If you'll turn to your Bible and to the book of Hebrews in chapter 11, we'll continue our study. The book of Hebrews chapter 11. We'll begin with verse 17 and read down to verse 31. Hebrews 11 verse 17, reading the New International Version. By faith, Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son. Even though God had said to him, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so, in a manner of speaking, he did receive Isaac back from the dead. By faith, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future. By faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff. By faith, Joseph, when His end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones. By faith, Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king's edict. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith, he left Egypt not fearing the king's anger. He persevered because he saw him who is invisible. By faith, he kept the Passover the application of blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel. By faith, the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land, but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell after the army had marched around them for seven days. By faith, The prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient. And let's pray. Father, we do ask that you would grant us your grace and insight into this portion of your word. And we pray that you would speak to us tonight about the life of faith. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. There's several features that bind all of these examples together, all of these stories together. The most obvious one is faith. By faith, Abraham. By faith, Isaac. By faith, Jacob. By faith, Joseph. By faith, Moses' parents. By faith, Moses. By faith, the people of Israel. By faith, Rahab. This is what binds these stories together. The whole book of Hebrews is written to encourage us to press on and to persevere in our life of faith. He says at the end of chapter 10, you have need of endurance. You need to persevere. And we do that by faith. And so now he's illustrating this principle of faith. But what are we supposed to believe? What is the content of our faith? We often talk about it in different ways, but I think that we mean the same thing. Sometimes we talk about believing the Bible. Our faith is in the Bible, the word of God. The scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of us. And the book of Hebrews certainly has an emphasis on the word of God. But more specifically, we are to believe those promises that we find in scripture. The word of God gives us promises and as we read the word of God, we should pay particular attention to those promises where God himself is binding himself to us. He's telling us he's going to do something and he has some good for us. But what is the best thing that God has for us? What is the sum of all of the promises in scripture? Jesus Christ. Second Corinthians 1 20, no matter how many promises God has made, they are yes in Christ. And so through him, the amen is spoken. by us to the glory of God. And as we've just read, Moses endured as seeing him who is invisible. So we'll talk sometimes about we believe the scriptures, we believe the Bible, we believe the promises of God. We need to be clear that what we're really talking about is that focal point of every promise and what the scriptures reveal to us about Jesus Christ. Our faith is in a person, Jesus Christ. Another feature that binds these stories together is that all of these people, in one way or another, were living in the shadow of death. All of these stories have something to do with death. Abraham is told to offer up Isaac. Isaac blesses his sons while he's on his deathbed. Jacob, as he's dying, he blesses his sons. Joseph gives instructions about his bones after he has died. Moses' parents have strict orders to kill their child. Moses himself puts his life on the line not fearing the wrath of the king. The people of God observe the Passover on that night in which the death angel passes over Egypt. They pass through the Red Sea where the Egyptians are drowned. They defeat Jericho and the people inside the city die and Rahab could have been among their number except she had faith and so she was saved. All of these stories are about faith, but they are all about faith being lived out in the shadow of death. And then another feature. of all of these stories is the emphasis on the generation to come. Abraham lays his hand upon his son Isaac. Isaac lays his hand upon his twin sons, Jacob and Esau. Jacob touches the sons of Joseph. Joseph teaches his children what to do when they leave Egypt. Moses' parents want their son to have a future. Moses himself refuses to be called The son of Pharaoh, he wants to be a son of Israel. At the Passover, God's covenant children, that generation to come, are under the blood and they live. And then those same children, 40 years later as adults, march around the city of Jericho and take possession of the land. But the generation to come doesn't just include those covenant children who grow up in covenant families. It also includes the stranger who is brought in sovereignly by God's grace. And so there's a woman and her family who experienced the sovereign grace of God and they live and they have a blessed future. Now, just to look at a couple of these stories in more detail tonight. I didn't give you an outline because I'm not sure where we're going, so we'll just proceed for a while. The story of Abraham that we've looked at for a couple of weeks tells us that death is not the obstacle that it first appears to be. When we look at the example of Abraham, what we see is death is not the obstacle that it at first appears to be. It seems that death is the end, that everything stops with death. And yet we see something different with the example of Abraham. Abraham is certainly a man of faith. Faith enabled Abraham to pull up stakes and to move. Faith taught him that God had more for him than just a piece of dirt, a piece of land, the promised land. God had something better for Abraham. But then Abraham encountered the shadow of death. Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and offer him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains. And yet Abraham believed that God would be faithful to that promise that God made to Abraham. There would be a generation to come. He would be the father of many nations. Many people would come from Abraham and it would bless the entire And that promise was going to begin right here with this son that he is told to kill. Verse 18, even though God had said to him, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. And so by faith, Abraham is able to see beyond the obstacle of death. Verse 19, Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead. Unless the Lord comes back first, we are going to die. Our friends are going to die, our children are going to die, but the promise of God is not going to die. The purpose of God is not going to die. The word of God, the promise of God assures us that death is not the obstacle that it first appears to be. There is something beyond our mortality, death. All who are in Christ by faith will live and will receive all of the good that God has promised to us. Thinking about these other parents now, the story of these other parents reminds us that we need to look beyond our own existence to that greater picture of what God is doing. It's not just about us. It's not just about this generation. It's not just about Those of us who are sitting here tonight, we need to think beyond just us to the future and what God is going to do. We see some of this in the story of these various parents. By faith, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future. By faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff. By faith, Joseph, When his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones. By faith, Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born because they saw he was no ordinary child. They were not afraid of the king's edict. Again, death appears and casts a shadow. But all of these parents have learned that death can only do so much. God's not held back. God is not hindered by death. God is able to reach beyond our present human existence. And so each parent here passes on a covenant promise to his child. Isaac blesses Jacob and Esau. Not Esau and Jacob. That's the birth order. That's what you would expect the writer to say. It's not Esau and Jacob, but Jacob and Esau. Esau is blessed in some sense, but he rejects God's blessing. And the author will refer to that in chapter 12. Jacob embraces the promise with faith and obedience. And he, in turn, blesses his children and his grandchildren and Joseph and his children. Joseph, in turn, gives instructions about his bones. Don't leave my bones here. Egypt is not my home. This world is not my home. I'm thinking about that promised land. When you leave, and you will leave one day, take my bones with you. Years later, a man and a woman, descendant of Joseph, had a baby boy, Moses. Government passed a law there to put to death their male children, stop this generation that's coming along. And they chose to believe God's promise. They feared God rather than to fear the king's threat. In each of these families, we see the faith of believing parents. In each family, there's a threat. There's the shadow of death. And yet in each family, the parents are faithful to believe. what God has said, and they choose to follow God in faith. We do the same thing today. We baptize our children believing God's promises for life. We teach our children. We bring them to church. We put them in Sunday school. We teach other children in Sunday school. We encourage every effort at homeschooling. We provide the Charleston Christian School to assist parents. Even when we ourselves don't have children, we support the Charleston Christian. When we don't have children that are there, we support the Charleston Christian school because we're looking beyond just our own existence to that generation that is to come. And then very quickly, just two stories, two very different stories that give us some insight on how God will build his kingdom. We could spend a lot of time on this, but I'll just try to give you a summary of both of these stories. First of all, the story of Moses, verses 24 through 28. By Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, he chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith, he left Egypt not fearing the king's anger. He persevered because he saw him who is invisible. And by faith, he kept the Passover and the application of blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel. His parents saw that he was no ordinary child. I mean, what parent doesn't think that when they're looking at their child? This is a beautiful child. This is a special child. This isn't like everybody else's. This is mine. I don't know what they saw when they looked at Moses, but they saw something. They probably had no idea how great he was going to be. You think about how great a man Moses was. To lead God's people out of slavery, that long story that we have in the book of Exodus, leading God's people out of slavery, receiving God's law from God himself, going up on a mountain, talking with God, and God writing the law out with his finger, and Moses' face is shining, and, you know, it's just a very strange account. But, you know, this is a man who is hearing God himself and receiving God's law. He constructed the tabernacle. He got all of those instructions so that God could come down and dwell among people. He led the people all the way to the border of the promised land. You think of how great a man Moses was. By faith, he did all of this. Who of us knows what Moses-like person still lies in the future. Someone yet to come, a Moses-like person. Who knows what our children, our grandchildren, the children of this church will accomplish in the future. A Moses-like person sitting among us today. the generation to come, a Luther, a Whitfield, a Bonhoeffer, Elizabeth Elliot, Amy Carmichael, what Moses-like person yet to come among our children and our grandchildren. The story of Moses is the story of a great man, a covenant child. who grows up, takes his place in the kingdom and advances the kingdom by faith. And then there's the very different story of Rahab. What about people that are not born into Christian homes, not sent to a Christian school, don't have God's covenant promises, messy people? Verses 30 and 31. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell after the army had marched around them for seven days. By faith, the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient. She's not brought up in a Christian home. She's not a covenant child. She didn't have a Bible. Nobody took her to church. She's a prostitute. physically, emotionally, sexually abused, spiritually dead. We would say that's a train wreck if ever there was a train wreck of a person. Among those people whom God said destroy, doomed to death and yet by sovereign grace God reached out and embraced her in love and drew her to himself. and saved her and her family. Israelites are saying, gather your people here, your family, whoever it is that will come with you. Who of us knows what Rahab-like woman is out there right now waiting to be rescued by the good news of Jesus Christ? The kingdom is not just built with our covenant children who were raised in a church, but those messy people who come in that you want to welcome and say, yes, come in. You're welcome to be here. We're glad that you are here. Who of us knows what Rahab-like woman is out there right now waiting to be transformed and rescued by the good news of Jesus Christ, a woman who will come in among us and be welcomed, and find a new home, and find a new family in Jesus Christ. And who knows where that will lead? What will happen with her family, with her new family, and with the generation? What happened with Rahab? I mean, there's no doubt about her descendants. What happened? Just read Matthew 1. If you don't get anything else out of that genealogy in Matthew, get this. Rahab's name is there. There is no doubt what happened as she was assimilated into the people of God, a stranger being brought in by sovereign grace. David is born of her line. Solomon, Hezekiah, Josiah, Jesus Christ, the Messiah. Who knows? what Rahab-like woman is out there right now waiting to be transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ and where that will lead to the building of God's kingdom. Verse 32, and what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about dot, dot, dot. You just run out of time to be able to say everything that needs to be said. But just to finish the chapter out, what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, about David and Samuel. Come to Sunday school. Listen to Richard Cooper. You'll learn. He has time to talk about David and Samuel, the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised. who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, escaped the edge of the sword, whose weakness was turned to strength and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning. They were sawed in two. They were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, and mistreated. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised since God had planned something better for us, so that only together with us would they be made perfect. Let's pray. Father, there are so many stories and illustrations represented here in this chapter