Sunday 05 • 05 • 19

If you'll turn in your bulletin or look on the wall behind me, we're going to read from Hebrews chapter 11 together, verse one and seven through 16. You ready? Three, two, one, go.

Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. By faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this, he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance and he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith, he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city. — Hebrews 11:1, 7-16

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Would you join me in prayer together? Lord, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. You are our rock and our fortress and our redeemer. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

Faith in Practice

So, have you heard the one about the two friends? High school friends ran into each other after many years. One of them had been super driven in high school, always had lots of goals, super ambitious, and he had left his hometown a long time ago. He was back for a conference, and while he's back in town, he runs into an old high school buddy. This guy was sort of the opposite—super laid back, life sort of comes to him, never really had any dreams or ambitions.

But he noticed something. He was like, "Man, that guy is so impeccably dressed and he has this incredible high-end car. Pardon me, but what happened to you?"

He says, "Well, you want me to tell you my secret?"

"Please."

"Well, one day I decided I'd open up the Bible and see what it said. So I opened up my Bible, flipped through without looking, put my finger down, and I looked down and saw the word 'gold.' So I went out and invested in the gold market. Currency was down and it started doing really well, and I made a lot of money. Then I was like, maybe I'll try that again. So I went through and flipped my finger down—'oil.' So I went out and bought a ton of stock and man, the money has been flowing. I've just done really well."

The guy was like, "Wow, that's great. Good for you."

That night, he goes back to his hotel room and he's flipping through the channels, nothing to watch, and he looks over and sees the Gideon Bible. You know what a Gideon Bible is? Gideons put Bibles in hotels. So he thinks, "Can't hurt, right?" He's flipping through, puts his finger down, looks down, and it says: "Chapter 11."

For those of you who didn't laugh, chapter 11 means you're filing for bankruptcy. You have no money.

So here we are today in chapter 11 of Hebrews and it's all about faith. I think you get why the joke fits, but I think this passage really contradicts what many people think of as faith. It contradicts what people in our society think of as faith and even what people in the church think of as faith.

Think about this: we get this really gritty definition of faith and then these snapshots. Listen to what it says. First, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. I mean, that's a gritty definition. And then you get these snapshots, and these are incredible snapshots. You get snapshots of a man building a gigantic boat in a desert. You have this really old lady sewing baby clothes.

You have a man whose name means father of nations, laying his one and only son on an altar to kill him. I mean, all these snapshots confound the way people think of his faith. Now, let me show you that. In our society, if you ask people what is faith, they think of it as doing something or believing something in order to get goodies from God. You're doing something, believing something. So you believe enough, you do all the right things, you're a good person, or even you treat the Bible like a Ouija board. And somehow you get goodies from God. And yet, that's very different from what we learned in this passage. Listen to verse 13:

These people all died in faith not having received the things promised, but having seen them and grieved them from far off. — Hebrews 11:13

Man, that is not what we think of faith. They didn't get what they were longing for.

And the same thing is true for the church. This also confronts what many people think of as faith in the church. And that is faith is about believing the right truths. It's about agreeing to a system of doctrine. But look at this passage. Story after story, we don't know much of anything about these people having precise doctrine. It shows us that it's about how people live, not what they thought. Hebrews 11 shows us that faith is not what you do with your brain, it's what you do with your life. We're not saved by the amount of your faith. We're not saved by faith that way. We're saved by grace, and only grace is what makes faith possible.

In fact, this passage shows us that it's not about how much faith you have, but what you put your hope in. What you put your faith in. The assurance of things hoped for. It's not just that you have faith, but where you put your faith. So I can't think of any better way for us to end this than right back here at the feet of God. To say this loudly and clearly once again: we want to be a church that is not about getting God on our agenda, but being on his agenda. Of having faith not in and exercising things not in what we can do. That's way too small. Not about what we can accomplish, that is too limited. But what only God can do.

Hope Waits

So here's my outline today, if you take notes. Hope waits. Hope wrestles. Hope is homesick. I want to give a nod today. A lot of my material was taken from a counselor named Adam Young, and I'll reference him where I can.

Now, this passage, Hebrews 11, this really famous one-chapter flyover history of the people of Israel would be a great study for you this summer. If you don't know who some of these people are, it's worth looking over. But I want to highlight in particular two of these people in this section: Abraham and Noah.

