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Shall we begin this final session by reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews once more? And we shall read now in chapter twelve and verse eighteen. Hebrews twelve eighteen: For you were not come unto a mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire and unto blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, which voice they that heard intreated that no word more should be spoken unto them. For they could not endure that which was enjoyed, that even if a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned. And so fearful was the appearance that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake. But you are come unto Mount Zion and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than that of Abel. See that you refuse not him that speaketh, for if they escaped not when they refused him that warned them on earth, much more shall not we escape who turn away from him that warneth from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth, but now he has promised, saying, yet once more will I make to tremble, not the earth only, but also the heavens. This word, yet once more, signifies the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain. Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace whereby we may offer service well pleasing to God with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. Today we announced two general topics for our study, the first of which was, what does it mean to be a believer? The second of them was, temporary discipline for an eternal kingdom. So this afternoon we launched ourselves on the first question, what does it mean to be a believer? And we discovered from chapter eleven that it means in the first place believing certain basic Christian doctrine. And we enumerated them for ourselves and saw them illustrated in the passage. First, the doctrine of creation, that the worlds were made by the word of God. This doctrine is basic to everything. Our faith is not some nebulous, factless emotion. Our faith is based in not only doctrine, but the doctrine of creation, that behind this universe stands God, its creator. Secondly, the doctrine of redemption. This is a fallen world, but God in his mercy, right from the very start, laid down these simple lessons, how we fallen sinful men and women might come to God and be accepted by him, and know ourselves accepted and forgiven and restored and welcomed, so that we can come through our journey through life, not in any uncertainty of life's outcome, but with a glorious certain hope in our hearts that they have been received and accepted by God and one day will be taken to his heaven. So the third doctrine we came across was an instance of final salvation where Enoch, who walked with God as a friend of God in life, was taken to heaven bodily without dying, which reminds us of the Christian hope that the Lord Jesus is coming again. When he comes, those who were believers when they lived on earth and passed away and were died and were buried shall be raised again. And those of us who are still alive when the Lord Jesus comes will be caught up together with them, bodily caught up, and be taken home to glory without dying by the Savior. I don't know about you, which group you'd like to be in. I know a lot of my friends say they'd like to, to be alive when the Lord comes. Oh, joy, all this night should we go without dying. No sickness, no sorrow, no pain, and no crying. Caught up in the air with the Lord into glory. Oh, how wonderful that would be. And most Thursdays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, I, I feel like that too. And then there are the occasional days when I say, I don't know. I wonder what it would be like to die. The Lord went that way, didn't he? And our Lord taught us that death for the believer is only a sleep. We have a lovely word in English. I don't know whether you have it here in, uh, New Zealand. Uh, uh, the word cemetery. It's a nice word, isn't it? Well, don't you laugh, it is. Cemetery is merely an anglicization of the Greek word kemeterion, and kemeterion means a bedroom, uh, or a place where people sleep. Yes. And when our loved ones who know the Lord pass away in death, our Lord has taught us to regard it as a sleep. When a child gets fretful and tired out at the end of the day so it can't even enjoy itself, it's no great disaster when mum lovingly takes it upstairs and puts it to bed and it goes to sleep. And you don't say we've lost our child, do you, when it's asleep in bed? Of course you can't communicate with it. It's only asleep. It's going to wake up. That is how it is for a believer in Christ that passes through physical death. They are asleep, and they're putting them in the cemetery. Well, let us remember what cemetery means. It's a place where people sleep, God's bedroom, so to speak, for old and ill and departed believers as far as their bodies are concerned. And one day the Lord shall come to wake their very bodies out of sleep and give them new bodies. This also is a fundamental doctrine of the faith, part of the gospel. Christ died for our sins. He is coming again and will take his people home to glory. And the fourth doctrine that, uh, we must hold as believers is the end of the world. We are reminded of that this afternoon by Noah, who was warned of God by, uh, that there was going to be a flood, and believing that the world was going to be overwhelmed with a flood, he did something about, something about it and made an ark for the saving of his house. And as our Lord in the New Testament and the Apostle Peter remind us that just as in Noah's day, God destroyed the world by a constituent part of the world, by its water, so one day God will destroy