Have Confidence in His Faithfulness

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

A lot of you know that I serve on the Wisco board. And I don’t really know why, but on a rare occasion, we go offsite for our meetings. And this past week was one of those weeks where we went offsite for our meeting. We went to the Baird Building, I think it used to be called the US Bank Building, downtown. So, we get the directions, we get, here’s the address of the parking garage, here’s the address of the building. And along with it came this direction sheet out of how to get from the parking garage to the meeting room. And it had like 10 steps. Find an elevator, go down this hallway, lean to the left when you see this, then turn to the right, stop at the security guards, get this. I’m like, oh my goodness, to find one meeting room? So, I’m a little nervous about this whole thing. I don’t do the downtown area hardly at all. And so I get a little bit nervous when I get down there to try to find places to park and everything, it confuses me. But I get down there, Google Maps is wonderful, and I get down there and I find the parking garage, I get into the parking garage, everything is good so far. By the way, did I tell you I have opening devotion for this meeting? I tried to get there early, just in case I had bad traffic or whatever, so I’m there, it’s about 5:45, meeting starts at six, we’re good. Except for I can’t find the elevator. Now I have no doubt that was user error. Regardless, the user erred. I found a stairway, and I started climbing the stairs and that did not look like it was gonna work out well. So I climbed back down the stairs, back down to the first floor of the parking garage where I had parked and decided, all right, I’m gonna go outside and I’m gonna walk on the street and go find this building. I have to pull up Google Maps again and plug in the building name. And of course, very helpfully, none of the streets that I was close to had street names on them. I don’t even know what street I’m on at this point. I’m lost. Did I tell you I’ve got opening devotion for the meeting? So I start walking and eventually I figure out where I’m going and I get around to the front of the building, but of course, this is after hours, and so the whole thing is locked down tight. I’m able to find one door that I can get into, and the only person in there is a cleaning guy who’s doing the floors. He’s got the floor scrubber machine going back and forth, and I come up, and there’s a locked gate, one of those glass gates that they’re using now, where you have to have a pass to get through it. Thankfully, there was a very helpful cleaning lady who allowed me through, and I got in and okay, I find an elevator, I get up to the fourth floor, but it is, of course, not the elevator I’m supposed to be on. So I’m in the wrong part of the fourth floor, and what am I met with? I met with another locked gate. Just on the other side of it is a security hut with a security guard inside of it. I do the universal side for I’m lost. I don’t know what I’m doing, and she hopefully lets me through. Who are you? Well, my name is Tom Kock. I’m here for a Wisco board meeting. Who’s your contact in the building? I don’t know. We’ve got like 45 people on the Wisco boar,d and I don’t know all their names to be honest with you, much less where they work. So she takes my ID, she starts searching and searching and finds it and finally finds me in the meantime on texting President Fischer. Who’s our contact in the building? But he, of course, is greeting all the people who are arriving for the meeting. Did I tell you I’ve got opening devotion at six? And it’s 5:55 ish, and I’m at the security guard, and I still don’t know where I’m going. Well, eventually she found that I was legit, that I was supposed to be in there. She directed me to the proper elevator to take. I almost missed that, but thankfully, another helpful cleaning person got me to the right one, and then up to the 29th floor we went, and everything after that was kosher. I arrived at 5:59 for the six o’clock devotion. I was lost, and I wasn’t even that lost, right? I mean, I knew I was within the proximity of where I needed to be. But as I’m doing this, I could not help but think about the text that’s in front of us today. Abraham was called by God to leave his homeland and go someplace that God didn’t even tell him where he was going. I didn’t like being lost for 10 minutes. How long did Abraham feel like he was lost? Wow. Oh, by the way, what awaited Abraham when he got there? There wasn’t even a Motel 6 to leave the light on for him. He was gonna live in tents. And oh yeah, he had to leave behind everything he knew. Family, did he have a house in Ur, where he was from? We don’t know. But the contrast with the living in tents seems to perhaps imply that he had a permanent house. Don’t know it for sure. And I couldn’t help but thinking, would I do it? If I’d been Abraham, would I have done what God asked me to do? I hope and I pray