehedi went to be with the Lord, more Iranians have become Christians than in the previous 13 centuries put together since Islam came to Iran.

In 1979, there were an estimated 500 Christians of Muslim background in Iran. Today, there are hundreds of thousands, some say over a million.

In fact, last year the mission research organisation Operation World said that Iran is now home to the fastest-growing church in the world. The second-fastest growing church is in Afghanistan - and Afghans are being reached in part by Iranians.

That is why we live by faith. Because God is good, and Jesus is alive, and he’s coming back. Satan wins many battles, and they can be absolute carnage, but listen; Jesus wins the war!

Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. Don’t let setbacks and discouragements knock you off balance. They’re part of the story. We’ve read the end of the book – and Jesus wins.

Let’s pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 6 November 2016