Turn with me in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 11. And I wanna read verse six. But without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Amen. May God bless the reading of his word. As I said in the email that I sent out with the sermon outline, I made a mistake on last week's sermon. I said something that I don't think is entirely true upon reflection. And by way of repentance, rather than just saying, I'm sorry, I'm preaching this sermon. Now there's, the mistake was that I said in last week's sermons that we have to submit to God's sovereignty before we will see, before we will understand His goodness. Now there's a certain amount of truth in that. Only through submitting to His will will we really be able to fully appreciate, will we be able to fully see His goodness. It's also true that we ought to submit to Him simply because He is sovereign, simply because He is the King, and He has the right to be submitted to, because He made us. We ought to submit to Him for just that reason. But we don't. And that's not how God in the Scriptures ever encourages us to submission, ever encourages us to bend the knee merely because He is sovereign. Rather, what we see throughout the Scriptures is that God always motivates our submission to His sovereignty because of His goodness. The book of Hebrews has been talking, talks all the way through. And my intention actually is to preach through the book of Hebrews. One of the reasons why this particular text was on my mind when I'm done with the book of Genesis in a few months. But Hebrews is largely about the superiority of Christ over all that came before him. That everything that came before him was a shadow or a pointer pointing forward to Christ. foreshadowing Christ. And then when Christ comes, the shadow passes away. And part of the way he's explaining that, really in a lot of ways, the pinnacle of that argument is what we see in chapter 11, where he goes through these great heroes of the faith. men and women and the things that they did. And he shows that over and over again, what motivated them, what drove them was not doing these ceremonies or following these rules or anything like that, but was faith. Faith in a promise that they did not see. Faith in the promise that was never accomplished in their lives. Because it was faith in the, ultimately in the promise of the Messiah. That's what he was, that's what they were all looking forward to. Faith in God's gracious promise of salvation. And that leads us to, as he sums up the point of that whole chapter, as he anticipates it and he concludes it later on, but in verse number six, He says, without faith it is impossible to please Him. For he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. So first, to believe that He is, that God exists. That part's easy, right? We all believe in God. Most people believe in God. It's easy to say, but how often do we act as if we don't really believe in God? You're driving along in your car and suddenly up ahead, you see a cop by the side of the road, probably got his radar gun out. What do you do? Ooh, check your speed. Or maybe just instinctively start slowing down, better hit that brake. You see the cop, you know he's there, and because he's there, you change your behavior. And yet, how often do we act as if there was no omniscient God, was no God of justice, watching what we do, seeing what we do? How often do we get fearful, worried about the future? as if there was no God looking over us, caring for all things. It is very easy to forget about God. The psalmist says, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. Note that he says it in his heart. Perhaps in his brain, perhaps with his lips, he acknowledges God. Yet what drives him on the deepest core of his behavior is what has often been called practical atheism. Some of the most theologically astute people you could ever meet, people who could rattle off all sorts of true facts about God, are nonetheless practical atheists. They live their lives as if there were no God. What we believe in our heads and what we believe in our hearts, what we believe up on the top of our consciousness, And what we believe deep down is usually not the same. talking about the justice of God here. Oh Lord, God to whom vengeance belongs, oh God to whom vengeance belongs, shine forth. Rise up, oh judge of the earth, render punishment to the proud. Lord, how long will the wicked, how long will the wicked triumph? They utter speech and speak insolent things. All the workers of iniquity boast in themselves. They break in pieces your people, O Lord, and afflict your heritage. They slay the widow and the stranger and murder the fatherless. Yet they say the Lord does not see, nor does the God of Jacob understand. Understand, you senseless among the people, and you fools, when will you be wise? He who planted the ears shall he not hear? He who formed the eyes shall he not see? He who instructs the nations shall he not correct? He who teaches man knowledge? The Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are futile. So there is, he's talking about the wicked here, right? The evil man, we're all familiar. We see him in the news all the time, right? Those people who live as if there is no God and the world exists for their personal