Hey, Family

Here is a sermon that a chaplain gave me permission to share with y'all.  Hope it blesses you as much as it did us.

Title:  "Faith in Triumph and Tribulation"
Text:  Hebrews 11:32-40

Main Idea:  Faith enables God’s people to experience great victories and endure apparent defeat

Introduction:  When the late Dr. James Boice stood in front of his congregation at the historic Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia to announce that he was suffering with incurable cancer, he told the church that he appreciated those who were praying for his healing but he wanted even more for the church to pray that he would face his illness with the courage and faith that would bring honor to his Savior.  He said, “If you think of God glorifying himself in history and you say, where in all of history has God most glorified himself?  He did it at the cross of Jesus Christ, and it wasn’t by delivering Jesus from the cross, though he could have.  Jesus said, ‘Don’t you think I could call down from my father ten legions of angels for my defense?’ But he didn’t do that.  And yet that’s where God is most glorified.”  A little further in his testimony Dr. Boice asked his people, “If God does something in your life, would you change it?  If you’d change it, you’d make it worse.  It wouldn’t be as good.  So that’s the way we want to accept it and move forward, and who knows what God will do?”  I kept a copy of that short statement because it was a living example of one of those great lessons of faith that we only learn under great adversity.  Dr. Boice lived the truth of our text, the truth that faith can have two very different outcomes in our lives. Faith enables God’s people to experience great victories and to endure apparent defeat.  In verses 32-35 we see that…

I.  Faith Enables God’s People to Experience Great Victories (Verses 32-35a):  As we examine the quick list of people and events that the writer alludes to we can discern two broad categories of victories experienced by God’s people.  First,…

A.  People of Faith Overcame Great Odds: Verse 32 records six names (Gideon, Barak, Jephthah, Samson, David, and Samuel) and one broad category, the prophets. All of these people are united by at least one factor.  They overcame major odds at some point in their lives to achieve a great faith inspired victory. Gideon destroyed the Midianites with a force of 300 men armed with only torches and clay pots. Barak along with Deborah led the Israelites to defeat Sisera and the army of the Canaanites.  Samson pulled down the temple of Dagon after he lost his strength and had been humiliated at the hands of the Philistines. Jephthah became a leader in Israel even though his family had disowned him and went on to defeat the Ammonites. As a young man, David defeated the giant Goliath with a sling and a stone when none of the more experienced warriors would face him.  The prophets courageously served God and confidently proclaimed his message in the face of stiff opposition and persecution. In each case people of faith overcame overwhelming odds because God simply isn't limited by odds no matter how little our faith may be.  But not only did people of faith overcome great odds, some men and women of faith escaped certain death. 

B.  People of Faith Escaped Certain Death: Verse 34 recalls heroes who escaped death by trusting God to fight their battles for them. The writer tells us that some “shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of flames, and escaped the edge of the sword.”  He seems to have in mind men of faith like Daniel who was thrown to the lions and left overnight but was unscathed, because of his faith in God.  It was Daniel’s friends, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, who, “quenched the fury of the flames” when they were thrown into the fiery furnace for their refusal to worship idols.  Many of the prophets including Elijah, Elisha and Jeremiah, “escaped the edge of the sword” at points in their ministries. What made the difference was not their faith; it was the God in whom they placed their faith.
If the text closed with the thrill of victories we could all walk out of here feeling very good, but life isn’t always about victories. The word “others” in verse should have given us that clue.  There were “others” who had faith, but God did not providentially deal with them in the same way he dwelt with those who experienced victories.  There are times when you will experience the thrill of victory but at other times you have to be ready to suffer the agony of defeat. The second outcome of faith is that…

II.   Faith Enables God’s People to Endure Apparent Defeat (Verses 35b-40):  There are times when faith protects us from danger and other times when faith takes us through danger. Again, not all men and women of faith experience miraculous deliverance.  Consider what the “other” heroes of faith had to endure.  Some people of faith endured brutal mistreatment.  They were tortured, jeered, flogged, placed in chains and imprisoned.  
Others faced agonizing deaths.  They were stoned, sawed in two or put to death by the sword.  And still others experienced deprivation of the comforts of life.  They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated without a home in this world because of their faith.  What distinguishes the people in the first half of our text from the people in the last half? In some cases nothing.  And in a few cases, allusions seem to indicate that some are listed in both halves of the text. At times they experienced great victories and at other times they endured apparent defeat. In both sets of circumstances, the writer says that “all these” had faith.  They simply were called to different circumstances in the providence of God.  

Conclusion:  We live in a society where winning is everything. We are so success oriented that even the church has acquired the success syndrome.  But in God’s economy there is a difference between being deemed a success by the world and being deemed a success in his kingdom.  
Sometimes we may be called to have our faith proven and strengthened through the experience of victory in the face of overwhelming odds and even death.  At other times our faith may be proven and strengthened through the experience of apparent defeat.  In considering this text John Piper wrote, “The common feature of the faith that escapes suffering and the faith that endures suffering is this, both of them involve believing that God himself is better than what life can give you now, and is better than what death can take from you later. When you have it all, faith says that God is better, and when you lose it all, faith says that God is better… What does faith believe in the moment of torture? That if God loved me, he would get me out of this? No. Faith believes that there is a kind of resurrection for believer’s which is better than the miracle of escape. It’s better than the kind of resurrection experienced by the widow’s son, who returned to life to die again later.” May we remember that unlike the saints of old who remained faithful even though they never experienced the promise, we have a sure and certain hope of the resurrection. The earthly outcome, good or bad, is not the final measure of faith’s victory.