4th July 2021 Sunday Morning Worship
Good Morning. Our Service is being filmed and broadcast live from the Church field. We have produced this so you can read the transcripts of the Service. The prayers and the talk. We hope you find this helpful.
We are now able to meet in the church field for our services. If you would like to come next week, then please ring the Church office to let us know and we can help you to make sure you have what you need.
God Bless, Philip and Katy
This is website address if you can access it. www.downtonbaptist.org/Groups/337711/Pastors_Message.aspx
Based on Psalm 89. By Katy
Let us sing of the Lords great love forever, And share your faithfulness with our families, young and old.
Let us shout to the world that your love is the one thing we can trust and stand on. And always has been, even in Heaven.
Your promise to your people is so faithful. And extends throughout all time, from the beginning to the end.
Let us praise your wonders, Lord. Your faithfulness too, which never leaves us.
You, Lord, are mighty, and your faithfulness envelops us.
You Lord, Watch over the surging sea and can still the most mountainous of waves
The heavens are yours, and so is all the earth; North to south, east to west…
Real justice is the foundation of your kingdom; And love and faithfulness lead your way.
Let us rejoice in your name every moment of every day. And walk in the light of your presence.
Let us call out in praise, ‘You are my Father, my God, the Rock my Saviour.’
The first born will become the King of Kings. And his love will last forever.
You Lord appointed your first born, to be the most exalted of the kings of the earth.
His faithfulness and promise and purist love. Will be forever in his line and will never fail.
Let us rejoice in faithfulness that endure like the sun; It will be established forever like the moon, the faithful witness in the sky.
Let us offer our worship to our faithful Lord.
Praise be to the Lord forever! Amen and Amen.
Amen
Hebrews 11: 1-6
11 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for.
3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
4 By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.
5 By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.” For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
by Philip
Faith
What does that mean to you?
Don’t be in too much of a hurry to answer this…It’s a very important question for all of us
Your faith has healed you, Jesus said
Faith is at the very heart of our relationship with God
As the letter to the Ephesians says… For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith
Friends… The gift of forgiveness is freely given…But it is received by faith
At this stage of the book of Hebrews…the writer is asking us to look up…to the journey ahead of us
Lift up your heads and look… See the ones that have gone ahead of us
In them we can see what is up ahead
In them we can see what we may have to cope with
In them we will find encouragement and strength
And the one thing we discover that we all need for that journey...is faith
The journey will take us to the Kingdom of God
The Age to come…The new Jerusalem
Where we are called to be amongst that great company of the faithful ones
The long list of heroes and heroines that are woven throughout the OT and the Jewish scriptures
Hebrews 11 offers us two things…
The first is a description of faith itself
A description of the one thing that we will need…If we want to receive God’s freely given grace
Secondly, it offers us a short history of God’s people
The ones who trusted and……albeit falteringly…and often imperfectly…
…followed God’s calling
Particularly those from the earliest times…and especially Abraham and Moses
The long line of faithful people will continue into chapter 12…eventually reaching its pinnacle in Jesus
Who is our fully realised and revealed model of faith
Who freely received all that his Father gave…So much so that he is one with his Father…
And of course, that was his prayer for us
We are urged to live this story ourselves
To be counted among those who have gone ahead of us
Together chapter 11 and 12 tell the story from creation to new creation
From covenant to new covenant
And all the way through…it is a story of faith
So let’s have a careful look…
Faith is very closely linked to hope in Hebrews
Faith is looking at God and trusting him for everything…
…While hope is looking at the future and trusting God for it
And so…Hebrews defines faith in relation to hope
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see
It is one thing to have hope…but when you have faith within it and beneath it…It gives hope assurance
I may hope for a better world
I may hope for the Kingdom to come
I may hope for resurrection
But unless I trust and believe in the one God who raised Jesus from the dead…
…My hope may become mere optimism
We may have a general sense that there are unseen realities around us…An unseen spiritual world
We may even think that there is a personal presence…a personal force for good
A personal presence I may be able to have some sort of relationship with
But unless I trust and believe in and faith in God…the God we know in Jesus
This sense of unseen realities will lack any real conviction…it will change very little
Assurance and conviction…
…Both of them are to be seen in people of faith
Faith in God…This is what the ancient people were commended for
It was the one the one thing that Jesus asked of his followers…
Do you trust me?