gratification and power and they can do whatever they want, steal whatever they want, lie however they want and kill whoever they want. And they seem to do really well. They get rich. People seek out their opinions about things. What do you think about this or that? Experts in not only their own field, but apparently a great many others. They act as if there is no God. That's the explicit message here in Psalm 94. But you know, there's an implicit message as well. When we get agitated about that, when we get really upset and angry and resentful, aren't we acting as if there is no God too? That there is no justice? When we see a man lie and steal and break the law and get away with it and we just get angry and there's no justice. Aren't we acting as if there is no God? Or when we do think about God, how often is the God in our minds the God of our own imaginations? rather than the true God revealed in scriptures. It's a dangerous thing, but a very commonly done thing to mold God after our own preferences. That's a lot of what Isaiah chapter 44, that whole section of Isaiah is about. It emphasizes the strength of the blacksmith, the skill of the craftsman, as he makes this beautiful image Out of his own imagination, out of his own skill and talent. And bows down before it. Says, save me, oh God. What's he worshiping? It's his effort, his strength, his imagination that has created that God. And how many people who would laugh at the idea of bowing down before a block of wood, nonetheless do the same thing when they say, well, I think God's like this. I think God's like that. And can never imagine a God that makes any of their preconceptions, makes them uncomfortable in any of their presuppositions at all. We all have wrong ideas about God, of course. But the goal of the Christian life, the goal to which we should be striving, is that the God that exists in our mind becomes conformed to the God that is revealed in the Bible. The great work of the Christian life. So it is true that a fundamental part of coming to God will be acknowledging that there is someone to come to. I can't acknowledge God's goodness. if I don't even acknowledge that there is a God at all, of course. And there's no great trick to this. You know, the scriptures tell us, in Romans chapter one especially, but in lots of places, that the knowledge of God is inherent to man's nature, but that we suppress it. Psalm 94 shows us a big part of the reason why we naturally suppress it. Because if there is a God, And he's very wrathful against the wicked man. A God who sees all that we do. A God with perfect standards of justice, who can never be fooled, can never be deceived, can never be manipulated, can never be bribed. And so sinful man works hard to suppress the knowledge of God. And so to know that God exists, we merely need to stop suppressing that knowledge. and accept what we know to be true, what is revealed in the scripture. Everyone wants justice when they're wrong, but not justice for themselves when they are the one doing the wrong. As sinners under God's wrath, we suppress the knowledge of God. The truth is terrifying. But the justice of God and its expression in wrath and judgment is only one aspect of who God is. A deeper knowledge of God, a fuller knowledge of God, with that fuller knowledge we can bridge that gap, or God will bridge that gap for us. In particular, to know his goodness. This is the second part. of what he says in Hebrews chapter 11, to know that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Because the truth is, until we know the goodness of God, we will not come to him. We will not draw close to him, not really. We will suppress the truth of him one way or another. The idea of a perfectly just, all-seeing, all-powerful God who is not good is a terror, a terror to us. The parable of the prodigal son is a great example of all of these truths. Now it's often used The parable of the prodigal son is, you all know the story, of course, the young man who wants to leave his father's house. He demands he'd receive his inheritance now. And then he goes off in a far country and has a great time and is partying. But of course, as the old expression goes, a fool and his money are soon partying. And so he was, and so all the money was gone. And then the famine came, and then he's destitute. And finally, he decides he's going to return. And when he returns, he's humble and he's downcast, and his father receives him with joy, with open arms. And it's often taught to illustrate the free grace of God, the goodness of God, the forgiveness of God, the absolute willingness and readiness to receive the repentant sinner. It's used to teach those things, and rightly so, it does teach those things. But that's not actually the main point of the parable. Because it's specifically said, Jesus said, or the passage says that Jesus spoke this parable to those who were righteous of themselves, who in their own minds were righteous of themselves. Because the key character to understanding the story is actually not, it's not primarily about the younger son, even though the story is often named after him. It's the older brother. The older brother, who when the younger son comes back, the older brother is resentful of the treatment that his younger son receives. He stands off