God uses all kinds of people to accomplish His purposes. a theme you've probably picked up on as we've explored the hall of faith in Hebrews. Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah wraps up his series, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Faith. with strength and encouragement to ensure you'll be listed in the Hall of Faith next edition.
Here's David with the conclusion of his message: Ordinary Heroes. Hey, did you hear that? You can be in the next edition of the Hall of Faith. That's absolutely true. If we put our trust in Christ and walk with Him by faith, no reason why that can't happen.
We are so grateful for your faithfulness during this month as we have explored these wonderful heroes from the Old Testament. And I hope as you've heard their story, it's helped you with your story, helped you to understand that the God who served and saved and empowered them is the same God that we have today, who is willing to do that for us if we put our trust in Him. By faith, they lived, and so can we. We are finishing up this series also. This is the last day for me to make available to you this book called Where to Go in the Bible.
It is a book that chronicles 89 topics of scripture reference to help you understand how to answer questions that are asked of you. And I want you to take the opportunity. To get this book, we want to send it to you. We want you to receive it. We want you to use it.
Here's what you do. Today, this is the last day. Get your letter in the mail and send a gift of any size to help us with what we do on the radio. We're not telling you what to give. Only do the best you can.
Ask God what He wants you to do and do it. And then ask for your copy of this book. It's not available anyplace else, and this offer will go away after today. We'll have a brand new presentation when we meet together on Monday.
So be sure to get your copy today if you haven't done so already. We have a copy of this waiting for you. When you send your gift, simply say, Please send me where to go in the Bible, and it will be on its way. Here is the final teaching session from Hebrews 11, Ordinary Hebrews. Hebrews 11, 32 to 40.
Let's begin. By faith they defeated kingdoms. Notice the second one: by faith, they did righteous works. The third thing we read is they discovered the promises of God. Notice again in your Bible: whenever the people of the Old Testament were in trouble, whenever they got in a tough place, whenever they were in a corner, their back was against the wall.
They would go grab a hold of one of God's promises and hang on to it for dear life. Have you ever done that? Have you ever said, Lord, I don't know where this is going or what I'm supposed to do, but this is what I read in your book. And by the way, I don't know how God does this. I don't even know how to explain this.
But if you're in a regular reading program of the Word of God, Inevitably, you will find that on the day when you need a promise, it's in your reading assignment. And you read that assignment and you read that promise and you think, how did he know? If you're just in no reading program at all, just sort of jumping around, you might find a promise here and there. But when you're in a reading program and you're reading through the Word of God, God has a way of just. Preparing your heart for whatever you need.
And the Bible says that whenever these Old Testament people got into difficulty, they would just grab hold of a promise. And I found two verses that I want to share with you because they're really, really great reminders and encouragements. Joshua 21:45 says, Not a word failed of any good thing which the Lord spoke in the house of Israel. All of it came to pass. Listen to this from 1 Kings 8:56.
Blessed be the Lord who has given rest to his people Israel according to all that he promised.
Now, watch. There has not failed one word of all his good promise, which he promised through his servant Moses. How much of the promise of God can you count on? All of it, not one little bit of it, is ever going to fail. Here are two verses of Scripture that said in the Old Testament: every single thing God Almighty promised, He did it.
God never out promises himself. He always performs what he says he will do. And if he's given you a promise from the word of God and you interpret that promise the way it should be interpreted, God will never, ever, ever not keep his word. How many of you know we're unfaithful? He's not.
We don't always keep our promises, do we? We make a lot of promises to God. And hope in our heart he doesn't keep track of all of them. But he never ever Fails to keep his promise to us. I remember reading the book of Daniel one time and realizing how special this was.
You know, Daniel was the prophet of Israel when they were in captivity to the Babylonians. It was toward the end of this captivity period, and one day Daniel was having his devotions. At least, this is how I think it happened. And he's reading the book of Jeremiah. And he's reading this book, and in this book, he sees Jeremiah's prophecy about the captivity that he's in the midst of.
And Jeremiah says that the days of this captivity are going to be 70 years. And Daniel begins to calculate how many years the captivity has been going on, and he realizes it's almost time for this to be over.
So, guess what he does? He takes Jeremiah's prophecy and he prays it back to God. And he said, God, let me just remind you of what you said. And he puts God's promise back in God's face. Not in an irreverent way, but in a tremendously important way.
Have you ever prayed one of God's promises back to God? Have you said, God, this is what you said in your word? And I just want to remind you of what you said because I really need this promise. The Lord doesn't need to be reminded, but we need to be reminded that the Lord said what He said.
So they discovered the great promises of the Old Testament. By faith, they destroyed kingdoms, did righteous works, discovered the promises of God. Number four, they defeated lions. They stopped the mouths of lions.