that I would have. I hope and I pray that you would have too. But I don’t know. Wow, what faith. He was certain that he was doing the right thing. Why? Because God’s promises had convinced him that what God said was the truth, no matter what his eyes could see. And then, when he got to that promised land, finally, what did God do? God came to him with his further promises. Hey, I’m gonna make your descendants as great as the stars in the sky. That happened probably when Abraham was about 50, 55, 60. We don’t know the exact time of it. How long would it take for him to have a son till he was 100 years old and Sarah was 90? Would he even see his grandsons? We’re not sure. How long would it take for God’s promise to come true a long time? Oh, and God’s promise to him, yeah, you’re gonna go to a land and you’re about to get that as your inheritance. How long until that came to full fulfillment? 600 years. Would you have done it? Would I? And of course the chapter goes on, it talks about Isaac, it talks about Jacob, it talks about people like Moses, it talks about people like David and Samson, and Jephthah. And we look at those guys and maybe our shoulders slump in shame, shoulders slump in shame, I’ll get that right. They were great. Abraham did it, he left his homeland, and he went to that land that he didn’t even know where he was going. Moses leads the people of Israel out passing through the Red Sea, the Passover, all that great stuff. King David goes out and fights Goliath the giant, and by contrast, what is my faith like? By contrast, I look and I see my weakness and I see my doubt and I see my failure and I feel shame. You too? See my lack of focus, my lack of focus on the promises of God. How easy it is for me to find some excuse to not do devotional reading, to not dive as deeply into the Bible study text or the sermon text. You too? What are we compared to them? Oh, but wait. That Abraham guy. Yeah, that’s the same guy who lied about his wife and said that she was his sister, remember that? And not just once, but at least twice that we know of. And oh yeah, he’s the same guy who slept with Hagar, his wife’s handmaiden, and had a child through her. And oh yeah, Isaac, that hero of faith who is referred to in Hebrews 11 as by faith blessing Jacob and Esau, what was he doing when he was blessing Jacob and Esau? Isaac was trying to thwart the will of God because God had told him to give the blessing to Jacob, not to Esau, and Isaac wanted to give the blessing to Esau and not to Jacob. And Jacob, oh man, his family was a mess from beginning to end. David, an adulterer and a murderer. Samson? Would we be practicing church discipline on Samson? Oh my, it’s hard to see him as a believer. And God talks about him as a hero of faith. Why? It’s because heroes of faith are heroes of faith, not because you and I are so heroic in our faith, but because we have a God who is faithful. And the God who made the promise to Abram that his descendants would be like the stars in the sky was faithful to that promise and made it happen. And the God who promised Abraham that he would receive the Holy Land as his inheritance was faithful, and he made that promise happen. And the God who has promised that he is building a city in heaven where he is the architect and he is the builder and that there is a place in that heaven for you, he is faithful. And can you imagine? The faithful God looks at his unfaithful people like Abram, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. And God says about them that he is not ashamed to be called their God. Really? God says I’m not ashamed to be called your God, Abram, you who lie about your wife. Yeah, God said that. I’m not ashamed to be called your God, Isaac, even as you try to thwart my will. I’m not ashamed to be called your God, Jacob, even as your family life is, oh, such a mess. And I’m not ashamed to be called your God, Tatiana, Sue, Mike, Jeff, Willie. Plug your own name in. Because the issue is not how faithful you and I are. The issue is how faithful and loving your God is. And when your God makes a promise, you can be absolutely and completely sure of that promise. And right now, God has promised and is promising to you that he is building a home for you in heaven. And the God who is faithful will keep that promise. And the God who is faithful when the day is exactly right will fulfill that promise to you individually and personally and will take you to be with him in heaven forever. And that’s why faith is being sure of what we hope for. The evidence of the things that are unseen, I think that’s the results that God’s promises have had in the hearts of his people. With Abraham, God’s promises led him to leave Ur and go to that promised land. With Abraham, it led Abram to be sure that his descendants were gonna be like the stars in the sky, even though he couldn’t see it. And you and I can be just as confident, supremely confident, because you have a wonderfully powerful, faithful God who loves you dearly. Amen. And amen.