Worshiping Walking and Working (Part C)

We have Christians who say, yeah, the Word of God, it is the Word, it is everything. But they really don't act upon that. They don't believe that. God's Word is inerrant, it's just not enough.

They might not say it that way, but they're doing it, and this is why they will follow the behavioral psychologists and their counseling and their therapy, supposing that they're going to be a better person. Listen, the Bible and serving with God's people is to make bad people, bad people good, and good people kind, and that is a lot of work. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Hebrews.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick with his message called Worshipping, Walking and Working in Hebrews chapter 11. You who believe when you leave this planet, you will not see death because you walk with God. Jesus used this word, abide, to abide in Christ, same picture. In John's Gospel, Jesus said in chapter 11, whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Now I love this verse because of this point especially. He says this then to Martha. Do you believe this?

Now why is that so special? Because we face doubts. When it's our turn to be sick and face eternity, there are doubts that are going to come against us and Jesus says, take up the shield of faith by which you can repel the fiery darts of hell.

Those darts of doubt and they're serious. And he meant every word of what he's saying. And then he says, do you believe this? And he's just so tender with Martha.

And of course she submits to it because she knew who he was. So it will be with all who live by faith in Jesus Christ. He says before he was taken, he had this testimony that he pleased God. What about Enoch pleased God? That he walked with God?

What does that mean? It says that he preached the truth the Bible does, including God's judgment. And we get this again from that little letter Jude.

Jude 14 and 15. Now Enoch was the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men. Also saying behold the Lord comes with ten thousands of his saints to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly. Among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

Now maybe when you get home you can look at that verse and you can scrutinize it a bit but I'll do a little bit for you. Four times he uses that word ungodly. Ungodly among them, ungodly deeds, ungodly way, ungodly sinners speaking against Christ.

He said he's coming back. He's going to deal with the ungodly. God's word offends sinners. They don't like that. They don't want to submit but we must preach it. But he also preaches they can, they have a choice, they have a say so. We have no say so in our first birth. We're not able to say where we are going to be born, into what family we're going to be born, where on earth are we going to show up.

No say so. But in the second birth we have every bit of a say so in it. Contrary to what some in Christianity say that you've been selected, you have no choice in the matter and enjoy it. That's not love. Love is a response. Salvation involves love that responds to God's love. And love cannot be forced. And there are different levels and types of love. There are different things that belong to the most purest spiritual love. There is the love that says well I may not feel it but I'm going to do what I'm supposed to do nonetheless.

This would account for all those marriages before our generations when people were assigned their spouse and they didn't love each other but they grew to love each other and do the right thing and even produce children who are righteous. So we do preach judgment to the ungodly but we also preach the love of Christ. And the love of Christ is not limited to Christ loves you. Now that's part of it but it's agape love.

It's all that belongs to that. In 1 Corinthians 13 for example in the book of Acts the word love doesn't show up yet it's all over its pages. You think Philip had love for the Ethiopian eunuch when he said there's water what stops me from being baptized? Philip says if you believe, you say yeah man. And into that water on the side of the road Philip and the eunuch went and there was a baptism. Do you think there was love in Philip's heart? As someone who has baptized people you bet there was. And so we must also preach the love, the truth, the joy, the peace, the heaven.

We have to be honest. The struggles even within the body of Christ. He pleased God. What does that mean again? Well the Bible tells us that his walk was progressive.

That his walk with God lasted for 300 years. People don't live that long. They don't now. They don't drink enough milkshakes. It's a simple answer. But then they did and it's scientific to back that up and I'm not going to go into that right now.

You either take it or you investigate it or you won't believe. Anyway at 65 years of age he gets converted. And for the remainder of his life he walked with God for 300 years. And it was not a stroll.

You don't stroll 300 years. What happened to Enoch during that time? Do you think he faced depression, discouragement, disappointment, danger?

You bet he did. But he walked anyway and didn't stop walking until he ended up walking those golden streets of heaven. And so the only body left behind of Enoch was a body of testimony, of righteousness. In other words he was what is we call translated.

He was taken to heaven and without dying on earth that body that he was born with at some point was jettisoned but not here on earth and he was made spiritual to survive and so there he is. Verse 6, but without faith it is impossible to please him for he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Now this is a verse that's very difficult to expound on.

I'm going to try and hope I don't mess it up anyway. Most of the commentators don't have much to say about this verse. Why is that? Well it's because it's profound on its own. But yet God calls us to listen to him and if he has something to develop from it, develop it we must. This is saving faith incidentally. There are types of faith. There's saving faith and there is serving faith. The saving faith produces serving faith. Serving faith really doesn't produce saving faith. In other words when you trust God for your salvation that is the saving faith. When you then go ahead and start doing things for God, working that faith that is serving faith and we all should have both. We know that because it tells us right there for he who comes to God must believe that he is. He's talking about that beginning of belief.

Again they were drifting from the faith back to empty rituals. They cast their eyes and he is trying to say don't do it. Peter was a little bit more forceful. He says you're like a dog returning to your vomit. Oh man that's Peter for you and he's quoting the Old Testament.

You say well Peter was crude. Well he's quoting Solomon who was wise, very wise. You try writing a proverb.