the earth not by water, but by fire. The world is stored up with fire. God will use its very atomic structure to destroy it with. This world is only temporary. We may enjoy it to the full, but we should remember it is only temporary. Never intended as anything more than a stepping stone between the two great eternities. Wise are those people that even as they live here, remember it's only temporary. Life as we know it is a temporary phenomenon. We were brought here as creatures of God, that in the process of life on this temporary planet, we might find the Savior and be born again and become not simply creatures of God, but children of God. Therefore, start on our journey and pilgrimage to the great inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, fadeth not away, reserved in heaven's foref. So we thought this afternoon about what it means to be a believer. There's more to being a believer than just believing certain basic doctrines. They are fundamental. There's more to it than that. As you see now in these examples, we shall have to run over them very quickly, with a minimum of comment on most of them, picking out one or two more important. But immediately in verse eight we read of the pilgrimage of faith, the pilgrimage of the faith. You will see it follows, doesn't it, that if this world is a temporary world, if you really believe this world is a temporary world, that will alter your sight. You will find yourself no longer able to live for this world as though this world were everything. Really believe that the world is temporary and is one day coming to an end, It will start you off on a pilgrimage towards the eternal. And so now in these next verses, from verse eight down to sixteen, we have various aspects of what it means to be a believer. It will mean that believers... just, uh, uh, conditioned by faith, Abram, when he was called, says verse eight, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he went out, not knowing whether he went. He went out because he had a, a, a real call from God. God commanded him to. The God of glory appeared to him and said, get out of your kindred to a place that I will subsequently show you. And in response to the call of God, Abram set out on his pilgrimage, not knowing whether he went. In that sense, he journeyed blindly. Now that's an interesting thing, because sometimes people will say that faith in Christ is blind faith. We need to distinguish two things. If it's a question of your coming to Christ for salvation, and you want to be sure, is this Jesus the Christ? Is he the Son of God? Is he true? God will not ask you to believe blindly. God will give you evidence. The whole of the fourth gospel in the New Testament is a collection of evidence. These signs are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and then believing, have life in his name. God doesn't ask people to believe blind. I met a man once, he was a good Christian man, better Christian than I, of course. He was in a communist country at the time, and I, we fell to talking about Christian evidences, you see. And I said, do you use evidences much in your Christian witness? No, he said he didn't. I said, how do you do? He said, I rely upon my behavior, you see, uh, to uh, uh, be a good testimony to the people. That was marvelous that they got converts. I said, yes, but God surely does give us evidence that he gives us the Christ. He says, no, he doesn't. Oh. No, he says, you just have to believe blindly. I said, well, if you have to believe blindly, what's the difference between believing God and believing the devil? He said, there isn't any. You only discover when you've got the right one for the way it works out. That can't be true, can it? No, the the New Testament is quite clear. It says you're coming to Christ for the first time. God will not ask you for blind faith. He will offer you evidence. The signs are written that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and then you believe that great fact and proceeding next to personal committal to Christ, you'll receive eternal life. Once you have received Christ and become one of his disciples, he will ask you to trust him implicitly. Do what he says, just because he said it. That must be so, mustn't it? If we truly believe that Jesus is the Son of God, then he tells us in his bi- in the Word of God to do something. But if we really believe he's the Son of God, we should do it. We may say, but Lord, I don't understand this verse here and why you tell me I ought to do this, but if you tell me, I'll do it, and we can have explanations later. Yes. To say I have received Jesus as Lord, and then, for instance, he tells me, now I want you to be baptized, and I say, oh, well, I don't see the point of that. No, no, no, no, no. I don't see any need for that. What? I thought you just said you believe I'm Lord. Why do you call me Lord and don't do the things I tell you? Well, I don't see the point of it. Well, so what? The Lord says do it. We? The first requirement of the path of truth. And the second one is this: by faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, having, uh, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked for the city that hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God. That is to say, as Abram walked along the path of his pilgrimage, he kept his eyes on the ultimate goal. He looked for the city that hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Yes, God promised him all sorts of things. He promised Abram and to his seed possessions in what we now call the Middle East, and Abram believed it and was grateful. His posterity would own this country one day. God gave him the timetable for it, so the future held glowing things, possessions of land and territory