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2-11-2018 Weekly Message

The Meditation of the Week: Psalms 11:1-7

Text: Hebrews 11:1-16

The title of the Word: Faith given by God, overcoming the whole world

          Everyone lives by faith for his or her own. But there is the faith belong heaven and the faith belong to the earth . The heavenly faith is the faith that God  has given for them that believe the word of promise from God.  And the earthly faith  refers to the belief in each person, that is self confidence, the idea of the faith that man has in his own way. However, the belief of man  is frustrated and vanished when difficulties are encountered. man’s belief is lost because he does not know the things on the other side of death, and disappears like a mirage disappearing with death.

         The Word of God given to us today is testifying to what God’s faith is:

” Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

2For by it the elders obtained a good report.

3Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” (Hebrews 11: 1-2)

         Through the example of faith shown by the many elders of faiths, things that are not seen have not seen the fulfillment of God’s promise, but they have done that promise by faith, as seen by their eyes. Abel had not seen the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lamb that will shed the blood and eliminates the sins of the world, but has pleased God by giving the lamb and its blood to God as he has seen.

          Enoch also walked with God for three hundred years to please God by believing that God would judge the world with water, believing that God would bring him out of the judgment  by taking him into heaven before the judgment of  flood (Genesis 5: 21-24).

          Enoch is a model of the Saints in the Philadelphia Church who live a life of God’s pleasure with the belief that the Lord Jesus Christ take  His Church ,that is his bride, into the heavens before the judgment of the world.

           The Bible also testifies that Enoch had evidence that pleased God:

 ” But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” (Hebrews 11: 6)

           Those who do not believe in God believe in God’s existence deeply in their conscience. Their conscience is also created by God. Most people, however, know God’s existence and do not fear God. But the Bible says that God’s enemy, the devil, is trembling as he believes the existence of God but also the judgment he will receive:

“Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble..” (James 2:19)

             That’s right! The children of God, who are taken  into heaven like Enoch in this age, who  are looking at the day when the judgment of fire against  the present world, no more by the water. do not only believe in God’s being but believe in God’s promise of  reward like Enoch, living the  life of serving and walking with Him.

            The prophet Isaiah prophesied in advance, like Enoch, the Christians who will be caught up into heaven before the Great  tribulation:

 ” The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.2He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.  “(Isaiah 57: 1-2)

          The elders who lived the  life of faith, as well as Abel and Enoch, did not see anything with their eyes , but they pleased God by faith, as seen by their eyes.

          When God said to Noah  to prepare  the ark for a hundred and twenty years with a message that God would judge the world with water , he built the ark with fear, as if he saw God’s judgment beforehand. His Ark was the symbol of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, where we must enter into by faith before the Great Tribulation. Apostle Paul and Silas witnessed of the spiritual ark  that is the salvation as floating  on the flood. :

”  Sirs, what must I do to be saved?

31And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. “(Acts 16:30:31)

            Abraham, the father of faith, obeyed when he was called to leave for the land he was going to be  inherited in the future, and left without knowing where to go. He believed that God would establish a city in Jerusalem, the land of Palestinian he inherited. And by firmly believing in the promise that all nations will be blessed in him, there was no possibility that he and Sarah will give a birth to a child by being nearly one hundred years old, but by faith they believe that their seeds will become as many as stars in the sky. It pleased God..

          Apostle Paul testified that the belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, who came to the world two thousand years ago and died for our sins, is a gift from God beyond the thought of man:

” For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

9Not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2: 8-9).

           That’s right! We have not seen, nor have we seen Him come again yet, but believing Him is not our own faith but the  gift from God. If God does not give the gift of faith, there is no one to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, believing in the words of God, including the words “ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Gen 1; 1), is also a special gift from God. This gift of faith is God’s grace.

           God wants to give this grace to all people, but if people do not want, God can not give. Apostle James testified about the person receiving this gift of faith:

” Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?

6But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble..’ “(James 4: 5). -6)

            We live every day looking at the challenges that are always coming before us in the last days of the world. Therefore, just as Apostle Paul testified, we are to walk by faith (2 Corinthians 5: 7), not by the sight. In other word, we do not look at the problems in front of our eyes,  not worrying about but believing the words of God’s promise, but cast  all things on the hand of  the Lord, looking forward  the day of Christ, Even though we cannot see with our eyes, but we have to live by faith seeing the substance that we hope for.

             Apostle John testified that Christians who live by faith given by God overcome the world. To win the world is to be able to overcome it by faith even if we  suffer in the world.

 ” For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.

5Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5: 4 -5)

           When the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ appeared to John the Apostle and delivered letters to the seven churches, He spoke to all the churches about the rewards for those who overcome  the world by faith:

” To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God…..  He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death. …   To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it…. And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:

27And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.

28And I will give him the morning star.

….  He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels…….  Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name….  To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.. “

Amen! Hallelujah!