Look how many Solomon had. Well anyway continuing back to this, Romans 14 Paul says to us struggling believers also, whatever is not from faith is sin right between the eyes. And coupled with this, without it, faith is that key.

We talked about that last week. Without it you unlock nothing in the kingdom. With it you unlock it. Without, without faith it is impossible to get on the right side of God. Jesus said I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me.

If you don't believe that you don't get to the Father and again the world hates it. Other religions do not bow to that. Otherwise they would not be other religions.

But they are. Without faith we cannot see past this physical world around us and we cannot rightly see into the spiritual world that is here with us also. That spiritual world of Christ. And though, remember Elijah, Elijah the prophet praying that his servants eyes would be opened so that he could see that they were more with them than against them. And that prayer is a lesson for those of us who do have faith to pray for those who don't have faith. Paul says to Timothy that God would grant them repentance.

Pray for them that God would grant repentance. He said I don't understand it all. You don't need to understand it all.

You just need to exercise it. You go into a room and you flip the light switch on and if the lights come on, you don't say well I wonder how it moves through the copper wire. Does the wire have to be copper?

Can it be made of twizzlers? And you don't go through that. You just work the light. And so without faith we cannot see past the things that are right in front of us to the things that are beyond us that we need to see. And if this irritates those without saving faith, long enough that irritation will turn very likely to hatred and persecution and this explains so much of it. Romans 8 8, so then those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Well that's true. Any of you have a problem with anger? Well I'm pretty angry at you for having that. But if you struggle with anger, what does the Bible say about that? The wrath of man cannot produce the righteousness of God.

You're supposed to remember that so you understand that you're in the flesh when it's getting on top of you. Well that's not just limited to anger. Mercy is a form of anger. Lust of any sort. We like to corral lust. It's just sexual huh? There's a lust of all sorts of things. You see somebody with a better car than you and you don't like it, you now want to get better than him, that's lust of the flesh just as dangerous as any other sin. These things do not produce the righteousness of God nor does it please God. We know it and we fight. That part pleases God. In the midst of that ruin, of that disaster, there is the unbeliever swinging away their sword.

Yes I'm struggling with wrath. I just lost it five seconds ago. But God says yeah but you're fighting it for next time.

You're posting guards so you don't get tripped up that way again especially so easily. And the world is missing out. One of the horrible things about hell is people will be in hell saying we missed it. We missed out. We were cheated.

How do you feel when you're cheated of something? Well we won't go there because it's just too much time. But this condemns all the earn your way into salvation religions including those that call themselves Christians where he says without faith it's impossible to please God because those who say well I can't trust God for my salvation, I have to earn it. God says yeah you don't have my pleasure.

You just stepped away from me. You can't earn it. You're not good enough and I'm not going to accept what you have to offer. That God will accept those who come to him by faith. He will accept their labors. That's why there are rewards in heaven. Salvation is not a reward. It is a gift to those who come to Christ. The rewards are for the deeds we have done in grace and we don't deserve those either. That's why it's a gift. You can lose your gift. You can mess that all up.

You should be afraid of that. What drives me week after week to do the best I can for God's word with results that are less than what I want. Well what do I want? I want to save everybody. I want to build up every Christian. I want to wipe every criticism away from scripture. I'm not big enough to do that. My Lord did not do that.

But rather than give up because I can't get what I want is the fear of not doing what I'm supposed to be doing that pushes me forward. You know Antichrist, his universities, their professors, whatever they say is accepted by those who pay money to hear them say things against Christ. And sadly many Christians begin to fall into that. And yet they won't listen to their own pastors and they do this without blinking.

Just like that. We have Christians who say yeah the word of God, it is the word, it is everything. But they really don't act upon that.

They don't believe that. God's word is inerrant, it's just not enough. They might not say it that way but they're doing it and this is why they will follow the behavioral psychologists and their counseling and their therapies supposing that they're going to be a better person. The Bible and serving with God's people is to make bad people, bad people good and good people kind and that is a lot of work.

That will keep anybody. Do you know how hard it is to keep Christians kind? A lot of Christians become the kind you don't want to be around. Especially when they think their way is right and your way is wrong and the Bible doesn't have to back them up.

We get them. They come here and they don't like the way we do things. They want us to conform to their view supposing that their view is the only right view and then here comes the emails and the hate mails and the ratings of the church and all the other sin that goes with it. Paul warned against this.

He says beware, we read this last week. Let anyone cheat you through philosophy. That means you're guessing. You know what philosophy is? Human guessing. In human guessing, try that.

If you don't have a pilot's license, go take a flight, you being the pilot, and guess at how to do it. Empty deceit according to the tradition of man, according to the basic principles of the world and not according to Christ. That's what how Christians live when they run to the world. How should we thus live? The Bible deals with that.

You have a problem with the machine, go to the manufacturer. God did not give us his word and then all these auxiliary thoughts that come from the world. You say, why are we on this? Because without faith, it is impossible to please God.

And when you are abandoning the word of God because of what some university professor told you and you sit here and you listen to the pastor say, nyet, not so, then you turn on the pastor. Well, I paid good money for this degree. Who do you think you are? And science says, no, psychology is a religion that pretends to be a science.

