Hebrews 11 is known as the faith Chapter. It is a chapter about people who lived according to the promises of God yet some of them did not see those promises fulfilled and others waited many years to see them fulfilled. Do we belive God’s promises, how do we live as we wait on His promises?

GYCE Focus 2016: Coming to Christ

<p>Hebrews 11 is known as the faith Chapter. It is a chapter about people who lived according to the promises of God yet some of them did not see those promises fulfilled and others waited many years to see them fulfilled. Do we belive God’s promises, how do we live as we wait on His promises?</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

GYC Europe

Daniel Pel

Do You Believe His Promises

Father in heaven, I'm grateful for a new morning.

I'm grateful that I can be here in Leicester together with your people, and we're grateful that we have your Word, and Lord that in liberty that we can open your Word and study it together.

But I realize that without you this is an exercise in vain, And so I pray that you will empower us through your Holy Spirit this morning.

I pray that you will speak to us in a very personal way and that your promises may become very real.

For this we ask in your beautiful name, in Jesus' name, amen.

Title of my message this morning is, Do You Believe His Promises?

Yesterday we looked at the, yesterday my title was, Does anyone remember?

And we talked about how important it is to behold Jesus in Scripture so that we recognize Him, but not just to behold Him in Scripture, but also that there is a veil that needs to be removed, because it is very easy for us to have a veil on our eyes, over our faces, just like the Jews had 2, 000 years ago.

They did not recognize the Messiah because they had false expectations of who He would be and what He would be like, and therefore they could not recognize Him.

And this morning I want to kind of further, go further into this overall theme of coming to Christ, because in order to come to Christ, we must recognize Him, but also in order to come to Christ, we must believe His promises.

Last March, I was holding a Bible prophecy series in the city where I pastor, the city of Bergen.

It's the second largest city in Norway on the coast, the West Coast, and I have conducted many Bible prophecy seminars throughout the last 12 years in basically many different continents and countries, and by God's grace, and I say very clearly by God's grace, I have never come too late for a public series or for a public meeting in the evening.

I was on my way to the place where we were gonna have the meetings, And there are a lot of tunnels in Norway.

How many of you have actually been to Norway?

You know, it's the country of the tunnels, because there are so many mountains, and so they just have to make tunnels everywhere.

And so I'm on my way to the meeting, and a tunnel was closed.

They just closed it off and so they were going to redirect the traffic but it was quite an extra drive.

And I was looking at my watch and I was realizing, oh this might be the first time that I'm gonna be late for the meeting.

And my wife was with me and my son was with me.

And He has no idea what is taking place and the stress that is now filling up.

And he's just smiling and enjoying the drive.

And in the midst of all of this, as I'm getting more and more stressed out, he starts pointing to the radio in the car because he has his favorite CD with his music.

And so he's just pointing to that, like that I should turn it on.

And so here I am, driving, stressful, to get on time to the meeting, and I have to turn on the radio and listen to this music that he is enjoying.

But it happened that I got there exactly 7 o'clock, and I walked in, and someone just, you know, they were already there, and so they just mic'd me up while I was walking, and I got right up on the stage and a few people actually noticed what had happened.

But for my child, he had no idea what was going on.

For him, it was just a great evening, a great experience to drive to church.

He always likes to drive in the car, he likes to listen to his music.

It's interesting that children don't notice sometimes the stress that their parents go through.

I remember I grew up in the country of New Zealand.

My parents are Dutch and they immigrated to New Zealand, and they wanted to just start all over there.

And as I grew up, I remember the very first time as a child noticing that something was going on with my parents, and things were not that easy.

I was about 9 years old and my father was a carpenter and he had his own business but things were not going that easy.

And several times what had happened is he had gotten promises about projects but then things would fall through and the promise would not be kept and so he would be without job.

Sometimes he would be in the middle of a project and then there was not finances to complete it.

It was a difficult time financially in New Zealand those years and so my father realized or he experienced over and over again unfulfilled promises.

And I just remember as a child noticing that for the first time, that, wow, there's something going on in the home, there's a difficulty here.

But what happens when promises are not fulfilled?

It's 1 thing for promises not to be fulfilled when human beings make promises, but it's something else when we feel that God does not fulfill promises in our lives.

I want you to take your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Hebrews.

Turn with me to the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 11.

Our topic this morning is, do you believe his promises?

Sometimes we wonder if God's promises are really going to fulfill in our lives.

I want to be very honest this morning, and I believe that we have all been there or are there perhaps, in a place in life where we wonder, will God's promises, will they really come to pass in my life?

It's 1 thing to get a promise from a human being that doesn't come to pass.

It's something else when you get a promise from God and you feel that it is just there, but the promise is there, but the fulfillment isn't.

I wanna bring you to a couple of examples in Scripture about promises being made, and then how they were fulfilled.

And so we're in Hebrews chapter 11, 1 of my favorite chapters in the Bible.

You know how I like to sum up Hebrews 11?

I like to call it the remembrance of God.

Isn't it powerful what God remembers about people?

I mean, you read in Hebrews about, you know, David and Rahab and Samson, and I can remember a lot about them when I read my Old Testament, but you know what God remembers about them?

This is the remembrance of God, Hebrews chapter 11.

And we can all be part of that story, right?

I mean, we have 40 verses in Hebrews 11, but it's an unfinished chapter.

I believe there are many more verses in heaven, and 1 day when we get to the other side, when we get into God's presence, into eternity, we'll be able to perhaps have a look at the unedited or the unfinished, the complete story of Hebrews chapter 11, and perhaps your story and my story will be in there by faith.

There's a lot that God could remember about you and remember about me, but He decides to remember our faith when we put our faith in Him.

Look at Hebrews chapter 11, and 1 more thing before I read.

It's so interesting that Hebrews 11 is So diverse, such a diversity of people, such a diversity of expressions of faith.

It's like a diamond that you hold up in the light and it reflects to every direction.

You know, you read about Abel and what happened to Abel.

The first person you read about is Abel and he died for his faith.

He gave up his life for his faith and right after that you read about Enoch, Enoch never tasted death by faith.

Then you read about Noah and he was in 1 place for 120 years building an ark and then right after that you read about Abram that had to leave his home and go somewhere else.

And so you ask yourself the question, like, is it faith to die or is it faith to live?

And the answer is yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Because Hebrews 11, and then it's fascinating, it's every time, it's comparisons and contrasts.

You then come to Abraham, and Abraham has a, what is it?

He has to have faith that he's going to get a son, and then right afterwards, you read about how it was by faith he had to give up that son.

Faith has so many dimensions, and you and I, though we are not the same, none of us here are the same, God has a special call for each of us.

We can all belong to the story of faith, amen?

Now look at how these promises take place.

Hebrews 11, beginning in verse 8, by faith Abram obeyed when he was called to go to the place which he would receive as an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going.

Okay, so he got the call to go, he didn't know exactly where he was gonna go, but by faith he follows.

Verse 9, by faith he dwelt in the land of promise, as in a foreign country dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the ears with him of the same promise.

I want you to take notice that the promise first was given to Abraham, and the promise was that his descendants would inherit a land.

Now first of all, he didn't have any descendants.

We'll come to that in just a bit, but he was promised that they were gonna inherit a land and God would show him that land.

And so he's taken out of Ur the Chaldean and he makes his way to Canaan, but he lived his entire life in a tent.

How many of you like camping longer than a week?

How many of you like camping for a month?

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Do You Believe His Promises

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