Hope Church LV Sermons
Not by Sight :: Experiencing God by Faith
Do you, do you long, do you hunger to experience the presence and power of God in your life daily? Do you have a desire? Do you have a longing to experience the presence, the manifest presence and power of God in your life on a daily basis? There are many of you. I'm sure right now in a very specific way you need God. I know that maybe we would all say in a generic, I'm at church kind of way, yes, I need God, but I know there are a lot of you right now in a very specific way. Maybe the whole reason you made the decision to come to church this weekend is because in a very specific way you need to experience God in your life. Maybe it's a situation dealing with your health. Maybe there's a physical reality in your life and you are very aware right now of your need for God to manifest His presence and show up in a very specific way in your life. Maybe it's in your marriage. Maybe in your marriage you cry yourself to sleep at night because you need God in a very specific way to show up in your marriage. Maybe it's in the area of provision, financial or physical. You have a need for God to provide. You're at the end and you don't know what the next step is going to look like. You don't know how the next meal is going to be paid. You maybe not even know where the next meal is going to come from. And in a very specific way, you need God to show up. I don't know where you are this weekend. But I got a feeling there's a lot of us. You need God to show up in a very specific way. If you're visiting with us, we're on a journey together as a family of faith. We've been for about three or four months now studying straight through one chapter in the Bible, Hebrews chapter 11. If you have your Bible, I want you to go ahead and turn to Hebrews chapter 11 as we're walking through this series. Let me tell you what Hebrews chapter 11 is. It's a chapter that tells the story of men and women of God who in a very specific way experienced God in their life. In a very unique and a very specific and sometimes in a very extraordinary way, these ordinary people, as we read these stories in Hebrews 11, they're disordinary people. They're just like you and me, but they've seen God show up in some very specific and very extraordinary ways as they followed in by faith. Now, to be honest with you, if you look at Hebrews chapter 11, you've heard people talk about a 30,000 foot view. Well, we're in Hebrews 11, man. It's like a 50,000 foot view. Some of these stories that we find contained in one verse of Scripture, maybe two little lines, are unpacked over the course of several chapters in the Old Testament and sometimes they span different decades. And yet we get just a little snippet in Hebrews chapter 11 that gives us just enough to wet our appetite. Hebrews chapter 11, the last time we looked at this text two weekends ago, you looked at verses 28 and 29 and in verse 29, you read the text where it talked about the children of Israel passing through the Red Sea. That wonderful miracle that Pastor Tom preached to us about where God parted the Red Sea and allowed the children of Israel to cross. And that's verse 29. Verse 30, we're going to read in just a moment about the walls of Jericho falling down. How many of you heard that story before, right? Did you know that little white space in between verse 29 and verse 30 is 40 years? 50,000 foot view here. If you read this text just like it's written here and you don't understand the context of the Old Testament, you would think they marched through the Red Sea straight to the walls of Jericho next verse and they fell down flat, right? Didn't happen like that. You know what that tells us, right? There's a whole lot in the white space in Hebrews chapter 11. In those little spaces in between the verses, there's a lot of truth that you can uncover in the Old Testament about these men and women of God who walk by faith. This week in our country, we celebrated the life of a great American, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Listen to what Dr. King said about faith. He said, "Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase." That's verses, that's the white space in between verse 29 and verse 30. They took the first step through the Red Sea. They didn't see the whole staircase. They didn't know there was going to be 40 years in between the verses. They knew they were heading out to the Promised Land and for 40 years they wandered around in the wilderness. But every step, even though it wasn't perfect, as you read the story it's encouraging because it's not like every day they woke up saying, "Let's do this for God." You know, that's some real blunders along the journey. Every day they took another step and another step and another step by faith. Let me kind of explain what I mean by that 40-year journey being a journey of faith. There was a study that was done by the Quartermaster General of the United States Army. The Quartermaster General, if you don't know in the Army, is the one that kind of makes sure the provisions get to the troops wherever they are. And so the Quartermaster General did a study on what it would have been like for the children of Israel. Now Tom told us two weeks ago, there were about three million of them. When we talk about them leaving the Promised Land going to the, or leaving Egypt going to the Promised Land going through the Red Sea, this wasn't like a little band of gypsies. This wasn't 40 or 50 people. We're talking about three million. It's like more than the population of Las Vegas taking off hiking together. You imagine if we took the