Not all, there are types of psychology that are based on evidence, but behavioral therapeutic psychology is not. Well, I think, and so I hope you get that. I hope you understand what I'm saying. You say, no, pastor, we're going to listen to the world. We're not going to listen to someone quote to us, beware, lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the principles of the world. For it continues here in verse six. For he who, let me pause here to say, you should want a pastor that every now and then goes down a rabbit trail with a machete in his hand on the things that the world puts in front of you. You should want one that is not committed to being polished in the pulpit but being moved by the Holy Spirit. That's what we want from you when you preach the gospel to somebody. Moved by the Holy Spirit. So we're going to get to the moving. We've got some time left.

I'll turn the clock back some. For he who comes to God must believe that he is. And that explains the doom of the agnostic and the atheist.

They don't believe, they tell you they don't believe that he is and then you spend the rest of your life trying to tell you, prove to you that he isn't, which is to me insane. And he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Well, it's not enough to simply believe. There must be some effort involved that comes from passion. And that passion comes from a relationship, from seeing Christ, from understanding how he loves me and I want to love him back. And that depression and that danger and that disappointment will discourage you from being passionate about Christ, feeling cheated in life, feeling God should have done more for you and he's not doing it that will strip you of your love if you're not careful.

Learn to accept what you have and work that. That is what faith is all about and that's what he's going to point out as he goes to the scripture. We've been covering that in the life of David. David, you can't build a temple to me.

David, that was his passion. And David says, fine. He doesn't go, fine. He goes, fine, Lord.

I'll do the next best thing. And he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. In other words, God is going to make it worth it. Salvation is not the reward, it is the gift.

Verse 7, by faith Noah, being divinely warned of things he has not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household by which he condemned the world and became heir to the righteousness which is according to faith. He condemned the world. You hear a pastor stand at the pulpit and say the world is trying to rip you off, strip you down. They are wrong. They have nothing to offer your spiritual experience.

Nothing. And then you have people get upset at the pastors for saying that. But that's what the Bible says. Noah condemned the world. He said, I get nothing from you. What I need from the world is an ark but you won't build one for me.

I can't go buy one because you don't believe the rain is coming that you've never seen before but I do. Because God told me. He worshipped like Abel. He walked like Enoch. The two men in the Bible that God says they walked with him, Enoch and Noah.

And they were criticized for their unswerving devotion to what God said to them, to obeying God's word. And there's a flood of evidence that backs up Noah. Being divinely warned of these things not yet seen. That is the rain. Forecaster. God forecasted there's a flood coming. It's going to rain. It's going to rain a long time. Genesis 7.

For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth 40 days and 40 nights and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made. Oh God, that's harsh. That's brutal. You don't love the animals.

You don't love the people. No, that's not what Noah does. Noah gets inside the ark and God closes him in. And so we trust God. He says, move with godly fear. What strikes you about that verse? The word moved or the word fear?

Well, it depends on where you are probably. If you're not doing what you're supposed to do and you know it, maybe fear is what stands out. But if you're trying your best, that word moved. Something happened. It wasn't a philosophy, a theory. It turned into a fact. He was moved by what God said to him.

Are you moved or do you, are you exposed to the Bible so much you're no longer moved by it? Oh yeah, I know that story. Come on, pal.

I heard that point before. What do you have new? Come on, tickle, tickle, tickle my ears. Or do you say, no, that's God's word and it is right and I need to hear it again and I need to execute it.

I need to do it. He says, prepared an ark for the saving of his household. So Noah went to work once he received God's word. Lot, the man named Lot, that is, he fumbled in his faith and it cost him his family. But Noah acted on his faith and the story of Noah was publicly circulated in the days of Lot with little benefit because he was not moved enough. By which he condemned the world. So when he's building this ark, the ark of Noah, before it became a floating barge, it was a pulpit. It preached.

Every time they saw the tree, at the sound of that saw, every time they swung a hammer, put a beam in place, the sound that echoed from those actions preached to the world. Judgment is coming. You can do something about it. This is what we do.

We do the same thing. We preach it. Some believe and some don't. So what defines the world is not what we have in common, but who we don't have in common.

That's what defines the world system. And he says at the bottom, and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. Eternal life. Noah's soul is saved. And this is what Jesus says about the times of Noah. He says, for in the days of Noah before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day Noah entered the ark and did not know until the flood came and took them all away. So it will be with the coming of the Son of Man. Now, you can also say that is true at death at any point, but it will be true at the coming of Christ. It will be too late if they have rejected our message.

So our lives in Christ are to be just like these men, Abel, Enoch and Noah, worshipping and walking, worshipping and building the ark in faith and sound prophecy and sharing it with the world knowing that within those numbers as difficult as it is there will be those who get saved. You've been listening to Cross-Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, today's teaching is available free of charge at our website. Simply log on to crossreferenceradio.com. That's crossreferenceradio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross-Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can subscribe at crossreferenceradio.com or simply search for Cross-Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app. Tune in next time as Pastor Rick continues teaching through the book of Hebrews right here on Cross-Reference Radio.