here in that part of the world. Abram didn't despise it. But for Abram, that future was a short-term future. And even in the days of his pilgrimage, he read all the short-term things for him and his posterity against the background of the ultimate goal. Remained a pilgrim in the land where he looked for the city that hath the foundation, that is the great eternal city. And my dear fellow believer, we do wise to copy Abel on our pilgrimage. Yes, it's good and healthy as a youngster to look forward to your career, if God so gives it to you, to look forward to marriage, to raising a family, to rising in your position in life. These things are good and healthy. God bless you in it, but be wise like Abraham. Whatever your hopes for your career, what God may give you in this life, pray. Put it all against the background of the ultimate goal, the city that hath a foundation. For if we don't, we're liable to lose our way. Possible to be a believer, to be redeemed, to be born again, to live an honest, righteous life, not to go into malpractice of any kind, but to forget the ultimate goal. And when that happens, then my career becomes everything, then my marriage becomes everything, then my home becomes everything. And as far as practical living goes, there's no difference between me and the decent man of the world. Now, it's not enough to have a decent business career and a healthy family. For all these things, our daily work, our family life, are part of God's training, part of our pilgrimage. We're not to run away from life, but we have to see those things as contributing to God's eternal plan. And I must ask myself, how does my career fit into God's eternal plan and ultimate goal? That will begin to be a check on the way we live, on our ba- ba- comparative value. How will my career help towards my advance in spiritual things? I have known men and women to say, well, I could done that go down that avenue in my career, that would be a splendid pathway. But of course, it would leave me very little time, very little time for the church in midweek, very little time and energy for it Sundays either. Couldn't possibly be an elder and pastor of a church because I haven't got the time. I've known men and women in that circumstance to say, well, let me choose a lesser career, so that I may be free to spend a bit more time contributing to the eternal. And of course, it is a check in another way, isn't it? I was sitting with a good man, miles from here, now retired. He was a company secretary and a believer. He said, what great temptations would come across a man in those circumstances. He was sitting as advisor to the board of his company, and they had inspectors of income tax investigating their affairs, and the company had done all sorts of under-the-counter manipulations to escape tax. And as they sat there, and the cra- the inspector asked questions. Question was put to him. He knew in that moment what the board of directors wanted him to say, or they wanted him to say wasn't true. He knew if he said the truth, he would lose his job and his wife and children and mortgage and all those things. What did he do? Ah, you see, if in that circumstance you're solely glued to your career and your family and your prosperity here, you'll come under very severe temptation. Well, it was only what some people call a business lie, so that doesn't matter if Christians tell business lies. In that moment, he had his eyes on the eternal city, and he told the truth. And he lost his job. All in our pilgrimage, that is very important, isn't it? That whatever the short-term goals, to be enjoyed, we need to keep the ultimate goal always in our pocket. And then, for a man who did that, instead of life being unproductive, look how fruitful his faith was. By faith, uh, ah eleven and twelve, the true reading of the Greek actually means Abram, along with Sarah, received power to conceive seed when she was past age. All beyond nature's expectations. Abram and Sarah proved exceedingly fruitful. It's not merely that, uh, a great nation eventually came of them all down the centuries, though both of them at first were incapable of having children. By faith they were able to do this. But look at the spiritual progeny they've had. Multi-millions of folks who have read in the scripture of Abraham and Sarah's experience, their voyage of faith, how they learned justification by faith, like Abraham did, and have been justified, and they shall be in that eternal city. I had a friend, he goes and lectures sometimes in Israel, he's a mathematician, and when he was in Israel, they got him talking, you see, about spiritual things, and to their astonishment, he knew a lot about the Old Testament, more than the Israelis did themselves. They said then, how come you, an old Gentile, uh, uh, know all this about the Old Testament? Well, he said, beg your pardon, I'm a, I'm a son of Abraham. What do you mean? No, he says, I'm a child of Abraham. Of course you're not. Well, yes, I am. He quoted Galatians two, then you'll see. He's the son of Abraham, they are the father and mother of the faithful, aren't they? In them God laid down the pattern of how we can be justified by faith, and all who are justified by faith are in that sense children of Abraham. You think of the multitude that have come out of that fruitful union, because Sarah and Abraham had their eyes on the eternal kingdom. And then, of course, um, uh, it says these all died in faith, not having re- received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them afar off, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. They could have gone back if they liked. This is the consistency of faith and the perseverance of faith. You know, it's all right to be a pilgrim when you're young