Worshiping Walking and Working (Part A)

His sacrifice was more excellent. It's not his ritual that has held up before us, it is his faith. He said, by faith, take that part.

If you just had, he offered a sacrifice. Well, where's the faith? Without the faith, it cannot be excellent in God's eyes. What made his offering received by God was that he received God, by faith.

But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Hebrews chapter 11, as he begins his message, Worshiping, Walking, and Working. Christ then came, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and through it he, being dead, still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death and was not found because God had taken him. For before he was taken, he had this testimony that he pleased God. But without faith, it is impossible to please God.

For he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. By faith, Noah, being divinely warned of things 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 of the righteousness which is according to faith. In this chapter, we have three characters that teach us something about worshiping, walking, and working with the Lord. Christianity had proven difficult to these Christians at the time this letter was written to these Jewish believers, in particular, and this letter is addressed to them. Christianity was radical. It was turning on its head so many Jewish traditions and rabbinical teachings that had existed through the centuries. It brought a new freedom, but it was divisive, caused much trouble for these believers. And it encountered the wrath of the rabbis and their neighbors, the Jewish neighbors that these Christians had. The culture was pressing upon them to abandon their newfound faith and return to Judaism, and so this letter is dealing with that very thing. Perhaps you have turned to Christ, or maybe some of you long ago had turned to Christ and discovered that the opposition was fierce against you from your own family members, loved ones, trying to get you to return to the things that Christ delivered you from. And because you would not yield, you suffered ridicule and persecution, being ostracized even, and whatever else they could dish at you. And so if that has been the case with you, you personally can understand what these Christians were going through.

So we look now at verse 4, and he says, And by faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and through it he being dead still speaks. There will be 16 of them named, there are more referenced to, and two of them will be women, Sarah and Rahab. And so we're going to take our time going through this as we go through the 11th chapter over the coming weeks, drawing from the characters, that which hopefully is beneficial. I hope that Bible study never becomes, to the Christian, just a lecture or an analysis of things.

I hope you understand that these things are preserved for us. They are to be living and powerful. You find yourself depressed and cornered and just in the drag of life that you draw from the spring of the witness that has been left for us to be strong and to join the numbers of righteous testimony that we have in the scripture. And there are those Christians that don't receive the word of God.

They go to churches where the word of God is not given to them. And I think a big part of this life for all of us is to learn how to appreciate what we have and not grow bored with it. Which we're tempted to do because the flesh, the heart of the flesh is deceitful above all things. And after a while you take for granted your husband or your wife or your children or your job, the food in your refrigerator or so many other things because you're not, you're not paying attention.

It's so easy. It happens to all of us. But what also can happen to all of us is that we notice it and take countermeasures to guard against it. And so this witness that we have before us starting with these three men, none of them were Jewish incidentally, these three men came before there was a Jewish people, Abel, Enoch and Noah. And the characters that are going to be held up in front of us, paraded if you will, they did not allow danger, disappointment and here it comes, the big one for people in our society, depression. They did not allow those things to turn them off to God, to doubt their faith.

They pressed forward. If you struggle with any of these things, there's only one way to deal with it and that is to deal with it. There's not going to be an escape hatch except you fighting through it and that should encourage you.

That should make you stronger, not weaker. But we tell ourselves we just can't even when we don't have a choice. So you must be brave, be strong in the faith as the scripture tells us, knowing that your labor is not for nothing, that it does count. Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, he said, we are hard pressed on every side.

They were surrounded, he said, yet not crushed. So we're perplexed but we're not in despair. We don't know what's going on, we're confused about what God is going to allow and not allow. But we're not giving up on God. He continued, he said, we are persecuted but we're not destroyed. We are persecuted, not forsaken. We are struck down, not destroyed. Persecuted, not forsaken.

Are you kidding me? You mean you're being persecuted and you still think God is there. He won't deliver you from this persecution so he must not be there, says the doubting heart.

But the righteous said, God is always here and if he has allowed these things for his purposes, I'm joining him. Remember God held up his faithful witness Antipas to the church. Remember my faithful witness Antipas who was martyred.

He did not say, remember Antipas who I didn't deliver. Remember Antipas, remember him or you can become unraveled in your faith if you choose. And so these examples are those who did not fall away, did not succumb to whatever pressures fell on them and the writer to the Hebrew letter is saying, hey, look at these people. They had their pressures in their lifetime and they held to the faith and here you are wanting to run back to the temple and abandon Jesus Christ.