aloof. He hears this party going on in there. The father comes out to him too. And he says, I've served you faithfully. I've done all this for you. I've worked hard for you. You never gave me so much as a kid from the flocks to celebrate with my friends. And you remember what the father's answer is. He says, son, all that I have is yours. And was it not right? Was it not right that this your brother who was dead is now alive, who was lost and now is found? The key to it is understanding the elder brother's attitude was a legal attitude. The elder's brother was, he thought he was doing some favor for the father instead of recognizing that everything he had was a gift from the father. Everything, his very position in the house was a gift of grace. He had no cause to be resentful of his father's generosity. Again, a kid, a goat from the flock, everything that the father had was his. The parable of the talents is another demonstration of that principle. Remember there was the man with five, the man with two, the man with one. The master gives each one of them a sum of money. large sum of money, tells them to go invest it, go make use of it, goes on a long journey, comes back. The one with five, he's gained five more. He says, well done, here's five cities. The other one says, I had two, here's two more. He says, well done, here's two cities. The one with one talent says something different. He said, master, I know that you are a hard master. Reaping where you have not sown and gathering where you have not strewn. That he's a miserly, grasping man. So he just took a talent and he hid it in the ground. And so he did not sin against him. He didn't do anything wrong. He didn't lose anything. Because here, that which you've given me, I buried it in the ground to keep it safe. And so he dug it up and here it is again. He's cursed for it, thrown into outer darkness. Is it because he didn't give him a return? Because he didn't give him another talent? Was the master's great concern another talent's worth of money that he wanted? No, it was what the man said about him. He says, you knew that I was a hard man, grasping and greedy and unfair. It was his slander of the goodness of the master. Now it's common to displace our anger and our bitterness against God. We know we aren't supposed to be angry at God, if we've been taught anything at all. So what do we do? We displace that onto other people, other situations. It's because of my terrible parents. It's because of the awful government. It's because of this or that. But you know, it's God that gave you the parents you have. It's God that made the president the president. It's God that ordains all things. And so if I'm bitter and angry and resentful about some situation in my life, some way that someone else has treated me, some physical illness that I have or poverty or whatever else, the circumstances as it is, we have to understand that our bitterness and resentment isn't ultimately at that thing, but God who ordained that thing. Our business is always with God. And God is always good. That doesn't mean calling evil good. But it does mean that though the evil is real, it serves a very real and good purpose in God's plan. You see, God over and over again, when He's talking to the Israelites, we just saw an example of that in Isaiah 44, when He motivates calls the Israelites to come back to him. He does so on the basis of his repeated and consistent goodness to them. He says, I brought you out of Egypt, out of the fiery furnace. I led you across the wilderness. I destroyed the kings of Cain and Sihon and Og and all the nations of Cain. And I gave you a land you didn't work for. I gave you cities you didn't build. I gave you vineyards you didn't plant. on the basis of His tremendous and unearned goodness. What had Israel ever done for God? The threat of judgment and wrath is never the primary motivator to serve God. The judgment and wrath is certainly there. But as we see in the case of the talents, the judgment and wrath comes on the one who rejects the goodness and the grace of God. The one who rebels and rejects, who believes the devil's lie, who believes that God is holding out on us. The reason that God has withheld these things from us is because God just doesn't want us to have fun, because God just wants to keep good things from us. That one who slanders the goodness and grace of God, ultimately, yes, falls under the wrath and curse of God. But Hebrews 11.6, to draw near to God, to come to God, it is necessary to believe that He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him. Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find. God is good and gracious, and even though we ought to bend the knee to His sovereignty, simply because He is sovereign, simply because He is right, Yet He appeals to us over and over again on the basis of His goodness, His generosity, and His grace. And Christ Himself is the fullest example of this. And rightly so. When God came down to earth to establish His kingdom, to overthrow the power of Satan, and to bring his people under his rule, he did not come down with great shows of earthly glory and might, demanding submission to his strength. He came down humble, gentle, meek and mild. He says, all those who come to me, I will in no wise cast out. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." There's no quid pro quo. There's no obligation to somehow pay God back, as if we had anything that He needed, as if we had any coin that would repay Him. That passage we read for the call to worship from Isaiah 55 illustrates it so well. Come buy food and wine, he says, buy food and wine without money and without cost. Emphasizing well that we have nothing to give in exchange for what God is giving us, food and wine. And yet he says buy. He doesn't say just come and get food for free. He says buy food without money and without cost. Why does he say buy if there is no cost and I have no money? Because there is a cost, it's just not you that's paying it. And of course, that's the thing that we don't like. Because it's humbling to come to God simply in need. We want to maintain our independence, our sense of self-worth. I don't want to be in debt to God. I don't want to owe Him anything. So I think if I can work, if I can be good, if I can accomplish these or that things, then I have earned what God has given me. Maybe even retroactively, people will often, you'll see Christians often that apparently have the mindset that yes, they received it free as a gift of grace initially, it was just by faith initially, but now I'm gonna work really hard to sort of retroactively earn what God has given me. But the truth of it is there is no debt. There is no quid pro quo. It is a gift without any obligation in return. Yes, receiving the gift will result in us bending the knee and serving God, but not because we need to repay God. God doesn't need our obedience. We do so simply out of joy and thankfulness and love. There's another remarkable fact about the parable of the prodigal son that is often overlooked. The son, the prodigal, when he is on his way back from the pigsty, coming back to the master, coming back to the father's house, you remember what he said? He said, I'm not worthy to be called your son. Let me be your servant and work that I could eat. The son left his father's house because he didn't really believe his father was good. He thought he could gain something better by going out into the world. But you see, he still doesn't understand his father. Coming back, he wants to make himself a servant. He wants to work for the blessing of his father's house. It is a lie from the devil from the beginning that God wasn't really good, that God didn't want them to be all they could, that somehow God was holding back from them. He said, God knows the day you eat of that tree, you'll surely die. Yeah, God had given him, or you won't surely die, but you will be as God, knowing good and evil. Oh sure, God had given you all these good things, God had given you all the blessings, but really probably just as a distraction or something from the real blessing, the most important thing that he wanted to keep for himself. That's why he told you you couldn't eat of that tree. And isn't this what motivates our sin to this day? that we think God's holding out on us. We think God is denying us something good. The truth is Adam and Eve had nothing at all to gain from rebelling against God and they had everything to lose. And that is true for us as well in the converse. is that by drawing close to Jesus, we have everything to gain and nothing at all of reality to lose. Lose our pride, lose our illusions, lose the lies that we believe by drawing close to Christ. And we draw close to Christ by faith. How can we expect to draw close to God at the same time as we're calling him a liar? Like that third servant with that one talent, he wants to still be in the master's favor at the same time as he is slandering the master's good name. You're a hard man, reaping where you haven't sown and gathering where you haven't strewn. Here's your talent back. I didn't lose it. That attitude that we Christians can all too easily fall into. This attitude that God is just an exacting judge and He's just looking down at us, waiting for us to mess up so He can smack us. That I fall in and out of God's favor as I'm obeying or not obeying on any given day. He's like, oh, today you were good, so you're my son today. Tomorrow, oh, you messed up, you're not my son anymore. There are some earthly fathers that are like that. But not our Heavenly Father. And that is the purpose of the Gospel. For God to draw His people close to Him in love and grace. We draw close to Him in the Gospel. And for us to do that, the first thing for us is to believe in His goodness. To believe that the promise of the Gospel is really a true promise. that He really would give us such a tremendous and extravagant gift, the gift of His own Son without expecting anything at all in return. You have to understand what a slander it is against God's character to assert that it's not really a gift, that we have to earn it, we have to be worthy of it somehow. to approach God with that legal spirit. People will often say, or at least demonstrate that attitude, that I need to shape myself up somehow in order to draw close to God. I need to get this or that sin in my life under control, I need to get that taken care of before I can really go to God. And then God will accept me, God will approve my efforts, and then I can begin pursuing God, that I have to prove that I have sufficiently