and, and, and, and your knees are pretty good and you can walk a lot like Abraham had to. That's not so bad. But all when you get older, all to settle down. Not to push ahead in the pilgrim life. Don't get to fifty if you can help it. Keep young. It's a mistake to get to fifty because if you get to fifty you'll surely go on to sixty, You know what I mean. And, and in the spiritual life as in the physical, the temptation, when you've lost use idealism, to settle down and not make any more progress, and indeed to go back a little bit, not to be so rigorous in your spiritual discipline and pilgrimage as once you were as a youngster. The temptation is great. Marvelous, isn't it, to see Abraham and Sarah persisting in their pilgrimage? They could have gone back to Ur of Chaldees. They chose not to, for they were saying clearly, we're strangers here, we're looking for our own fatherland. Our fatherland is in heaven. So they made sacrifices, but the Bible says that, that therefore God is not ashamed of them to be called their God. He has prepared for them a city. I like that, that bit, and the way God talks, he does talk in an astonishing fashion sometimes, doesn't he? God does. He says that when Abraham gets home to glory and sees the eternal city, God will not be ashamed to be called his God. Hey, what is the connection of thought? Why? Why won't God to be ashamed to be called his God? Well, the reason given is God won't be ashamed to be called his God. You'll see, because he has prepared for him a city. He's called Abram's God, and if he's Abram's God, that means he's all powerful. He can do what he likes. It should mean he's all loving. So what kind of a city will he have prepared for Abram? He called Abram out of the Ur of Chaldees and asked him to be a pilgrim towards the eternal city. One day, Abram will get home and see the eternal city. You imagine what would happen if God said, now, Abram, my dear son, let me show you around this city. Uh, Abram goes around the city. Yes, says God, that's marvelous there, isn't it? That's good there. I prepared that for you, Abram. So when he got around the lot, he says, now, Abram, what do you think of that? Suppose Abram were to say, well, honestly, God, I was expecting something better than this. Well, then God would have every right to be ashamed of himself, wouldn't he? If that eternal city disappoints Abram, I tell you what, God isn't going to be ashamed of himself when he takes Abram down the eternal city. Ooh, you should hear the delight, the whoops of delight and satisfaction, abundantly above all that we can ask or seek. Now, with that we come to another aspect of the life of pilgrimage, from verse seventeen to verse twenty four called the testing of faith. It is a united testimony of the writers of the New Testament that if we are believers setting out on our pilgrimage home to glory, sooner or later our faith will be tested. Peter explains why that is. He likens our faith to a lump of gold, for instance. Now, as we all know, gold comes in different forms. The some is very pure gold, that's the most expensive. Some is not so pure, it's mixed with all sorts of other substances that are less valuable. Some gold has a lot of dross in it, and therefore a goldsmith will not be content with to have dross in his gold. He will, uh, refine it. He finds the gold, melts it, and the dross rises to the surface, and he cuts it off and is left with pure gold when at last the thing solidifies again. So with our faith. So very often when we trust Christ first, it's genuine faith, a lot of it, and a lot of it, and some of it at least, not real faith. Perhaps excitement, perhaps secondhand knowledge. We believe it because mum said so. Well, that's a good reason to start with, but we'll have to have more than that to finish with. And therefore, from time to time, God will allow trials to come. It won't be pleasant. Instead of feeling for fir- faith is firm, when God allows your faith to be tested, you may well feel your faith has become very fluid and not solid at all. And, uh, you'll wonder what's happening. Don't be alarmed, says people. God is testing, trying, purifying your faith. What you'll be left with is a smaller quantity, but it will be solid gold. Yeah. So their faith was to be tested, you see. And first, as we saw, uh, uh, on the last evening, uh, God asked Abram to offer his son on the altar. It was a colossal great test of faith, as Abram was required to justify his faith by his works. What interests us tonight, surely, is what was going on in Abram's heart when he went through that test? How did he find the grace to stand the test? And the Bible tells us, he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son, accounting that God, the word means logically working it out, that God is able to raise up even from the dead, from whence he did also in a parable receive him back. Basis logic to me. When Abraham went up the mountain with Isaac, commanded to go and build an altar and put Isaac on it, how do you suppose he went up singing pipe choruses, hallelujah, why my life, love this opportunity, I had a marvelous experience, I'm gonna put my son on the altar and put a knife through him, oh, praise the Lord, hallelujah. No, he didn't. He went up as grim-faced as a man could possibly be, hoping that there would be a substitute there so he didn't have to offer his son. There wasn't any. So he bound the boy and put him on the altar and raised the knife. How did he find the strength and courage to do it? Well, not by excitement and emotional high. He found it in logic. Logic based on the character of God. God had said, in Isaac shall thy seed be called. All right? Abraham believed it. If God was now asking him to offer Isaac, well, God couldn't