Now, there's three people in the Old Testament who got involved with lions. One guy we don't know very much about, his name is Beniah. But the two people we do know about who were involved with lions are. David? Samson.
Both of them killed lions, and the reference here is to Daniel's experience in the lion's den. I believe. Daniel 6:22 says, My God sent his angel and shut the lion's mouth so that they have not hurt me. And I remember as a little kid growing up in Sunday school, that was one of our favorite stories: Daniel in the Lions Den. And have you seen the pictures of Daniel taking a nap with his head on the lion, you know, just kind of laying there in the den?
The Bible says that when he was thrown into the lion's den because of his faithfulness to God, Almighty God moved in and shut the mouth of the lion. By faith, they destroyed kingdoms, displayed righteousness, discovered promises, defeated lions. Then number five, by faith they defied fire. Daniel's three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, thrown into the fiery furnace because they wouldn't bow down before Nebuchadnezzar's statue. And the Bible says, after they threw him into the furnace and it was heated seven times hotter than it had ever been heated, the king somehow looked into the fire and there were these three guys and there was one other person.
There were four. And the fourth was like unto the Son of God. God doesn't promise to keep us out of the fire. He just says he'll go in there with us. and be with us through whatever experience we're going through.
And by faith they destroyed kingdoms and displayed righteousness and discovered promises and defeated lions and defied the fire and they dodged the sword. It says they escaped the sword. And this is in reference to an attack on Israel by the Amalekites. And the Bible tells us that Moses went up into a mountain to intercede for them. And remember, when his arms got tired, they held his arms up.
And whenever his arms were up, the Israelites were in control. And whenever his arms went down, they got defeated. And the Bible says that they dodged the sword. And by faith, they developed strength. I love this one.
Out of weakness, they were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. All three of those statements go together, and they remind us that all God's giants have been weak men who just did great things for God. We sometimes find, well, I'm not capable of being a giant for God. Nobody ever was and ever will be. Because you don't get to be one of God's giants because you're something special.
You get to be a giant of God when you recognize your own weakness and allow God to move into your weakness and make you strong. Just think about the people we've read about already in this chapter. Apart from the power of God, Samson was as weak as any other man on the face of the earth, he got his strength from God. Gideon was a trembling farmer hiding in a wine press. Barak begged Deborah to assist him in battle.
And out of fear and weakness, God gave him strength. Jephthah was rejected. He was the son of a prostitute. Who are these people that became champions of faith? They're weak people.
And God took their weakness and made something strong out of who they were. And that's how God does it, isn't it? That's why Paul wrote in the New Testament. But We take pleasure in infirmities and in reproaches and in needs and in persecutions and in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, Then I am strong.
That's not double speak. That makes absolutely good spiritual sense. What does it mean, Pastor? It means when we're all filled up with our own strength and our own ability and our own, we can do this. And if you're a type A like I am, you fight this battle a lot.
You know, you always got the list of things you're going to do next and the projects you got on your report, and you know, I can tackle this, and then all of a sudden, God will give you a great glimpse of your own inability and your weakness. And then after you get over being discouraged and defeated, he'll say, Let me show you what I can do. You see, when we're so filled up with our own ability, we've got no room for God. And usually, along the way in life, God gives us all a signature experience to prove that to us. And many of you know, I went through this years ago when I had two different bouts of cancer back to back.
And you know, even back as long ago as that was, they had processed this treatment of cancer and chemotherapy so that you really didn't. I used to hear about people getting sick, I never got sick. The anti-nausea medicine is pretty strong, good stuff. But I was so overwhelmed by the fatigue. And I remember saying, this is profound fatigue.
This is not just being tired. This is like fatigue you can't even describe to somebody. To get up in the morning at 8 o'clock and feel like you got to go back to bed at 9 because you have no strength. And then get back to the place where I started to preach, and I'd come to preach. And when I got done preaching, I'd be soaking wet, and I would be so fatigued I would just barely get to the back, and I'd have to rest until I went home.
And the fatigue just got a hold of my whole system so that every time I'd try to pray, I'd start to cry, and it just drove me nuts. But during that time, God used my weakness. to infuse his strength And he taught me such an incredible lesson. In fact, during the time there was something kind of funny that happened, I gotta tell you about that. God has a sense of humor.
I've learned that, and especially when I was sick. I used to get these crazy cards from people. I remember getting a card one night when I was in the hospital, and it said something about have a good time in the hospital today. The ugly nurse comes on duty tonight. The night before that, I had been awakened in the middle of the night to get a shot of morphine or something, and I wanted to say, No, the ugly nurse was here last night.
She wasn't coming tonight. You know, I just, God just sort of kind of filled your heart with some of this humor. After I got done with this disease, I started getting letters from all over the country of people saying, you know, we used to listen to you on the radio all the time, and boys, Pastor Jeremiah, since you have been sick and have come back. Your messages on the radio are so much better. They're so much more inspiring.