Abraham, the father of the faith—the father of all the faith. He received a promise from God. Look at verse 8:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. — Hebrews 11:8

God had given him a promise of a new homeland. It's called here in Hebrews 11—I love this word—an inheritance. Now, that's a word that has some freight with us, because we know what an inheritance is. An inheritance is something you don't have yet, right? We're all on the same page here. Something you don't have yet, and you're waiting for it. But you're waiting for an indeterminate amount of time. I mean, very rarely is there an inheritance coming when you know that it's coming on this date. Most of the time it's like, I don't know when I'm going to receive something. It's been promised to me, but I don't know when it's ever going to come.

But so this helps us drill down on this idea of faith. Because faith, let's be honest, in Christian circles is a safe word. It's a nice word. It doesn't have a whole lot of punch to it. In this passage, the writer of Hebrews points us to a little bit grittier definition: hope. Hope. The assurance of things hoped for.

Adam Young describes it this way. This is different from faith. Faith is a safe word. Hope is groaning inwardly while waiting expectantly, expecting things to happen. Man, that is so hard to do. This is why Frederick Nietzsche hated Christianity. He felt like Christianity was a cruel religion because it held out hope in the faces of all kinds of evidence to the contrary. It fueled hope. He called it the evil of evils because it prolongs people's torment.

Think about this. Think about longing, looking for, waiting for something that has not come yet to fruition. Think about this in your own life. Something you want. Maybe you've been longing for years for a significant relationship, or the healing of a significant relationship, or a break for your job, or getting into that grad program. And you've been waiting and longing. You've waited for years.

And you begin to think yourself, isn't it foolish for me to keep wanting this? I mean, really, should I continue to hold out hope? And this is where Nietzsche is like, Exactly. Right? Realism kicks in and says, give it up. You're holding on to something in the face of reality, you should let go.

Biblical hope calls us to long and to wait and to groan with expectation, and that requires some courage. Waiting with expectation. Saying like, I long for a significant other in my life and not only do I long for it, I also expect. I visualize in my mind walking down the aisle. I hope for a break, for a change, and for some kind of way forward with my work. And I begin to expect like, what would it be like to show up on my first day? That's waiting with hope. That's expectant. And that's hard. It requires us to bring specific desires to God and hold them up before him and say, you can do this. Waiting on you. It's agonizing for something.

Let's take it another step, though. In this passage, the writer of Hebrews holds up for us another person: Noah. You know the story of Noah? God is going to bring destruction on the earth by flooding. It's going to wipe it out. And you are right now to prepare for this in advance by beginning to build a gigantic construction project—not a kayak in your garage, not a sailboat, right? A gigantic boat. Begin working on this in the middle of a desert.

This shows us something of the character of faith.

The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

God tells Noah, build a boat. But again, this is the character of biblical hope. It's not passive. It's not waiting like, God's going to do what God's going to do. It's waiting with dynamic faith. It's hoping. It's trusting. It's not passive.

This is why we chose this as a theme for our church. I know this is the anti-slogan for any generosity initiative. Some of you are like, what kind of counsel does this church get on your marketing? Terrible marketing. I mean, how many of you have been part of a church before that does it? It's not "we can't." It's like "we can." You know, build the vision. We can do it. I have been part of churches like that—we're gonna do it. And what I love about this is we want to keep saying, we want to be on God's agenda. We want God to be the one. So we put ourselves in an active posture of hope as a church, an active posture of dependency, an active waiting and expectation and longing.

This two-year initiative that we've been part of, this journey we've been on, has called us to wait with active hope and trust God to give, to pray big prayers, to hope, to wait, to expect. I just want to remind you of where our church has been over the last two years. We intentionally chose a target for us financially that was too big for us—$2,500,000. We didn't hit it. And I am so glad. I know that sounds crazy, but honestly, I would love to have more money in the bank as a church. Sure. But I love that we didn't hit this. I love that at the very end, we're saying, we still can't. God is our hope. God is our provision. God is the one who leads and provides, and we want to put ourselves on his agenda. It makes us have to keep praying Jesus-sized prayers and looking to him and hoping in him.