be a liar. So if now Abraham had to slay his son, then logic said that God, to keep his word, must raise him from the dead then, that's all. That's faith. Logic. Logic based on the character and truthfulness of God. Don't worry if in trials your emotions go against you. Learn to use logic. Base your deductions on the character of God. Then it says, by faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even concerning things to come. I'm grateful for that verse, uh, that to be informed by the Holy Spirit that Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau by faith. I never would have dreamed it. Particularly when you read the story. But then, of course, yes, he did, he was a believer, wasn't he, Isaac? He did believe the blessing, the blessing that God had given him and God had promised for his posterity. He did believe it. And because he believed it, he came now as an elderly man to that great formal ceremony when he should pronounce the blessing of God on one of his sons. But you see, what is said? The fact is that when the boys were still in the womb, God had given Rebecca, their mother, a plain word about these boys. And the word of God said that the elder should serve the younger. The younger was to have priesthood. And Rebecca believed it. I don't know whether she told Isaac. I can't think she never did. When it came to blessing, Isaac was not for taking any notice of this word of God and giving Jacob the priesthood. He proposed to carry on blessing Esau. Oh dear. But now he wasn't going according to the word of God. Well, what was he going by? It's a very vivid story, isn't it? He went by his senses, you know. He was going to have this ceremony, solemn ceremony, officially transmitting the blessing of God, you see, to his son. He felt he had to be in the mood to do it. Can't do it cold in the morning, can you? So he told Esau, he said, my boy, because he liked Esau, a hairy boy he was, and a good hunter. I'd like you now to go out and get some venison and cook it, you know, the venison, I love just the gravy done to the exact turn, you know, the herb like you do, Esau. And you come, and I'll eat the venison, and I shall feel good, you see. Beautiful, like you feel after a lovely dinner, you'll say. And then I'll bless you. He's working up towards the thing, you see. You work up to these things, don't you? So he sent Esau off, you'll see, uh, to get the blessing. To get to the venison, and then he would bless him. Uh, Rebecca thought something else. She was going to have her way, uh, the God's way, she said. You've got to bless Jacob, not Esau, but how should she get the word of God done? Why didn't she go to Isaac and say, now look here, Isaac, my, my dear, my dear, my dear, but I must now, I know I'm now your wife, but I must tell you now, you must go by God's word. Well, she didn't do that. Well, as far as I know, she didn't. And she's afraid Isaac wouldn't take any notice, so she thought of another way round. Isaac, you know, he loves his venison. He sent Esau after the venison. I know what to do. So she called Jacob, and she said, now I want you to go in and, and take this meal. Jacob was afraid to do it. My father will feel me and he'll see I'm not Esau and he'll curse me. No, she said, you do what I tell you. So she slayed a kid, and she got the skin, put it on his hands, my arms, made of his neck, you see, and she dressed up this kid as though it was venison. Ooh, she was good at cooking. And, uh, uh, in, uh, Jacob went into the presence of Esau, uh, Isaac. And Isaac, he was elderly. He had five senses, like we all do. Sight, hearing, uh, tasting, feeling, and smell. And he was going to decide on this matter of the blessing and who he blessed by his five senses. Well, that was unfortunate to start with, instead of deciding it through the word of God, going to be guided by his senses, you know. Well, his eyes were dim, so when Jacob came in, he couldn't see him. He said, who are you? He said, I- I'm Esau. He couldn't see. Went by his sound. You don't sound very much like Esau. Are you sure you're Esau? Oh yes, I'm Esau, he said. Oh. So he couldn't see, he didn't trust his hearing, no more. What would he trust then? Well, he trusted his touch, his feel. Say, come here, he said, come and let me feel you. Yeah, hairy hands, seems solid enough. Yeah. Feel like he's thought this is, and went by his feelings. But they deceived him. Then he went by his taste. Is this the venison? Yes. Yes, oh, marvelous. His taste deceived him. It wasn't venison, it was a Chinese takeaway or something that Rebecca had cooked up. His taste deceived him. Finally, he used his smell. He said, here, wait a minute, you come here and let me smell you. Well, smelling Esau when he'd been out hunting didn't, doesn't strike me as the sign of the blessing of God, but he trusted his smell, you see. That deceived him as well. Oh, what a lesson there is for us, isn't it? You want the blessing of God? What is blessing? How would you know what blessing is and whether you've got it or not? The true order, if we want blessing, is one, to start not with our senses, to start with God's word. And then we believe God's word. And when we believe God's word, we get the blessing. It may lead to wonderful feelings of emotion. It even the emotion might be so big that we get all sorts of sensations, like tears and things. But it must be that order, God's word, then faith in God's word, then the blessing, and then the emotion, and if need be, the sensation. It is so with forgiveness, isn't it? How do you get forgiveness? And how do you know you've got it? Well, we start with God's word, and we believe God's word. And when we believe, we get forgiveness. Whether we feel we've got it or we, uh, we don't feel we've