whole city of Las Vegas on a hike for 40 years? Here's what the Quartermaster General discovered. It took every day, 1,500 tons of food to feed those three million people every day. 1,500 tons of food would require two freight trains each one mile long just to carry the food. That's how much food it took to feed them every day. On top of that, they had to have firewood to cook the food. They had to have firewood to stay warm in the desert at night. The Quartermaster General said it would have taken 4,000 tons daily of firewood, which means a few more mile long freight trains. Now they're wandering around the desert. They needed water. We understand that living in Las Vegas. You got to have water. They needed water to drink as they walked. They needed water to wash the things that they had to wash themselves. The Quartermaster General said it would have taken 11 million gallons of water every single day. It would take a freight train with tank cars 1,800 miles long. Let me give you a box to put that in. That's Las Vegas to Chicago. You got to have a train of tanker cars every day from Las Vegas to Chicago delivering 11 million gallons of water. Every night they had to camp. The camp site would have been two-thirds the size of Rhode Island, or 750 square miles. Now, that was daily. They spent 40 years. You do the math. It's 14,600 days. So every one of the numbers I just gave you multiply it by 14,600, and that's the amount of provision it took for 40 years in the wilderness. You think Moses sat down and calculated all that out before they set out on the journey into the wilderness? I don't think so. You see, Moses lived by faith, and God provided it. Now, in light of what I've just told you, do you really think God has any problem taking care of you or me? For 40 years, they walked with God by faith, and that 40 years was 40 years of preparation for what was going to happen in verse 30. Look at verse 30, our text for this weekend, "By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days." What a short, simple statement for such a profound miracle. They experienced God in a very specific, very supernatural way in their lives, and out of that verse I want to give you four simple steps that enable them to experience God in their lives that will also, as you and I take these four steps and apply them to our lives, these four simple steps will allow you and I to experience God in a very real, very specific, very extraordinary way. Here's the first one. They heard from God. They heard from God. We're not going to take the time to turn there, but in Joshua chapter 6, you need to write that down. Joshua chapter 6, because later on tonight when you get home and you're headed to bed, you can open to Joshua chapter 6 and you can read the whole account of exactly what God said and exactly how it carried itself out there with the walls of Jericho falling down. If you're really going to get the whole context, back up read chapter 5 into chapter 6 on into chapter 7, and you'll get the larger context of this story, but in Joshua chapter 6 and verse 2, listen to what the Bible says, the Lord said to Joshua, this is very important. See, I have given Jericho into your hand. Notice the past tense. Joshua, I have given. Not I will give or I might give but have given. Here's the point. Joshua and the people of Israel were able to step out in faith because they clearly heard God speak into the, listen, God is not in the business of tearing down walls just because I want him to. But when God speaks clearly, I can wrap my heart around the promise of God and by faith, step out in boldness. So let me give you a life changing reality. The single most important factor in walking by faith is the ability to hear from God. I want you to read that off the screen with me. You ready? One, two, three. The single most important factor in walking by faith is the ability to hear from God. Let me show it to you in the Bible. Romans chapter 10 and verse 17. So, faith comes by what? Hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Faith is a response to hearing God. Faith is not me dreaming up what I want and then stamping God's name on it so that it will happen. Faith is not me rubbing a lamp and expecting a genie to come out and solve all my problems. No, faith is hearing God speak into my life. And when God speaks by faith, I wrap my heart around it and step out in response. Here's what that means. Faith demands intimate fellowship with God. And thereian is why so many Christians struggle to live by faith. Listen, you cannot come to church once or twice a month and occasionally breeze by a small group and think that in moments of crisis, you have bold faith to step out and trust God. Faith demands an intimate fellowship relationship with God that is daily. You see God speaks to us through our relationship to Him. So is the strength of your fellowship with God. So is your ability to walk by faith. You see, the more you know Him, the easier it becomes to trust Him. When you don't know Him well, it is difficult to trust Him greatly. But when you are walking an intimate fellowship with God, when daily you are seeking Him and you are spending time and you've gotten in the routine of hearing God speak into your life, it increases our capacity to live by faith. Let me give you three ways that God speaks to us through our relationship with Him. Number one, He speaks to us through the Bible. God has given us this book. Not just to intellectually fill our minds with truth about God, but God has given us this book as a living word and as you and I spend time with God. We don't read the Bible just to read