We sense the passion in your heart and in your voice. And I'd read all these letters and I'd just smile. Because you see what they were listening to on the radio was recorded before I got sick. And I learned something from that. I wasn't preaching better, they were listening better, right?
And isn't it true? Don't you listen to people when you know they've been through stuff? You listen to them in a different way.
So, what is the Bible saying here? The Bible said that God took all these Weak people, these people that didn't seem to have a lot going for them, and he used them. and calls them people of faith. They destroyed kingdoms, they displayed righteousness, they discovered promises, they defeated lions, they defied fire, they dodged the sword, they developed strength, and they disabled death. It says here that women received their dead raised to life again.
And there are only two occasions of that in the Old Testament that I'm aware of. First was Elijah, who brought back to life the child of the widow of Zarephath. in 1 Kings chapter 17. And the second was Elijah's successor, Elisha, who did the same thing for the son of the Shunammite woman, and that's in 2 Kings chapter 4.
So, all of these people who did all of these great things are listed for us in these first few verses. I want you to just take a breath now and I want you to join me for the most important part of this passage. Because most of us don't consider ourselves to be in the first part of this. You see The first part of this chapter is about people who were victorious over their enemies. But the last part of it is about people who were victims of their enemies.
And I want you to notice that we're about to learn that the faith that God gives us to be strong is the same faith that He gives us to persevere during difficult times. In fact, it's so interesting when you're reading the 11th chapter and you get to the 35th verse, it says, women receive their dead raised to life again. And you need to draw a little line in that verse because he's about to change the storyline. He says others were tortured. And it goes through this whole list of things that happen.
Who are the others? They're the others that God didn't use to drive forward some triumphant victory.
Well, let's just read what happened to them.
Some of them, we are told, were tortured because of their faith. They would not accept deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. In other words, some of the early Christians were given the option: if you will bow down to Caesar, if you will put some incense on his altar, you can walk away from persecution. And the scripture says they chose to be tortured rather than to be. giving up their faith in Almighty God.
The early Christians learned that by honoring God and putting Him first and alone, When faced with the alternative between death and renouncing their faith, these champions would not be broken. They would not sacrifice their future on the altar of the immediate. They were willing to accept the worst. That the world could do to them because they knew God had his best waiting for them in the future.
So many of them were tortured. They had a wheel, and they would tie the hands to the wheel and their feet to the wheel, and they would little by little stretch the wheel out, literally pulling their limbs from their body. People who have studied this say it was the most torturous thing you could ever do to a person. And these men and women, these others, They chose to be tortured rather. Than to give up their faith in God.
The Bible says not only were they tortured, but some of them went through trials because of their faith. Still others had the trial of mockings and scourging and chains and imprisonment. Notice, if you just read the text, they were belittled and beaten and bound and bruised. They were stoned. They were sawn asunder, it says.
What does that mean? I read that when King Manasseh got mad at the prophet Isaiah, he took Isaiah and put him in an empty tree trunk and had the tree sawed in half so that Isaiah would be victimized in the process.
Okay. And the Bible says that these people who endured that were champions of faith. They weren't champions of faith because of what they did. They were champions because of what happened to them and how they honored God in the midst of their testing. The Bible says some of them were tortured, some had trials, and some were tormented.
It says in Hebrews 11:37, they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute and afflicted and tormented. Of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. These were the people of God. The first part of this passage talks about those who triumphed and walked around with their hands up high.
Look what God has done through us. But the last part of the chapter talks about others. And most of us, we feel like we're part of the others. We wonder if God is with us when we're going through the stuff we're going through. And this passage of Scripture is saying: if you're enduring things that you didn't ask for, if things are tough for you and you keep honoring God, you are as much a champion of faith as the ones who stood on the mountain defying the prophets of Baal.
This totally destroys The prosperity theology that you hear so much today just totally destroys it. Anytime somebody comes up and says, you know, God wants everybody to be well, everybody to be healthy, everybody to have all the things they need, here's what I want you to say to them. What about the others? What others? The others who are Described as wandering around in sheepskins and goatskins and being destitute and afflicted and tormented, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth because of their faith in Almighty God.
God said they were the champions. Not just the people who accomplished great things. Don't let anybody tell you that the Bible says that this is a walk in the park from the moment you get saved all the way to when you get to heaven. It ain't a walk in the park. Life is filled with difficulties and challenges.
But here's what you need to know: you are not out of the will of God when you're going through difficult things. You may be in the most important time in your life to show the strength of God in your life. The world looks around and they see prosperity and they say, Well, yeah, if I had all that stuff, I'd believe in God too. But when they see God's people walking through the difficult times, As described here, and many of you know what these words are about. And you still are honoring the Lord God with your life, and you still trying to find ways to help others while you yourself are going through difficulty.