got it, it's irrelevant. Believing God's word, he that believeth shall receive forgiveness of sins, and we get the forgiveness. So some people, when they get forgiveness, there's such a weight gone off their consciences that the emotions are colossal. Of course, they're very enjoyable, and then perhaps they might even lead to floods of sensations and tears. That's okay. But sometimes it happens with young converts that they start to mistake what the blessing is, and they think the blessing is the emotion. So they try to work up the emotion. Am I forgiven? Well, I felt ever so wonderful when I was forgiven, so I feel a bit down in the dumps now, but if I could work up the feeling of emotion, you see, I- I- I should feel I was forgiven. That's false, isn't it? Blessing comes by listening to God's word, believing God's word, then we have the blessing. If emotions don't follow, well, what does that matter? And if we don't get sensations, what does that matter either? So Isaac had to have his faith redirected, didn't he? Instead of going by sensations as to and emotions and feelings and your senses as to what, uh, blessing is, to learn to believe God's word and act on it. And Rebecca wasn't good, was she? They were going to Isaac and say, my Isaac, dear old Isaac, love you, but you must go by God's word. He bypassed his intellect, worked on his emotions and feelings to get the results. We mustn't do that, not even in our evangelism, maybe. The way to bring blessing to people is not to start by working on their emotions and working them up to a high and bypassing their moral judgment, bypassing intellect. No, no. In intellect be grown up men and women, says the Holy Spirit. Don't you ever attempt to bypass people's intellect or their moral judgment by working on their emotions and sensations. The Where way of faith faith. and blessing is faith first in God's word, believe that the emotions follow after. Faith redirected, and then faith refined. By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph and worshiped, leaning upon the top of his staff. It's a little melancholy, isn't it? The only thing that the Holy Spirit can talk about when he comes to think about the faith of Jacob is what he did virtually on his deathbed, as he leaned on his pilgrim's staff and, uh, uh, blessed, uh, each of the sons of Israel. Well, see, Jacob had been a believer early on. He really believed the promises made to his father of the blessing of God. He believed them so much that he was determined to get this blessing. You'll see him cheated Esau out of his birthright and then cheated him out of the blessing. He so believed the blessing that he thought it was OK to use his own wits and very questionable practices to cheat the chap out of his blessing. For that he had to run away from home. And so he went to get the job done with Uncle Laban in the, in the country, and he worked for him, he got one wife, and then he got two. Uh, and then he said, look, uncle, I've worked for you for wages, but I suggest we have a joint business venture. Because he would believe that God was going to give him all sorts of things. You see, that he's going to get the blessing, and this is how he was going to do this. So he hit upon a trade pact with Laban, but Laban didn't know all the secrets he had up his sleeve, you see. And by manipulating, as he thought, his trade secrets and know-how, he managed to get ninety nine point nine percent of Laban's capital into his own bank. And presently, his brothers-in-law, Laban's sons, had a look at him. They said, you see what's happening? This chap, Jacob, he's taking over our capital. He's virtually taking over our business and robbed us of our capital. And their faces weren't towards him, as the Bible says, as they were before. Happened to Israel in many countries, hasn't it, when the Gentiles have turned round and seeing that all the banks in the place had an Israelite name over the top of them. They had to run for his life. On the way back, he heard Esau was coming. And he got frightened. And they wrestled a man with him in the course of a night. He presently realized this was God himself, and he tried to maneuver God into play, but God touched his thigh, and Jacob lost his power to maneuver God and just hung helplessly upon God and said, uh, I will not let you go unless you bless me. Very good, says God, I will bless you. But what is blessing? Let's start here, says God. Esau was coming. Now, what would Jacob do? The man he cheated of all the goods and thought he was thereby getting the blessing of God. Says God, Jacob, give it back. Go on, give it back. And Jacob took an enormous great lot of sheep and oxen and one of his wives and sent them across. And he thought to himself, I don't think that's enough. So he sent another great batch of sheep and camels and goodness knows what across. And then he sent about three or four different companies. You count up the animals. An enormous amount of stuff he was obliged to send as a present to Esau. And God was saying, Jacob, I promised to give you the blessing, didn't I? But you don't have to cheat to get it. You don't have to cheat people to get my blessing. Send it back, Jacob. Give it back, give it back. Give it back he had to. And then life developed in a strange way to Jacob. He was dwelling now in the land, a famine came, and he was obliged to send his boys, uh, to Egypt, you see. Now Joseph had already disappeared, he didn't know where, so he'd lost one son. When he sent his boys down to Egypt, that man in Egypt kept one of the pe- men, Simeon, in prison while he sent the others back. Now he'd lost two sons. And the man said that they weren't to go again unless they brought the youngest son, Benjamin, with them. You're not taking