Have faith
It is the eyes of faith that will see…
It is faith…no matter how small that will move mountains
Before the writer begins the long list of the faithful… …Hebrews takes us back to the beginning
To creation itself
God spoke and everything came into existence
Nothing existed before he spoke
By God’s word creation began…life began
By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command…
…so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible
There are a number of ways of translating this
Perhaps it means that the things you can see came into existence out of the things you can’t…
…that at creation God was making invisible things visible
Or…
Perhaps it means that God created everything out of nothing…absolutely nothing at all [Ex Nihlo]
Either way…
It takes one thing to see this…It takes faith
Faith in God the creator
This is at the heart of all Abrahamic faith
It is also at the root of judgement…
There is one creator God…Beginning and end of all things
All things belong to him
God is the creator, the architect, the builder, the gardener…
…and God takes responsibility for putting all things right
True justice and perfect judgement
And faith in the creator God is also at the root of resurrection…
God loves his creation…the physical world and so he intends to remake human beings…
…as even more gloriously physical than they are at the moment
Let’s take a break from this wonderful Theology for a moment
Instead let’s take a look at who now appears on the pages of this letter
And let’s try to notice what the writer is doing
The first two characters that he brings to our attention…
…are Abel the first victim of murder …and then Enoch
Enoch was the only person in the Bible…other than Elijah…
…Who is taken straight to heaven without experiencing death in the way we would normally expect
Genesis 5 tells us that…
Seth died…Jared died…Kernan died…Enosh died…Lamech died
But Enoch we are told…walked with God, then he was no more, because God took him away
Both Enoch and Abel are a little puzzling to begin with…
Abel and his brother Cain both brought sacrifices to God
Genesis 4:3-4 says that Abel brought some of his most valuable lambs to the Lord
It simply says that Cain brought some of the produce from his fields
When the offerings were made…It is said that Abel’s offerings were better than Cain’s
We assume that they were gifts that were genuinely given with a heart open to God…
…And it was Abel’s gift that was accepted by God
This as we know caused Cain to become bitter and angry…
…and this anger grew and grew until he killed his brother
The first murder
The point that is being made is that God accepted Abel…by faith
By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man
And God will reward his faith
He will reward his faith through death…and out the other side of death
Though he is dead…The account of his faith is a witness to those that follow
And by Faith he still speaks, even though he is dead
As it says in Genesis…The Lord said to Cain, what have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground
Enoch was a popular figure in Jewish writing…even in the time before Jesus
His story is very mysterious
But particularly this idea that he escaped death…which gave him a very special place in the popular imagination
Gen 5:24 Enoch walked with God, then he was no more, because God took him away
As we have already heard in the case of every other figure in Genesis it is said that they died
But not Enoch
Because of his mystique…books were written about him
And books were also written as if he had written them himself
And in those books, he prophesised events many centuries ahead
Even in the times of the actual writers
But in truth Hebrews is not interested in such speculation
It simply says and insists upon what Genesis 5:24 says He pleased God
Enoch walked with God
That is a very powerful thing to say…that was our first calling…To walk with God through this life
The writer ties this to his real point…
…Without faith you cannot please God
As we said earlier you may have some broad idea of a supreme being
But unless you have faith…
Unless you trusts that God exists…This particular one, true God
Unless you trust …That he seeks us…and that in our hearts we want to seek him
It is very hard to begin to truly worship him
And without faith, it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him
Friends… We worship what we trust…what we place our faith in
As Jesus said using money as a powerful example…
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
For where your treasure is [The thing you trust and have faith in], there will your heart be also.
These early faithful people are a launch pad into a long list of faithful biblical characters
But we have already been challenged by this call to true faith…
A faith that looks in awe and wonder creation
A faith that celebrates the creator
A faith that sees death and yet sees the promise of new life beyond
A faith that looks God in the face and trusts him
A faith that builds a life in all its fullness on the goodness of God
A faith that receives the grace that is freely on offer
In faith we find our salvation…
And so like Abel...in faith…let’s offer back to God all that is truly his And like Enoch…lets walk with God…now and always
Amen
May the Blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit be with you all today and forevermore. Amen