sorrowed for my sins, that I have cried enough through enough sleepless nights before I can really be confident that God accepts me. We should sorrow over sin. We should pursue righteousness and holiness, of course, but we can only do those things after and as a result of The conviction, the full conviction of God's goodness. This is just what he's saying in Hebrews 11, 6. Without faith it is impossible to please Him. I can't even begin pleasing Him. I can't even begin doing anything until I first of all throw myself on the truth of His goodness. That's what faith is. Without faith, it is impossible to please Him. And as a basic definition of that in the writer's mind, again, not just checking off doctrinal check marks or making sure I go to the right kind of church and do the right kind of things. No, first of all, that He is, and specifically that He is good. that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. That is to say that my movement towards God is going to be blessed. Don't be fooled by that translation, reward, and think again that this is a quid pro quo, is that I have done something for God and therefore He does something for me. No, it's that if I draw close to God, if I come to Him with nothing at all to offer, such an approach will be met with His goodness and grace. The truth is that nobody will ever be ashamed that they put too much trust in God's goodness, His grace, His forgiveness, His receiving and accepting. All those who come to Him, He will by no means cast out. This is the promise of Jesus. And Jesus does not say all those who come to Him who have met criteria A, B, C, D, and E, All those who have come to me after they have wept over their sinful state for long enough. After they have made good faith efforts to try and be better. After they have gone to church a while. Or whatever. Whatever criteria you want to slot in there. He just says all those who come. All those who come. We come to God. by drawing close to Jesus Christ in faith, by believing, accepting the grace, the message of love and forgiveness that He is proclaiming. To believe that message, to believe that God really is exactly as surprisingly, incomprehensibly good as He claims to be. He knows your worst moments. He knows the terrible things that you would do that you just don't do because external restraint or fear of man is holding you back. He knows every shameful thought, every petty and cruel word, every false pretense of goodness you put on, that you fool your neighbors and your family members with. You don't fool Him. He knows every time you neglected someone else in need just because you couldn't be bothered. And the stunning truth is He loves you and He blesses you anyway. With no expectation of you ever giving Him anything back in return. This is the goodness and the love of God. And so we can go to Him We can draw near to Him. We can reach out to Him in prayer at any moment of our lives. We can go to the throne of grace and ask for help in time of need, boldly, not fearing what kind of reception we will receive. And we go in Christ's name. Because to go to God, trusting in His goodness, is to go in the name of Christ. Because Christ is the greatest demonstration, the purest and highest and final demonstration of that goodness, of that love. To go to God in any other way is to go in something I can bring Him. Something I think I can offer Him, some righteousness of my own or some cleverness or worthiness because I'm good enough somehow. In that legal spirit, which is to slander His name, to slander His goodness and His grace. When we go to Him accepting His promise, believing Him, knowing that our entreaty to Him will be answered with goodness and grace, then we glorify Him and we can have confidence in how He receives us. Because as He said, without faith, it is impossible to please Him. He needs nothing from us. He asks nothing from us in exchange for all that He is giving us, all of the good works that I do, all of the righteousness that I perform, whatever sanctification I experience in this life, far from somehow repaying God back for what He's done for me already, it just makes me even more indebted to Him. It just makes me even more thankful for what He's done, because my good works and my righteousness are only His good works in me. It hasn't added anything to God. The remarkable truth of God's grace, the story of the prodigal son again illustrates it so well. As I said, the son has returned to the father after rebelling against him, and he does so still with this legal mindset. There was a legal mindset before that the father only gave him good things because he was working for him, and so he's done being a slave to the man, and now he's going out on his own. And of course, that's a disaster. Now he's coming back, but he still has the legal mindset. So he wants to be a servant. He'll work for the small blessings of his father's house. But despite the son's mischaracterization of his father's character and nature, the father still embraces him. The father still receives him, runs out to him. and restores Him, celebrates Him. And it is the Father's goodness to Him that shows the Son who the Father really is. And so it is with us. It is the goodness of God, the graciousness of God, which reveals His true character to us. What