Hope Wrestles

See, hope waits. Second, hope wrestles. Now, I choose that word on purpose. Remember this chapter—a flyover history of the people of Israel. Where did the name Israel come from? And what does it mean? Israel is a word that God attached to this people, and it means "he who wrestles with God." I mean, can you imagine that if that was the name of our country, right? United States of Wrestlers. I mean, can you imagine what kind of a national identity you have if you grew up in a country that's like "United States of Wrestling"? What kind of a national identity is that?

The word comes from a moment in Genesis chapter 32. Jacob, one of the patriarchs mentioned in this chapter, has this encounter with God. He's out in the desert, and he wrestles all night with an angel of the Lord. At the end of it, the angel touches his hip socket and throws a joint and changes his name. "You will no longer be called Jacob, you will be called Israel—he who wrestles with God."

What's ambiguous about that passage—what's funny about it—is it's ambiguous about who he's wrestling with there. Was he wrestling with an angel of the Lord?

Even Jacob after the end of that wrestling match says this: "I'm going to name this spot where I had this wrestling match all night long, Penuel, which means I saw God's face, and I live to tell the story about it." Like he's saying, I met God here, and I wrestled him.

Look, hope in God involves wrestling with God. Involves wrestling with God. I know that is a strange statement. It might not fit your theology. Again, Adam Young says chances are if you have never wrestled with God, you don't live with much hope. Unfulfilled longings drive you to God until you take the risk of hoping that God will fulfill the desires of your heart in this lifetime, then God will seem impersonal to you. You may know him as the savior of the world in some kind of remote and distant sense. But will you know him as God of my rescue? Personal, me.

Think about wrestling with God. This is wrestling with God—the internal combat between what you know God is capable of doing and what's actually happening in your life right now. The internal struggle, that sense of disappointment. Where are you? Why are you not doing this?

Most Christians do this all the time. But most wrestling with God is actually avoided by adding this little phrase on the end of our prayers: "If it be your will." Now I know before you stone me, let me remind you what I'm talking about. That's a biblical phrase. Jesus prayed:

"Not my will, but yours be done." — Luke 22:42

It's a fine phrase to use after you've wrestled. But I'm afraid sometimes we tag that phrase on to distance ourselves from our hopes, to hold those things out like I don't want to get too close to this. So I'll just add that little phrase and it makes me feel better. Because God is probably not going to listen to me. He's probably not going to come through on this.

You may be saying, "Wait a second, aren't we supposed to surrender our wills to God?" Yeah. But like a general—I mean, you don't want a general in the army who, at the first sign of other troops coming around him, is waving the white flag. You want a general who's like, "I'm going to hold out to the very end. I'm going to fight." See, they surrender after a long fight, after a place of exhaustion.

Is there a way to actually tack that phrase on to our prayers in a way that holds God and biblical hope at a distance from us, rather than having a robust hope?

Wrestling in Our Leadership

I think if I look at our church over the last two years, it has involved—at least among our leadership—a ton of wrestling. Can I tell you about some of those?

Two years ago last April—April 2018—we were supposed to be out of this building. 04/01/2018 was sort of an off-the-cliff moment for us because we had known that was the end of our lease, and we had nowhere else to go. You guys know the Raleigh downtown market for real estate is nuts. I mean, it's crazy. There was no space for a congregation this size to buy anything.

And the summer before that, July 2017, I get a call from Mark Best, who's like, "You are never going to believe it. Our landlord, who had always been like 'no more rental for CTK,' offered us a three-year extension." Out of nowhere. We did not see that coming. God's provision like out of nowhere for us. We were wrestling.

We launched Renewal Presbyterian Church February 2017. Two months before we launched this initiative, we sent some of our best people. We sent tons of money. We prayed big prayers. We dreamed big dreams. Last month, we closed Renewal. Man, it's been a lot of wrestling among our leadership. That was hard. God, this is what we thought you really led us to do. Yeah, we still think that. But man, wrestling at the same time.

Fall, a year and a half ago, we were interviewing for director of operations and development, and our deacons were doing these interviews. They interviewed this guy named Russell McCutchen. They're like, "Hey, we found him, but he's not the guy we were looking for. He's a church planter. Are we ready to do that?" Right? I guess so. Like, we're gonna take what the Lord is sending. It's great. He's coming here in June this year.

We had a building option come on the market last fall. I cut short my sabbatical to come back and look at this thing. Right? We looked, we walked through, man, it was hard. Like, should we do this? It was sort of a Goldilocks option. It was like actually in a price range, actually right here on Wake Forest Road, this will actually work for us. We had a huge prayer vision night, we all walked through it. People were like, "Yeah, let's do it." We walked through the whole process. And a couple months later, the thing is shut down because the selling church couldn't get their financing through to buy their next property. Again, wrestling with God.