Benjamin, says Jacob. If he goes and, and, and he gets imprisoned there and I lose him, it'll bring down my life with sorrow to the grave. I've already lost two sons. To lose another third, my darling little Benjamin, what, a quarter of my son's gone? No, I never will. Ah, but they said, Dad, there's no more food left. It will perish. We'll have to send Benjamin. Poor old boy. Like getting a child who's got something in its grip and mother having to undo the fingers to get it out. Is Jacob trying to hold on to what is left. Now he has to send Benjamin at the court of his son Saul. Where's this blessing of God got to? Eventually, Jacob got down to Egypt, and then he discovered, oh, is this what God meant by blessing? A few sheep stolen from Esau. Now there was his son Joseph, second in command to Pharaoh, lord of all the granaries in Egypt. The elderly Jacob was brought into the presence of Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh, lived to see what God really meant by blessing. To make him supreme of the nation, his son the savior of the world. There's blessing. And with God's people, you'll see. So do us we. One of the greatest trials of, um, faith is succession. In spite of his success, Joseph retained his faith in the future that God had promised, the future of earth, salvation lay with Israel, not with the Gentiles. Good. We mustn't stay over the other examples of faith. We must pass now on to the great topic of those that appeared to fail. There were some who, by faith, wrought marvelous victories. Others who stood valiantly for God, but were persecuted, executed, destroyed. As the world looked at it, it seemed as though they were fatal. Yes, sometimes great acts of faith will lead to God's vindication now, which will be proved by the blessing God gives now. Many a man and woman has been called to pass the other way, great acts of faith leading to martyrdom and death, and the vindication has to wait till the day to come. And so in that list, the writer puts the most famous name of all, the author of faith, Jesus Christ our Lord. His faith undimmed, he came to the cross despising the shame, and endured the cross, and ended up in a grave. Didn't die a hero's death, surrounded by admirers. Even his disciples forsook him. He died alone, that the world counted it a failure. However, God raised him from the dead. He's now at the right hand of God. The writer exhorts us, when we suffer, to look at Christ as our example, looking off unto Jesus, that we might find the courage, whatever happens, to continue with the wet battle of faith, even if this li- in this life we die as martyrs, and it seems that we've lost the battle. God will vindicate us at the resurrection of the just. Then our Lord, then the writer says another marvelous thing, doesn't he? Here were these believers enduring persecution for the Christ's sake, some of them executed. They've lost their homes. Why doesn't God deal with their enemies? Why do they have to suffer for Christ? We had a letter one day from Russia, we get hundreds and thousands. We got a letter from Chadicistan one day from a student. He got some of our literature. He said he'd been converted through the Baptists in that country. It's a Muslim country, about eighty five percent Muslim. Been converted, he said, and then he'd been baptized. And when I was baptized, he said, my brothers beat me unmercifully, for they were Muslims. My father took a knife and carved my back into rhythm. Please send me some literature, says he, that could explain to me why do we have to suffer so much when we believe in Christ? What would you have said? Why hasn't God arranged it so when you believe in Christ, that's the end of all suffering? Why do we have to suffer so much? Writer comforts his fellow believers in their suffering by pointing out that they are following Christ who likewise suffered. What is more, God can take that suffering and use it as education, as training and discipline to lead us deeper into the ways of holiness and thus prepare us for the great eternal kingdom. As it comes to the end, he reminds them of the great eternal city to which we have come. For we have not come to a mountain like Mount Sinai that was all aglow with fire and thunder. We've come to the city of the great king and heavenly Jerusalem, the great company of the angels, the church of the firstborn written in heaven. Notice what he says, not that we will come to it one day, we have already come to it. How can that be? Well, consider the history. When God redeemed Israel out of Egypt, he promised them the great inheritance in Canaan, didn't he? And he set them on the pilgrim pathway to that inheritance. But God didn't wait till they got to Canaan before he came down personally to meet his people in the wilderness, to tell them what the goal of redemption was. For after all, the goal of redemption wasn't Canaan, that was merely their destination. The goal of redemption was... Well, let God himself explain it. So he to Moses, go down and tell those people, I, uh, have, see what I've done to the Egyptians, how I've borne you on eagle wings and brought you to myself. The goal of redemption is not heaven. The goal of redemption is God. Long before they got to the Promised Land, God came down to Mount Sinai, and he said, Moses, I want you to bring forth the people to meet me. Can you imagine the scene? On the pilgrim path, and here's God come down, and Moses comes out to introduce the people to God here on the desert sands of the desert. God does that to us. Doesn't wait till we get to heaven, does he? While we're on the desert sand. Oh, but it's a reality, isn't it? We have come. We have come to the heavenly Jerusalem. Isn't that so? Don't you already feel yourself a part of