a comfort to know that when we approach God, even when our faith is faltering and unsure and misinformed and badly taught and weak, yet His grace is still His grace. His goodness is everlasting to everlasting. And that is the key to understanding Joseph's story that we'll return to next week. It's the key to understanding all the stories of Genesis, all the stories of the Bible, Joseph could only do what he did. Joseph could only endure what he endured because he knew God was good. Not only sovereign, Joseph wasn't just a stoic saying, well, you know, there's nothing you can do about it, so you might as well be, you know, might as well not get upset about it. not only sovereign, but sovereignly gracious and kind, so that he could endure what he needed to endure. And that's true for you and me every bit as much as it is for Joseph. You know, when I was reading Isaiah 44 earlier for the preparatory scripture, and it comes into my mind, we so often read those passages of this person falling down before an idol. And it's a very, it's an incomprehensible, it's such so foreign and so strange. But he says, there is no knowledge in their mind. So how often do we do the same thing? Because we think we're different than them. We think we're so much smarter than them. But the heart of the thing is not this idol of wooden stone before it. The heart of the thing is the lie that's in his right hand. The lie that my strength, my goodness, I will achieve for myself. I am not dependent on God. I do not need him. That he is not good. that He is harsh and He is cruel and He is unkind to us. So the lessons here are true for you and me every bit as much as they are for Joseph. Who can separate me from the love of God? Many of the ancients believed in blind fate, the idea that God, that there was a God, that even Even all the gods were just representations of God, ultimately. That all things happen for a reason. But it had nothing to do with them. It wasn't personal. It was just fate. It was just determinism. And so, the thing that differentiated you was whether you reacted to the arbitrary suffering of this life with resentment and bitterness and cruelty, or whether you reacted with dignity and courage and virtue. I think Jordan Peterson in our own day is a pretty good example of that same sort of spirit. And it does bring order, and there was some value in that, relatively speaking. But missing from it is the goodness of God, the love of God, the personal care of God. The Christian conception of sovereignty and providence is very, very different than the world's conception of fate. Because it's not blind, it's not arbitrary, it's perfectly designed by God for our good in all things. Plenty in want, joy and sorrow, riches and poverty, sickness and health. God is doing exactly as he wishes, and what he wishes is to glorify himself by blessing and restoring his people. By making us like Christ. Brothers and sisters, study the goodness of God. Contemplate the goodness of God. Rest your hearts on it every day. Remind yourself always of the goodness of God in all that He does. You may think you're submitting to His will because you think that He's sovereign. But unless you think He's good, you will always hold yourself back. You'll always be like that third servant. That one who technically outwardly is submitting. He didn't steal. He didn't lose the Master's precious talent. But he's not really giving himself to the service of the Master either, is he? He's holding himself back because he doesn't think the Master's good. And that's what we'll do too. You may say, you may go through all the outward forms. You're a good little Christian boy or girl. But until you believe that God is good, you will never really come to Him. We can never trust God enough. We can never trust God as much as He deserves to be trusted. And we can never get to the point where you're trusting Him too much. When you say you've put too much confidence in God, you've relied on Him too much. And the easy way to see it is to look at the ways that you are bitter and resentful in your life. We often, as I said before, we often displace that bitterness and resentment onto other people. But really, it's ultimately directed at God. Learn to trust Him with everything in your life. Learn to believe that all is good. That nothing in your life has gone wrong just because it didn't go the way you thought it should go. God is directing your paths. Trust Him, study His goodness, draw close to Him. You will not be disappointed. Amen. Let's pray. Gracious God and Father, we thank you that you are such a good God. The overflowing fount of all good, as our confession says. Lord, help us to rest in that. Help us to be reminded of that every single day, that everything comes from your hand and all things work together for good to those that love you, to those that you've called according to your purpose to make us like Christ. Help us to remember that when we're upset or fearful or prideful about what we think we've accomplished on our own. Help us to remember who you are. and call us back away from our idols, afraid from the lies we so easily construct for ourselves and to the truth of your unending, unlimited, unqualified, unconditional goodness and grace and love. In Jesus' precious name, we pray. Amen.