the Bible. No, we read the Bible as an exercise to spend time with God. It's a way to communicate with God and to fellowship with God. God speaks to us through His Word and we respond in communicating to Him and praise and repentance and in confession and in submission. It becomes a two-way communication as we spend time in the Word of God. God speaks to us through the Bible. God also speaks to us through circumstances and counsel. The circumstances and situations that are in your life, God can speak to you through them if we're walking in fellowship with God. We can seek Godly counsel from people that know His Word and if we're walking in fellowship with God, God can through the counsel of others confirm what He's saying to us through the Word. Number three, God speaks to us through His Spirit, that sense of peace and rightness that God gives us as His children. When we're stepping out of obedience to Him, God gives us that sense of peace. I define it this way, the absence of a check in my Spirit. If you've been walking with God for any length of time at all, you understand that phrase when I say it, a check in your Spirit. You know what it is to be on the brink of making a decision or following God and there's just something in you that's an unrest. The Spirit of God has put a check there. Listen, you can't have peace from God and a check in your Spirit at the same time. So here's what my personal conviction is. When all three of those things that I've just mentioned, the Word, counsel and circumstances and that sense of peace and right, when all three of those line up and point in the same direction, I believe I can definitively say, I've heard God speak. You've got to be careful that you don't make a decision on any one of those things by themselves because we can go looking for a verse to justify what we want to do or our feelings or emotions can tell us, hey, this is a good thing or you can even seek bad counsel. But when all three, the Word and that sense of peace and counsel and my circumstances all line up and point in the same direction, I believe I can definitively say, I've heard God speak. Listen, you will never experience God on a daily basis until you seek to hear from God on a daily basis. I'm not sure you heard that. I won't say it again because I think when I started, I said, how many of you long and I could see it in your faces? So many of you long to experience the presence and power of God daily, but you will never, you'll never experience the power and the presence of God daily until you establish the daily principle of seeking to hear God speak daily into your life. You see, the key is the relationship. The focus is the relationship. The more you know Him, the greater your capacity to have faith. Number one is they heard from God. So the first question is, what's God saying to you? He said, I don't know. Well, then there's step one. You need to pursue Him. You need to hear His voice? Hey, the wrong question is, what's the will of God? You don't need to know the will of God. You just need to know God. And when you begin to know Him, God will accomplish His will through your life. It's not a chess game where He's hiding behind the rocks out there. God's brought you to Himself that you couldn't know Him. God wants you to know the plan more than you want to know it. But it's not bells and whistles and stars and lightning flashes in the sky. It happens as God speaks into your life out of the overflow of your intimate fellowship with Him. They heard God. Number two, step number two, they trusted God. They trusted God. Webster defines trust as the assured dependence on the character ability strength or truth of someone or something. So biblical trust is to depend with confidence on the character ability strength and truth of God for everything in my life. It's what this life of faith is all about. We've given you a definition every weekend that we've been doing this series. What does it mean to live by faith? Here's the answer to the question. It means to live life, not trusting in myself, but resting moment by moment in His very life in me. To live life, not trusting in my character, my ability, my strength, my wisdom, no, but to live life moment by moment in complete dependence on His character, His ability, His strength, His knowledge. Now, if you don't know much about all of those things, it's difficult to trust Him. But when you're pursuing Him and knowing Him, it creates a greater capacity for you and I to trust Him. They trusted God. God spoke, said, "I've given you Jericho," and they trusted Him. Now, there are two classic mistakes that we make when it comes to trusting God. The first mistake I call the do-nothing believers. And if this group of people in Hebrews 11, 30 had been the do-nothing believers, here's what they would have done. They would have said, "God has given us Jericho, so let's just sit back and wait on God to do it." God's given it to us? We're just going to sit back and do nothing. It's like the man I heard about one time in the story who was in a flood. And it began to flood in his town, and he believed and said to his friends, "No, hey, God's going to take care of me. I'm going to be okay." And the flood waters began to rise, and it rose so high that he wound up sitting on the roof of his house. And a neighbor came by in a canoe and said, "Hey, man, come on, get in with me. This is getting out of hand." And he said, "No, I'm okay. God's going to provide." A little while later, the flood -- I mean, he's sitting on the chimney. There's nothing -- he's just standing there, and the red cross comes behind a boat, says, "Hey, Seth, fella, you