And you know, that's us as leadership in our church. What about you? We know hope wrestles with God. But isn't it sometimes easier just to not hope?

Isn't it easier not to hope sometimes? I want to remind you of the third person this passage who I think was a big wrestler with God. And that's Sarah.

Even when she was past age — Hebrews 11:11

That sounds like it was easy, like it was a short thing. But let me give you the backstory. This was a long and drawn out wrestling match. Abraham's name, her husband's name was originally Abram, which meant father of many, which is a big joke because they were old people and had no children. And I love the phrase in here: He was as good as dead. Well, thanks a lot for that.

God comes to them. Remember, he's already promised to take them out to a land, but now he comes and promises them a child in their old age. And not only that, he changes their names. Changes Sarai to Sarah. Changes Abram, father of many, to Abraham, which means father of nations. Again, no child. You gotta believe this guy was a joke among people who knew him. Father of nations. Like, talking about your goats. You know, like—and thus begins this wrestling match.

Because Sarah is barren. Sarah is barren. In fact, you realize that of the three first patriarchs in the Old Testament—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob—all of them married to barren women. Samuel's mother, barren woman. This is a theme of the Bible: God's ability to work in a place of hopelessness and powerlessness. I can't think of a better metaphor for that in all the Bible than barrenness.

And here's the question: Can God work there? Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament professor and writer, says this: "Barrenness is the arena of God's life-giving action." Can the closed womb be opened and can there be life? The utter impossibility of this promise becomes evident. This is not happening. Sarah knows what's possible. She knows the contradiction between what is and what God is capable of. You better believe there's wrestling going on there.

So where in your life right now are you experiencing powerlessness and weakness, and you look and you're like, "There is no hope. This is a barren place in my life"—and yet, this is what God loves to work in. Places of barrenness. But here's what we do. I think all the time in those kind of spots, this is what good Christian people do, and we do it with our theology, and it's incredibly dangerous. We give airtime to cynicism. Instead of waiting expectantly and continuing to hold out hope, we say things like, "It's never going to happen. It's never going to happen." Instead of starting something new, you're like, "That's never going to work. I'm not being cynical. I'm just being realistic."

My dad coming and repenting to me and being a new, real dad to me—not going to happen. That career that has been closed, that's been a closed door to me, it is not going to open up. God's work in the lives of people that I love and care about—let's just be realistic. If it hadn't happened now, it's not going to happen. And we hold it, we push hope away because it's too painful. We push it away.

The Danger of Christian Cynicism

See, what's the problem with this if you're a Christian? Nothing—nothing is more unrealistic in your life, in the life of this world, than the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, right? Aren't we Easter people? Aren't we empty tomb people? But let's be realistic about Jesus' resurrection. No. Let's not, right? There's a form of cynicism that's Christian cynicism, and yet it's really not Christian, right?

It's, "Hey, it's a broken world. Hey, God doesn't promise to give me everything in this life until I get to heaven." Now, the problem with those statements is that both of those things are true, aren't they? Those are true statements. But there is a way that you could use those sentences to kill hope with theology. We do it all the time. It has nothing to do with Jesus either. It's not Christian. It's a denial of the God of hope.

So let me ask you a couple questions. Is it a broken world? Is it a broken world, people? Yes, it is. But did God make the broken body of Jesus to rise from the dead? Yes. Does God promise to give you everything you want in this life? No. But listen, God won't meet all your desires. He's not a magic pill. But do you know the ones he's going to meet? You don't. This is a living relationship with a living God who's powerful and loving and good.

And see, the question you have to continually ask—this is what wrestling and faith looks like—is holding out open hands to living in relationship with the God of the living. Living in this place with him.

Cynicism is a byproduct of repeated experience of powerlessness, and it's easier just to kill off hope. I'm afraid we counsel each other in these ways, again, with great theology, and it's super dangerous. You hear someone in your community group express desires for something. They express hope in something. They're like, I really want to get into this grad school program. You're like, be careful. Don't make that into an idol. Hey, idolatry is real. But what's that? What if those words are coming from a place like, yeah, don't hope too much? Or you're really hopeful, really hoping for this reconciliation in this unreconciled relationship. Be careful. Maybe that's not God's will for you. What is that? It's like counseling someone with God's sovereignty to not believe in his power. Now, God's sovereignty is true. You've heard me preach Romans—don't take me out on that. But do you see how we use theology to actually kill hope, cut off desires? Don't risk that. No, that is not kind and it's not biblical hope.