They trusted God in spite of whatever was thrown at them and so in the 10th chapter, look with me at Hebrews 10 verse 39. We are not those who draw back to perdition but of those who believe to the saving of the soul. We're not going to retreat from our faith. He's reminding them in this letter, we're not that kind of fake believers. We're not going to draw back. This is high speech.

What should it be, low? Should he be encouraging them to crumble in the face of opposition? All the way back to the first people born of a woman he goes. Cain and Abel, the first two born. Adam and Eve were not born but these two were.

They were born in sin into the wrong kingdom. Abel worshiped God, the Bible tells us, on the basis of blood sacrifice. That is a critical part of his life.

That is not a detail that we can do without. It is essential that we understand he worshiped God with a blood sacrifice because that blood sacrifice pointed to Calvary, the death of Jesus Christ. Enoch walked with God into heaven.

He just kept going. Noah worked for God. God said build an ark.

He didn't go down to the lumber yard to purchase his lumber. He had to harvest the wood, to mill it, to work it into a structure that could survive a flood. And he did this in the days of corruption and violence, the Bible tells us. And then there's Abraham who obeyed, Isaac who blessed and prophesied, Jacob who blessed and worshiped, Joseph who gave instruction to generations not yet born, and those generations listened to him. And of course there was Moses who survived and on he goes with these heroes of the faith that every Christian should look at and say, yeah man, I'm setting my course in that direction.

I'm not taking instructions from any other place that goes against what I get from my scripture. All of them by faith in the unseen. You see if you have a flat line view, a flat line view of this life, it's a horizontal. You just see things that are on earth.

You're a flat liner. But if you have a vertical view, you look up, you see God. You see the unseen because God makes it visible on his terms, his way. Unfortunately those without faith want to dictate to God, to conform to their rules and regulations of what it's going to take to get them to bless God back by acknowledging him. And God does not participate in that. Continuing in verse one, he says, by faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice. Well his sacrifice was more excellent. It's not his ritual that has held up before us, it is his faith. He says by faith, take that part. If you just had, he offered a sacrifice. Well where's the faith? Without the faith it cannot be excellent in God's eyes. What made his offering received by God was that he received God by faith. Romans 12, I beseech you brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. God has never walked back that encouragement. You won't get to the book of Revelation and hear God say, oh yeah, and remember what I said in what you call Romans 12 one? I didn't really mean, that was too intense for you. I want to skinny it down some so that you're not so aggressive and zealous in your faith that you can be discouraged and dismayed and depressed and stay there. He never does that.

He says, get your gear on and get going and I'll be with you and together we will get things done. You believe that or you don't. It remains by faith.

It is more than compliance. Someone can comply, well God said do it, I'll do it but my heart's not in but I'm going to do it on the outside. That's ritual. But faith says I will do it and I will do it the best I can do it.

Because I believe God, I love God, I want God, I will see God. That's faith. Cain, on the other hand, by faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice. We'll come back to that man named Abel. Now his brother Cain, it says a more excellent sacrifice, verse one, than Cain. Cain was the founder of the false religions of the planet.

He kicked it off, he opened the door for it. Tragically, it seems that there are more people like Cain than Abel to this very day. What he did is what every false religion on earth does, approach God outside of God's terms. That's what makes it a false religion. God did not say that but you're going to do it anyway and you're going to insist he's accepting it and that the best you can do is insist you have nothing to back up that insistence. Whereas Christianity says well we're going to back this up. Not only are we going to back it up with logic and science but we've got prophecy and you don't.

And we're not mocking them when we say that, we're just making the point that needs to be made. Now Cain and Abel, their mother, was lied to by Satan and she fell for it and dumb, dumb Adam went ahead and ratified it. Satan said to the woman that God's word and God himself is not trustworthy. You can't trust him, he won't come to you like you said, he's holding stuff back from you and his word is loaded with doubt. And that lie worked so good the first time he told it that he told it again and again and he's telling it still to everyone who will hear.

It's like you know if you have a good joke you like to tell it over and over again to as many people as you can. Well Satan is not joking, he's very serious. He says God he cannot be trusted, he's not worthy of your trust.

Not offering an alternative incidentally, not that it would really matter, it's just something that you know you notice as you go through. Within the man-made religions you go to God your way and he will understand and he will receive it, he will honor you if you're sincere. You do enough stuff to help out, that's the world's lie that Satan told Eve and is telling today. Jude sums it up in his little letter. He makes this point blank statement in Jude 11. He said woe to them. Well they've gone the way of Cain.