it? Rejoice in this, says Christ, your names are written in heaven. And there's old Abraham. Well, sometimes when I'm studying the Bible and I'm reading in Genesis, I lift up my eyes to heaven. You'll forgive me, you see, I'm a bit of a child, and I say, Abram, Abram, I know what you were thinking in those centuries gone by. You were justified by faith, weren't you, Abram? Well, so have I been. Thank you, Abram. You've been a tremendous pattern for me. And there's a certain communion in my heart between me and Abram, you know. Not that he knows much about it. Yes, yes, yes. You see. I know what he felt like. And then I read out David in his Psalm, all the blessedness of the man whose sins forgive. I say, David, marvelous David. I know what that means. You see what God is doing? We're already part of the circuit. God comes down to our desert to meet us, doesn't he? Oh, what a wonderful thing I should do if I could, but I can't, to say to you, come, my dear fellow believers, let me bring you to God now here, this moment. He's your goal. One day he will take you to heaven, but here on the desert sand, in the midst of all life's trials and difficulties and pains and upheavals and variations, all come and meet God now, for he is the eternal, unchanging God. He wants to walk with you through life's journey. It is important that we get hold of what the goal is. The goal is not heaven, that's our destiny. Thank God for it. The goal is God. Israel mistook that on the journey and came to disaster. I must tell you this story, and then I'll stop. I will stop. I, and I will go one day from, from into Kabul, you see. I'm not likely to be again, so that's okay. Uh, uh, ha. Just wanted to tell you this story, you see. Israel were, uh, at Mount Sinai, and God had come down, you'll see, and made the proposal that they should be his special people, and he'd make a covenant with them. As Jeremiah put it, God was courting the people. He went to court them in the wilderness and offer them terms of marriage. And therefore, he said, now Moses, I, I, I prepare to come down and live among them, if you like, in a tabernacle and journey with them all the way to the Promised Land. I will be with them, you see. I'm the goal of their journey. Ha. So right on, Moses said, come up the tap- up the mountain. I'll give you the details of the tabernacle you can make, and I'll come down and live among the people. So up went Moses, up the mountain. No visible means of, of support. He went up the mountain. He was up there for forty days and forty nights. Well, one day, I don't know when it was, there were two chaps, I suspect, sitting at the bottom of this mountain, and one was a very clever man. He said to the other chap, you know, this is a very funny situation to be in, isn't it? What is, he said? Well, have you thought about it? Here we are at the bottom of this mountain, sitting in the desert. Impatient. Moses said he was going up there, and he's coming down again. Ah, I said that last week. He's not here yet, is he? Well, said the man, well, what do you propose you do about it? He says, it's no good sitting at the bottom of the mountain like this and going nowhere. Do you see? You've got to have something to aim at in life, haven't you? You can't just sit around twiddling your thumbs. You, you, you must have something to aim at. And this Moses, we don't know what's happened to him, nor to all his scheme about this inheritance living in us under sun. So I suggest we go to Aaron and we say, look, Aaron, we want some gods to aim at. We want some real practical goals that we can aim at on our desert journey. What kind of goal, goal gods, said Aaron? Well, I say, I don't know, but um, all right, I know, said Aaron. Pluck off your earrings. That's the way they had to, uh, they didn't have banks in those days. When they got spare cash, they made ornaments and hung them on their ears and around them, you see. Their cash, their money, their treasures. Aaron said, uh, give me those treasures of yours. And he made a golden calf, and he said, this be your God for you to follow. Oh, dear, dear, dear me. Folks that have been redeemed out of Egypt, introduced to God as their goal, and now on the desert way, they've set up another goal in life instead of God. Oh, God help us. God make his presence such a reality to us now, here, and now in this life. With eternity become real. We don't wait till we get to heaven. Know what it is to have God dwelling amongst us now, that God may be our goal, then we shall be safe, however long the desert journey is. Be sad, wouldn't it, for a believer to mistake the goal in life and to say, well, I'm going to heaven, so that's all I need to bother. I don't need to bother too much about God now. And follow other gods? No, of course, it won't happen with you nor me, shall it? By God's grace. Let us cultivate the presence of God through his word, through his spirit, through the risen Lord, that God may dwell in our hearts now by faith. God being a reality, eternity will become real, and we shall not miss our way, but journey to the goal until the Lord comes and take us home to heaven. Thank you for your patience. Shall we commit ourselves to God in prayer? Our Father, we thank thee for thy word. We bless thee for this chart and map. We thank thee for the thousands who have trod the pilgrim way before us, many of them now already in glory. We bless thee that thou hast come down to meet us on the desert way. We ask thy grace that in faith we may follow whither the Lord leads, keep our eye on the ultimate goal, walk day by day in fellowship with thee until the journey ends and we be brought home to God. This then our studies, as we now commit ourselves to thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.