To say things like, aren't your expectations too high? God's real. I'm holding out for God's word. Do you see how hard it is to be a people who live in hope? It is a hard thing. It is a bold and courageous thing for us as a community to be people who try to wrestle with God and live in hope. Those things go together but man, it's hard. So hope waits, hope wrestles.

Hope Is Homesick

Finally, hope is homesick. Look at verses 13 through 16. A great picture for us of all these people in faith not getting what they wanted in this life. And yet it says they were looking forward. They were saying, this isn't where, this isn't our home. Looking forward to a city whose architect and builder is God. Putting their hope in God—homesick for where they're going.

See, we can end this initiative today where we started it two years ago: back at the feet of God. You ever heard people say the phrase, hey, don't put all your eggs in one basket? You know what that means? Like, hey, spread out your investments. Don't put too much hope in one thing. We're not going to do that. We're going to take all our eggs and we're going to put it in a basket that's held by the Holy Spirit. We're going to put all our hope in the Holy Spirit's basket. We're going to trust him. We don't control God. He's not under our management, but he promises to lead and provide for his church. He promises that he is taking us on a journey and we're not there yet, and we hope in him. We're homesick for a better place.

I just finished reading aloud a series of children's fantasy books with my two youngest guys in our home. It's taken us nine months to get through these books. They were authored by a Christian singer, Andrew Peterson. I really love Andrew Peterson, and he's a great singer. I was a little skeptical about him as an author. Man, these are like—I have no qualms about saying this is some of the best books I've read in a long time. They're right up there, right under the Chronicles of Narnia in my mind.

So anyway, fantasy books about life in a different world and about three young kids growing up in this foreign world. They live in this country called Skree, and they grow up, and it is occupied territory. There's this oppressive regime, half lizard, half people called the Fangs of Dang. Right? Like, great name. The Fangs of Dang are oppressing them, under the control of Gnag the Nameless. Like, again, great name. This oppressive state that comes and kidnaps people in the middle of the night and you don't see them anymore. And yet these children are raised in this home where they're told, actually, you're not from here. You're from a place called the Shining Isle of Aniera, and it's across the Dark Sea of Darkness, right?

And they learn, they grow up learning the songs about Aniera. They grow up memorizing the stories about Aniera. They study Aniera in history in their books. They grow up learning the three principal things that Anierans love to do. They're told over and over again, this isn't where you're from. And the whole book is a journey to discovering again who they are and what their real home is.

Man, what a picture for us. We are people who are exiles and strangers. We live in an oppressive place. We have a real enemy. This world is not your home. Raleigh isn't Disneyland. This isn't all there is. We long for what is to come.

We're about to start a series next week. James is going to kick it off.

First Peter on exiles and sojourners. That's who we are. See, this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, but are we longing and living with homesickness for our real home? Are we singing the songs? Are we remembering the stories? Are we reminding each other of the Shining Isle? This isn't where it is.

We have a choice this morning. We have a choice as a church. You know, we could just be content to be a nice little PCA church where we have good theology. Nothing really wrong with that. Except when we use it to kill hope. We use it to not exercise faith, to not take risks. We could be content to be the reformed witness. But listen, I'm not going to pastor that church. And we're not going to be that people.

We are a "we can't" people. And though we're at the end of this series, this two-year journey together, I hope that that becomes a mantra for us as a church. I hope that we continue to pray "Jesus only" prayers. We hold out big dreams. Our goal is not just being the bastion of reformed truth and a little nice safe haven for us and our kids. But we have a big God. We have a true home. We have real and lasting hopes. We're going somewhere.

See, here's my call: Don't let this mantra die. I want us more and more to be the kind of people who regularly pray that we can't, but God is sufficient. We can't, but He can. We still can't, but He's taking us. We're on a journey for Him.

Remember, this is Scree. It's not the Shining Isle or any area yet. This isn't home. May God give us grace to place all of our hopes in Him. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Would you pray with me? Father, we're so weak.