got to get in the boat with us. You're going to drown. You're going to die." He said, "No, God said he's going to take care of me. I'm okay." Finally, as the last ditch effort, they send the National Guard helicopter by, and they come by and drop the line down and say, "Hey, you got to get up here." He says, "I'm going to be okay. God said he's going to provide him. The God drowns and dies." And in heaven, he goes up to God and says, "God, I thought you said you were going to take care of me. I told everybody you were going to provide him." And I stood to tell everybody of how you were going to do it. God said, "Man, a son of canoe, a boat, and a helicopter. What else you want?" Now, a lot of Christians we live our lives like that. Just sit back and do nothing. Listen, God's given us some principles in His Word that we're to obey, some steps that we're to honor. A.W. Pink said it this way, "The disclosure of God's gracious purpose and the absolute certainty of its accomplishment in no way renders needless the discharge of our responsibilities." We have a responsibility to obey the principles of Scripture. I need to look at my life and see if there's any area that I know I'm willingly violating and disobeying and not paying attention to. Sometimes we make the mistake of sitting back doing nothing. Thank God's just going to zap it out of the sky. Another classic mistake is to do something, believers. If the children of Israel have been to do something, believers, here's the way they would have responded to Jericho. God's given us Jericho. Now, we've got to come up with a plan on how we're going to get it. They would have said, "Hey, the way to take a city, we'll start them out or we'll scale the walls or we'll knock down the walls with brute force or we'll dig tunnels under the walls and we'll go into the city that way." Isn't it funny how often we try to accomplish God's plan our way? They didn't make either of these mistakes. Let me tell you what they did. They heard God and they trusted Him. Where's the evidence? They obeyed Him. And you need to understand and obeying Him what they did is pretty radical. Again, we're not going to take the time to go over and read it, but in Joshua chapter 6, let me tell you what God's plan was. He said, "Joshua, I've given Jericho into your hand. Here's the plan. I want you to line up seven priests with seven horns and behind them some priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant. And then I want all the children of Israel to line up behind them. And here's the way we're going to take the city. For six days, I want you to not say a word. I want you to go march around the Jericho walls one time at the conclusion of marching around the walls. I want you to blow the horn. And I want you to come back and make camp and go to bed and do the same thing the next day for six days. On the seventh day, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go do that again six times. And then on the seventh time, after the priests blow the horns, I want all the people to shout. Now you've got to know Joshua was thinking really? Lord, you left out that part where we draw our swords. Lord, when do we build the battering rams? Really? We're going to lead into battle with the orchestra. The evidence of Scripture is that after 40 years of watching God provide that daily supply, 40 years earlier, they'd had some trouble believing it. But now they went. They simply obey. Listen to this. Even though it didn't make sense. One writer, R. Kent Hughes, listen to what he said. Look at this quote, "By any outside estimation, these instructions were ridiculous." The uniform witness of military history is that the foe is conquered by force. City walls are cleared by bombardment. They are scaled by ladders and robes. Gates are smashed by battering rams. Troops taken by sword. Cities do not fall by mystics making bad music on rams horns. When the Canaanites got a good look at the procession, they undoubtedly exploded in the incredulous laughter and then hoots and cat calls. They could not believe their eyes. What fools these Israelites were? Clowns. The last time I preached this verse of Scripture was in the summer of 2001. There was a small group of people that had gathered together. We just moved out of my living room into a studio downtown. We're meeting on Sunday nights having a Bible study together, and I preached this verse of Scripture. I stood before that group of people, and I said to them, "Just a handful, we just moved here a few months earlier to be involved in planting a new church." I said, "God has spoken to us," and I read for them a text of Scripture that God had spoken into our lives about what He wanted to do in Las Vegas. It's out of Psalm 107, verse 35. Listen what it says. Psalm 107, verses 35 through 39. He changes a wilderness into a pool of water and a dry land into springs of water, and there He makes the hungry to dwell so that they may establish an inhabited city in so fields and plant vineyards and gather a fruitful harvest, and He blesses them and they multiply greatly. I stood before that little group of people and said that God had invited us into His activity in the city of Las Vegas, and I told them that God was going to do something through this fellowship in our city that was going to touch the world for His glory. But here's what I said. God had spoken very clearly. It wasn't going to be through marketing plans and demographic studies and community surveys. God had given us a threefold strategy. Number one, we were going to cultivate the field through prayer. Number two, we were going to sow the seed of the gospel. Number three, we were going to trust the Lord for a harvest. So for four months, we spent time as a family of faith, prayer-walking 50,000 households on the south end of Las Vegas. We prayed up and down every street in five zip codes on this end of town. We prayed through the entire Las Vegas phonebook two times. Then we went back to those neighborhoods and distributed 20,000 copies of the gospel of John. I stood before those people and here's the exact quote from my notes 10 years ago. "If we will seek to hear from Him and trust Him by obeying Him, we will see God move mightily in our city." In the last decade, we've seen 2,500 people trust Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. 