Sermons from June 2016

For most people the whole matter of faith has a mysterious, even scary, element to it. Can I trust the parachute to open when I jump out of the plane at 2000 metres? What factors inform decisions like these? The Christian life is a life of faith and this fact is graphically illustrated again in our passage today as we look at the experiences of Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Jacob, Moses and Rahab. In many different ways they were all challenged to “see Him who is invisible” (verse 27). They were called to intentionally choose to put their hope and confidence in the promises of a God whom they could not actually see. And that is exactly what we are being asked to do today… to believe in the God who has given us Jesus Christ and invites us to put our trust fully in Him.

The Christian life is a journey… a journey of faith. And perhaps no one models this better for us than Abraham. He was far from a perfect man (thankfully!), but his continual dependence on God over his lifetime still speaks powerfully to us today. Here was a man who implicitly believed the promises of God and clung to those promises year after year. Some of them were fulfilled in his lifetime. Some were not. Yet his unwavering faith that God would one day fulfil those promises enabled him to live and die a contented man. Even today those who have faith in Jesus Christ are called ‘children of Abraham’. The entire Christian life, ’from first to last’, is a journey of faith as we learn in daily life what it means to love, obey, trust and serve our faithful God.

Hebrews 11 is the best known chapter in the Bible when it comes to the subject of faith. And in this chapter we encounter numerous examples of people from the Old Testament who actually lived by faith in the circumstances they faced. Today we look at two of these people – Enoch and Noah. Despite much sin and godless opposition from the world around them, their faith shone through by the way they continued to trust God and live for Him. In many ways there are parallels for Christians today as we face growing antagonism. As it was then, the answer is to focus on God’s promises (now seen in Jesus Christ) and keep walking by faith in Him.