The Pinnacle of Faith
Hebrews 11:30-40
Coming now to Hebrews chapter 11, we're going to pick up the account in verse 30 through verse 40; and we've called this message "The Pinnacle of Faith." "The Pinnacle of Faith." Hebrews 11 verses 30 to 40; and as we have been reminded many times in our study of this chapter, the Holy Spirit is making a concentrated effort to sell the virtues of faith. The Spirit of God wants us to recognize, all men for that matter to recognize, the tremendous importance of a total kind of faith. Faith is really defined as simply trusting completely in what God says with no conditions. It is unconditional trust in what God says, strictly on the basis that He said it. Now that is what faith really amounts to, and every man lives his life either doing that or not doing it. Every man leads his life either believing in what God says and betting his life on it, or in betting his life on his own attitudes, on his own intellect, on his own understanding. Those are the only two options; but the faith that He is talking about in this chapter is that faith with takes the bare Word of God, now mark this, the bare Word of God and, acting on it, simply because it is the Word of God, stakes its life.
True faith doesn't need to ask any questions. It is simply believing what God said, because He's God and He said it, without any explanation at all. In fact, where you have true trust, you don't need explanations...That which looks for signs and wonders and explanations is not faith. It's doubt looking around to see if it can find some proof. Since God and the system are opposites, faith means breaking with the system; and so, consequently, to believe God is often to do that which is unreasonable and illogical and certainly different than what the world would dictate.
Yet faith willingly obeys. Now, we've seen it all the way through this chapter. For these Jews to whom He wrote, the natural thing was to hang onto Judaism. The reasonable thing was to hold onto Judaism because the break was so complete and so treacherous, and they would lose their friends and...and their families, and they would lose their social status, and they would be at a loss in many dimensions. And so the obvious thing to do was to hang onto Judaism. Even for those who really believed in Christ, to hold onto some of the trappings, just so the break wasn't so obvious that you sacrificed a lot.
So the reasonable thing wasn't to commit yourself to God totally, but to just get in a little bit, get your feet wet, and hang onto Judaism. But all through the chapter, the Holy Spirit is saying, "Faith means God says it, I do it wholeheartedly and totally." And we saw that with Abel. Abel, the first illustration of faith in the chapter didn't ask God any questions. He didn't ask for any reasons. God said, "Make a sacrifice," and he did it. And then we saw Enoch. Enoch didn't question God. God said to Enoch, "Separate yourself from the world and walk with Me," and he did it. And then we saw Noah, and Noah didn't question God. He obeyed, though it seemed totally bizarre to spend 120 years building a boat in the desert. God told him to do it. He suffered the mockery of his contemporaries for all those years, and he never saw any rain, but he believed it would rain. Why? Did God have a black cloud hanging over his head for 120 years? No, he believed it because God said it, and that was all he needed.
We saw Abraham. He believed God. God said, "Get up and get outta here and go to a land I'll show thee, and I'm not even gonna tell you where it is, and you're gonna get a promise that you'll never receive." And he got up and went. Why? Because God told him to go, and he never asked God a question. He just obeyed. And then we saw Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, and in each case, the natural course of events would lead a certain way, and God gave them instruction to violate the natural course of events, and never for a moment did they hesitate to believe it. And then we saw Moses, and everything in Moses' life said, "Hang onto Egypt. Hang onto the pleasure, the plenty, and everything else you've got." And God said, "Break with it. Go down and lead My people Israel," and he never had a second question. He immediately did what God said.
You say, "Why? Why did they so commit themselves to God? Why did they so believe God?" It boils down to this, people. They had a right view of who God is. The life of faith is based on proper theology. It may be difficult to do what God says. It may be strange. It may be bizarre. It may cause certain suffering. It may mean separation from the world, and even from people you love. It may cost all the ambitions and dreams of your life. It may even cost you your life, but to obey God because God said it is what faith is really all about.
Faith, then, is simply and only based on a person's attitude toward God. That's like J.B. Phillips wrote in his book, "Your God is too small. If you've got a little, tiny God, don't trust Him, because He's not verified in your mind." People who don't trust God have the wrong God. People who really know who God is have no reason to...to do anything but trust Him totally; and the reason these people trusted Him was because they had the right view of who He was. Moses serves as the illustration, the end of verse 27. Why did Moses do what he did? "He endured as seeing...what?...Him who is invisible." He focused on God, who God was, and the character of God; and, therefore, when he had a God that was great enough, he didn't have any problem doing what that God wanted him to do; because he knew God would keep His promise.
The bigger your God, the more you trust Him. Simple principle; and these heroes of the faith had such lofty, exalted knowledge of God. They saw Him as a sovereign, loving, covenant-keeping, faithful God. They took Him at His Word. They banked their life on it, though it was strange, though it was out of the ordinary, though it cross-grained everything they knew in the natural. They did it simply because God said it without any explanations.
Now, that's exactly what the Holy Spirit wants these people who are reading the Book of Hebrews for the first time to do. Now, remember, that all the books of the New Testament are written to somebody in particular, and this was written to a colony of Jews, and they were being really presented with the new covenant. Some of them were believers. Some of them were intellectually ascending to the Gospel but had never committed themselves to Christ; and this two, kind of a combination of two groups, was being really pinpointed by the writer of Hebrews to come all the way to Christ, to totally believe Him, and to let go of all the old stuff, to abandon themselves to what God said. They're trying to hold the best of two worlds. They really didn't trust Him. It's like taking your boat out, you know, on a stormy sea, but making sure that you never untie it from the dock...
