Sermon Tone Analysis

Monster Faith

Hebrews 11

 

Open: Clip from /Monster Garage/

 

I love that show, Monster Garage.

As we just saw, they take these very ordinary cars and do extraordinary things with them.

They’ve taken a school bus and made a pontoon boat out of it.

They’ve lasdkjf.

It is a amazing what these guys do to monster things up.

And that is what today is about as we look at “Monster Faith,” how God wants to monster our lives up…how God loves to use ordinary people like the person sitting next to you to do extraordinary things.

That’s why these toys are up here, to remind us of that.

We have monster Hersheys Kisses and a monster Diet Coke.

Do you smell the chocolate?

That’s why we gave you chocolate when you came in.

We didn’t want to be cruel.

Go ahead and eat the chocolate if you haven’t yet.

We also have a monster Frisbee.

And what do you think I’m going to do with the monster Frisbee?

Can I resist?

You know, I can’t ever seem to get things I throw out all the way to the balcony, but this is my big moment.

If you get it, just gently throw it back and you may want to keep your eyes open here on the bottom.

[play with Frisbee].

God loves to take a little bit of faith, like this little Hershey’s Kiss, and blow it up into something big [refer to big kiss].

He says that if we even have a mustard seed of faith, that we can move mountains.

It doesn’t take much chocolate to make me happy, and it doesn’t take much faith to make God happy.

He responds to even mustard seed sized faith.

We were going to pass out mustard seeds, but they are so small we couldn’t figure out how to make it work.

We tend to think that people who do great things for God are people of great ability…people very different from us.

But that is not true.

Being used by God greatly is not about our ability but our availability to God.

He is looking for people who are willing to muster up a little faith.

He is looking for ordinary people who place their lives in his hand and are willing to be monstered up for his purposes.

Today we are going to be spending our time in Hebrews 11, which is a passage of Scripture dedicated to these great people of God in the past—people like Moses, Deborah, Abraham, David, Joshua, and Noah…people who clearly were studs for God, who did great things.

But they were not in themselves great people with a perfect past and extraordinary ability.

Think about it.

David was an adulterer, Moses a murderer, Abraham gave his wife away—twice!

Noah got drunk.

These were not perfect people.

And they had limitations.

Moses stuttered.

Gideon was a wimp at the beginning.

Deborah married a weenie.

But they all had something in common.

They were people of faith.

They were people who made themselves available to God.

They loved God with a burning passion, and were willing to give up everything for him.

These were people who by faith believed the unbelievable, attempted the impossible, and sacrificed beyond what was reasonable.

They were people who had monster faith.

What is monster faith?

What is it that God is looking for when he chooses people to use?

Today we are going to look at what all these people mentioned in Hebrews 11 had in common to see how God can do extraordinary things through ordinary people like me and you.

/Monster faith is…/

 

* Beyond Sensible

 

Following God is easy when it makes sense and the circumstances of life are working out beautifully.

That’s not a big challenge.

Those times do not test our faith, and they do not stretch our faith.

When we are comfortable, we don’t grow very much.

What we can see is easy to believe.

Faith is tested when things don’t make much sense, or when we cannot see how things will work out.

Hebrews 11:1 describes faith this way: /   1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

2This is what the ancients were commended for.

/ 

 

Faith is when we don’t see but still believe firmly…when we are confident in God’s character and his promises even when life circumstances don’t seem to be matching up.

The writer to the Hebrews gives us some illustrations of this kind of faith, and let’s look at a few of them.

-          Noah = /Obeys the unreasonable/

/ 7By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.

By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

/Can you imagine being Noah?

God tells you to spend your life building an ark, a boat, where there is no lake or ocean or even significant rainfall.

He tells you the whole earth is going to flood, and your job now is to build this big boat and with his help get all these animals on there.

For decades, he endured ridicule from people who thought for sure this guy was nuts.

But Noah does it.

He obeys.

-          Abraham = / Believes the unbelievable/

/   8By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.

9By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.

10For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

11By faith Abraham, even though he was past age–and Sarah herself was barren–was enabled to become a father because he[a]considered him faithful who had made the promise.

12And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

/

 

God tells Abraham to go to this land he promises him, but doesn’t tell him where it is.

Like Noah, people would have considered him nuts.

Where are you going?

I don’t know.

What do you mean?

I believe God will show me, but I have to leave without knowing where it is.

And he does.

God had also promised that a nation would come from him, and yet Abraham was an old guy with no kids.

Sarah was no spring chicken herself.

Abraham was 100 years old, and Sarah 90.

How was that going to work?

But they believed the unbelievable.

-          Moses = /Sacrificed beyond the rational/

/   24By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter.

25He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.

26He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.

/

We tend to forget what Moses gave up to lead the people of Israel.

He was raised as a prince of Egypt, the most wealthy and powerful nation on the planet.

For 40 years, he grew up with absolutely the best of everything he wanted.

He had absolute power, limitless wealth, and constant enjoyment.

Anyone would consider him crazy for giving up the most enviable position on the planet.

Everybody wanted to be him.

And yet at 40 years old, God intervenes in his life and he has a choice to make—to stay as a ruler in Egypt or identify with the Hebrew slaves and fulfill his God-given calling, which of course he does go after his God-calling.