1,200 of those have been baptized right into this fellowship. We've had the privilege of seeing 10 churches planted, eight of them right here in Las Vegas alone. We now work on four continents around the world where we're training over 10,000 pastors on an annual basis so that they can be leaders that multiply and plant churches in those unreached parts of the world. God's opened the doors to us and done unbelievable things and now we're on the brink of a significant next step on the journey. We're about to transition into a new facility, a new campus, a permanent home, but I want you to understand something tonight. Nothing has changed. Our ability to impact our city and carry out the mission of Jesus still rests on our hearing God and simply doing what He says. They heard and they trusted. Now before I give you the third step, let me go ahead and tell you, it's the hardest. Are you ready for it? They heard, they trusted, they waited on God. Pastor, I was with you right up to this one. We live in the microwave world, right? I mean, now we stand at the microwave and we're like, "How can this take so long?" Three minutes. Are you kidding me? What is this? Filet mignon, "Are you kidding me?" Look back at our text. Hebrews 11.30, "By faith, the walls of Jericho fail down." What's the next word? "After." After they had been encircled for seven of the longest days of their life. Day one, they marched to the walls of Jericho following the priests in the Ark of the Covenant. And however many hours it took, they marched slowly around that. And the commandment that had been given to them was, "You don't make a sound." Other than the sound of the trumpets, nobody says anything. That's a miracle in and of itself. Three million people walking around, nobody say anything. No cell phones going off, nothing. I mean, they're walking around these walls. The only sound was the sound of the ridicule coming from the tops of the walls as the Canaanites were laughing and calling them fools and pointing their fingers. They marched around the wall on day one. The priests blow the horns. And nothing happens. Ground doesn't shake. They don't start seeing cracks in the walls. You know how difficult it must have been to get up on day two and go do it again. Day two, they go back. March all the way around the wall. Nobody making a sound. Priests blow the horns. Nothing happens. They go back. They make camp. They get up the next morning. Come on, boys and girls. Wake up. We're going back to do what? Go march around the walls. Again? Yes. You have to be quiet again. Yes. March around the walls. All the horns. Nothing happens. Day four. Day five. Day six. Day seven. This time we're going to do it seven times. Once, blow the horns. Nothing. Twice. Blow the horns. Nothing. Three times, four times, five times. They've been doing this for six days. Now they're on the seventh day. Today they've done it six more times. Twelve times they've been around these walls. Twelve times they've blown the horns and nothing has happened. Hey. You ever feel like you're doing everything God said to. You're obeying everything you know to obey. And yet nothing's happening. You ever feel like that? God, I'm doing everything. Lord, I'm serving. I'm giving. God, I'm in a small group. God, I'm spending time. Lord, listen, something was happening. Two things in particular I know for sure. Number one is that God was drawing them to himself. You see, in seasons when all I can do is wait on God is when I've really grown the most in my fellowship with Him. You think about it. In those seasons where there's nothing you can do but wait on Him, you seek Him like there's no tomorrow. What is the goal? The goal is the relationship. Sometimes God puts us in those seasons where all we can do is wait on Him because the relationship's just not the beginning point to get us into the experience. God, the relationship is the goal. God's brought us to Himself that we could know Him. God brings those seasons of waiting because it draws us into deep fellowship with Him. Can you imagine how they must have been praying that last time around the wall? Oh God. 12 times and nothing. Lord, do you hear them laughing? Tell you something else that was happening. God was being glorified. How? Through their simple obedience? Well, you know the end of the story. Something ultimately did happen. They experienced God. After that seventh day, the seventh time around those walls, they blew the horns and the Bible says that the people of God shouted an engine. And Joshua chapter 6 and verse 20, the Bible says the wall fell down flat. One of the most impenetrable cities of the day. And with a song and a shout, the walls collapsed. They heard, they trusted, they waited. And this ordinary group of people experienced God in an extraordinary way. You're ready to experience God in your life. Do you need Him in a very specific way right now? [BLANK_AUDIO]