The Bible says you can hold your hands up high too, because you're a champion. You're one of God's champions. You're one of the others. I've put a little circle around that word in my Bible, the others. We talk so much about the first group.
We don't talk enough about the others.
So whether delivered from their foes or delivered to their foes. The call to faithfulness was followed, and therefore, these unnamed patriots in the end of the chapter. are as important as those who are at the front of it. What can we learn from this passage with all these names? What can we learn?
Three things I want you to remember. First of all, Faith enlists all kinds of servants. Did you know that? When I read this chapter and I went back over it, I was just amazed. God doesn't have any stereotype.
What kind of people does God use?
Well, what kind of person are you? God uses you. God uses all kinds of folks. Look, if you read this passage, you discover that He used men and women. He used young and old.
He used official people and common people. He used those who were highborn and those who had no pedigree. And if you look at the list carefully, just the list we've studied, you will see a farmer, a shepherd, a soldier, a priest, and the son of a prostitute. God used them all. Every one of them.
You say, well, God can't use me. Yes, He can. In fact, He's just waiting for you to let Him do it. If you're a Christian, God's got something for you to do. You say, Well, I can't do anything.
If you're a Christian, that can't be true. Because the Bible says when you became a Christian, God gave you a spiritual gift. And that spiritual gift is His special ability that He's given to you to serve Him.
Well, you say, I don't know what it is.
Well, find out what it is. Ask some people around you, what does it seem like I do? What has God gifted me to do? And He'll show you what it is.
So the first thing you need to know is that Faith enlists all kinds of servants. And the second thing is that faith employs all kinds of strategies. Isn't it interesting that God did his work, and we've seen it in the 11th chapter, He did it in some of the strangest ways you've ever seen any work be done. I mean, how do you take out a city by marching around it 13 times? How do you take out a giant with a slingshot?
How do you take down two armies in a coalition with 300 men? Everything God does, He does uniquely. That's why it's always wrong for you to say, well, you know, Pastor Jeremiah, why aren't we doing in this church what they're doing in that church? Let me tell you why. Because this church isn't that church.
This church is God's church here. He has a plan for us. You know, people always want to copy what we do, and that's wrong. Find out what God wants you to do.
Somebody says, well, you know, Pastor, I know somebody else who does what I do. Listen, if you will listen to the voice of God, He gives you your strategy to do the work He's called you to do, and it probably won't be just like anybody else's, it'll be different. Aren't you glad God isn't stereotyped? You know, people say, God is boring. Are you kidding me?
God is not boring. God has something different for everybody to do if you just let Him do it.
So God uses all kinds of servants, He uses all kinds of strategy.
So that faith enjoys all kinds of success. Faith can do what nothing else can do. All the things that were accomplished just in these few verses because of faith. Cause success to happen in the plan of God. I read that, like David of old, God has five pebbles available for us to use.
Here they are. Are you ready? God is God has God does. God can and God will. Let me say that again.
God is God has. God does God can. Then God will. For all of us, for any of us. we can find our way into the next edition.
of the Hall of Faith. Not necessarily because we might achieve something great, it might be because we endure something great. God has a place for all of us to serve Him. Wherever you happen to be in your life at this present time, I want to ask you to stop for a moment and think about this. What is it that God has given me to do?
And am I doing it? You know, one of the things you discover when you read the Bible is that faith means taking the first step. without assurance. That there's soon to be another one. Remember when they were told to cross the river, and they were told that they had to put their feet in first before the river would roll back?
That's the way it works. That's how faith works. You take a step of faith, trusting that God is going to stay there by you and empower and strengthen and protect you, and He does it. But until you take the first step, you'll never know that. I encourage you to apply that to your heart.
If that's the only lesson you've learned during the month of Hebrews, I hope that that will be true. And we'll study this some more. We are so thankful for all of you who are faithful partners. And don't forget, you can still get your copy of the book, Where to Go in the Bible. But this is my last announcement of it.
So if you haven't done so already, Be sure to send a gift today to help us with the cost of radio and production and ask for your copy, and it'll be on its way to you. Have a great weekend, and we'll see you in December. The message you just heard originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Dr. David Jeremiah, the senior pastor. Turning Point is also on radio and TV this weekend.
To learn where to find it, visit our website davidjeremiah.org slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org slash radio or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's newly updated scripture reference guide, Where to Go in the Bible When. It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard, New International and New King James Versions.
available in a variety of handsome and resilient cover options. Let us know how this ministry is helping you grow by writing to Turning Point, PO Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us Monday as we begin our Christmas series, Why the Nativity, on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