Some years before the letter was written, the letter to the Hebrews, the Gospel of Christ was presented to this colony of Jews somewhere outside Jerusalem, and it was presented to them, chapter 2 verses 3 and 4 tell us, by a group of...of the apostles, those who had heard Christ or some disciples. They had heard the Gospel. Some of them had accepted Christ and really and truly believed they were really born again; but they found themselves holding onto some of the old patterns, some of the old customs, and they found themselves having a hard time breaking with the temple, particularly in Jerusalem and the priesthood; but there were others in the group who intellectually agreed that Christianity was true and that Christ was Messiah; and they got right up to the edge of it; and they had all this revelation, even with signs and wonders and...and diverse miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit; but they never came over to Christ. They just hung in the balance; and the infant, baby faith of the saved ones was really kind of floundering; and the emerging faith of the not yet saved ones was in danger of dissipating altogether, and they were gonna go back to Judaism and become apostates.
So all the way through the Book of Hebrews, the writer keeps saying, "Come on, come on, come on. Let us come to Christ. Let us enter in boldly into the holiest. Christ has made the way of access. Come on. Don't stop now. Put your total faith in Him. The old covenant is over with. Cut it off. Cut the cord." And you had to believe God to do that. You'd have to trust in the new covenant to sever every relationship, wouldn't you? To cut the...the line that ties you to the dock and go out on the sea and believe that God says, "I'll take care of your little boat."
So He's calling for full faith. In chapter 11, He then defines what this full faith is. It's that commodity which allows a man, because he believes so strongly in a powerful God, to cut himself off from everything in His life to obey what that God tells Him to do, no matter what the apparent con... circumstances and conditions might be; and these guys all did. They all believed God to the point where they cut off the cord from whatever it was that they were used to doing and obeyed God.
Now, the intellectually convinced individuals who weren't yet saved were in terrific danger. Look at chapter 10 verse 38. "Now the just shall live by faith...He says...but if anybody's goes backwards, anybody draws back, My soul shall have no pleasure in him." He's saying to the intellectually convinced, "Don't fall away. Don't fall backwards now that you've come this close to being redeemed." On the other side of the chapter, the beginning, and, incidentally, that's right at the end of chapter 10, and then He launches into faith. On the other side of the faith chapter comes verses 1 and 2 of chapter 12, and here He talks to the saved ones. The first passage, the intellectually convinced. The second one, the saved ones, and He says, "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, so many who illustrate to us the life of faith, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us...and the sin there, as well as being a very practical statement of sin in any Christian's life, was probably the sin of hanging on, hanging on to old patterns in Judaism, not really coming in full faith...Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto...what?...Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith."
In other words, He says, "Drop that old thing. Focus on Christ and come all the way and run the race." So on one side, He...He warns the intellectually convinced not to fall back. On the other side of chapter 11, He speaks to the saved and says, "Come on, cut...cut the cord and run the race with patience." And in the middle comes the great chapter on faith, so it really applies to either group. It is a chapter presenting to us the virtues of faith.
Now, we've seen a lot about faith in this chapter. Primarily, and keep it in your mind, if you never get anything else, get this, your faith, your trust is based on your view of God. If you've got a little God, you're not gonna trust Him. So if you want more faith, you get into the Bible. Find out what kind of a God you have, and that'll increase your faith.
All right, now, we've learned a lot about faith in this chapter. We've seen the life of faith, the walk of faith, the work of faith, the pattern of faith, the victory of faith, the choices of faith. I don't think I left any of 'em out; and now we come in verse 30 to the pinnacle of everything. Are you ready for this? The courage of faith. The courage of faith.
Now, the true test of faith is courage. You know, fair-weather faith is, you know, okay; but it's the faith that is exhibited in the face of disaster and trial and trouble that really proves the legitimacy of it. Now, I wanna show you three things in this passage, and there's so many exciting things in here. This is just gonna thrill you, I'm sure, as it did me in study; and I...it's like the iceberg. You can get the top of it, not the whole thing. But true faith at its high point is courageous. Real faith has courage. You know, we read about people, you know, who exhibit fantastic courage in the cause of Christ. Missionaries and...and so forth and so forth and bold people. We see the Apostle Paul and others like that, and we say, "Man, courage." Well, that's all based on faith. They so trusted God that they never feared anything.
Now, faith at its highest point has the courage to do three things: to conquer and struggle, to continue in suffering, and to count on salvation. To conquer and struggle, to continue in suffering, and to count on salvation. Faith, at its high point, has the courage to do that. First of all, really pinnacle faith, faith at its apex, has the courage to conquer in...in struggle. Now, life is always a struggle for the believer, and the only thing we really have to meet struggle is faith - to believe God; and we've talked so much about this; but I...I know the Spirit of God has brought this message to our hearts for tonight; and so I hesitate not to say it again.
Now, the faith that we have in God is the only thing we have to challenge the trouble and the struggle that faces us. In order to illustrate that, He begins with a discussion of Jericho in verse 30; and all the way through verse 35, at least the first part of it, we see the conquering of faith in the face of struggle. Look at verse 30, "By faith the walls of Jericho fell down." Now it wasn't the walls that had faith. We know that. It was the people. "By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days." Now, the walls there, takos in the Greek, has to do with the outer wall, the massive outer wall. Sometimes so wide you could run a couple of chariots side-by-side down the walls. Those are big walls. Not talking about a picket fence. Big walls.
Up to this point, the writer has been citing, you know, great examples of faith, one after another after another, and the great men of time before the Flood and after the Flood, and up to Moses; and now He's moving into the Promised Land. It's a chronological, chronological run through the 11th chapter; and He mo