During the collision course they're going to die on that course. It's the course that Cain took and woe to them they've gone that way. Cain ignored the shedding of blood, Abel did not. It was a blood sacrifice that Abel brought to God.

Cain, he brought a fruit basket. The way of Cain rejects the blood of Jesus Christ shed for sinners because it says we really don't need a Savior. Our sin's really not that bad, it doesn't merit bloodshed. God said yeah it does. That blood sacrifice admits that sin causes violence, separation from God, eternal death and death now. It causes sorrow, injustice in a world of other things that are not desirable. Isn't it interesting that Cain's religion of bringing a non-blood sacrifice is too refined to shed blood, the blood of a lamb.

But he had no problem shedding the blood of his own brother. That kind of insanity exists to this day in the world. You see it on the news, you read it, you hear it. It's preached in the university.

Universities don't teach only, they teach some things for sure. They preach everywhere they go. This religion of Cain and thus the world's first false religion soon manifested its character by not coming to God, God's way in the persecution of the righteous. All Cain had to do was say okay, I'll go back and I'll fix this, I'll bring a blood sacrifice. We have no record of him doing that.

In fact the record goes opposite of it. And God speaks to this man. He says if you do well, will you not be accepted? Genesis 4 verse 7. And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door.

And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it. Sin wants to take you out, but you should defeat sin. This God of Sin is how he set it up. Verse 16 of Genesis 4 continues, then Cain went out from the presence of Yahweh and he never came back.

We never read about him coming back. And this is what the world does in their non-faith approach to life. And that's why the writer is saying by faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nob, east of Eden. And so he refused God's way of thinking.

And men are doing that to this day. Another thing that identifies us as Christians is we don't disagree with God. We agree with him. No matter what. Hebrews 9 verse 22, without shedding of blood there is no remission. There's no pardon. We're just singing about the sins being, we are pardoned by God. God said, you're guilty. You deserve judgment. You're not holy before a holy God. But the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you from all sin.

You are pardoned. You who believe and receive. He continues in verse 1, he says, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous. And he's talking about Abel now. Faith leads to surrender and surrender leads to righteousness and righteousness is that that pursues that which is right before God. Not right before man.

I don't want to hear man tell me about it's right, it's right for any man or woman to no longer want to be a man or a woman. But to change sides. That's the world's, that's Satan talking through the world. And there are people gobbling it up. They're quite proud of it and smug. The temptation is to hate them, to strike out against them. That's not what we do. If they are close enough, closely enough related to us, maybe in the workplace, we pray for them. We pray that it won't spread too. We pray that others won't fall for it.

But it is war and it is active. He says God testifying of his gifts. Don't you think that salvation and religion should be based on truth?

If you do, you're in the minority. Especially if you look to uphold it and practice that. Abel, that righteous man, bought that which foretold of the substituted life, of a forfeited life.

Those animals that were used by God to cover Adam and Eve's nudity. And if you're still trying to work through I don't believe in Adam and Eve, then you know, what can anybody say to you? If you have a problem with God being God and giving us his word, the damage is extensive.

It can be instantly resolved or not. It's up to you, the individual. But over the centuries, intelligent, because this means something to people as though we who believe are not intelligent, so you've got to say it this way. Intelligent, accredited individuals have come to the Lord, have loved him and served him. And if you are more than likely rejecting the word of God, it is because you do not want to be held accountable to its standard and you're not being honest with yourself. That's been my take of the unbelievers that I have encountered in the world.

Then there are those that are just flat out ignorant. I was in that group. I did not know what these things meant, where they were going, where they came from.

I guessed about it. That guessing about God was leading me to hell on a rocket. And he's the one that graciously got me off as he does with all those who are destined for hell and then repent and come to Christ. And so when he brought the blood offering, he is saying, this is the life forfeited for me.

Cut out for me. Now this lamb or bull or whatever cannot save me, but it's preaching to me a truth that I cannot escape. And there is one who is coming. We know him as the one whose sandal we're not worthy to lose.

The Christ Jesus, Son of God. He will fulfill the image of these animal sacrifices and this is what he was telling his audience. Why is this so difficult to understand? Because of that flat line view. It's not easy to get a person to look up in truth.

Because like the book of Nehemiah, and you should know this about Nehemiah's book, if you know nothing else about the book of Nehemiah, you understand this much that before they could build, they had to remove the rubbish and the rubbish was almost immovable. Great lesson. 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.