What More Shall Be Said (p1) – What More Shall Be Said (p3)
I want to thank the choir for being here every night and for the wonderful job they did. I know I’m not saying this to for any other reason other than just the truth. I honestly feel like we have the best group of church members, choir members, anywhere around. Just put your heart and soul into it and I greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming every night to practice that you put in. Like our pastor said, I truly believe that doesn’t matter who all showed up, who didn’t show up. We showed up. And the Lord bless us each night. Amen. And it was an encouragement, it was a help. And I went back to work yesterday and they asked me to say, so you took off a week’s vacation to go to revival? I said, Well, I took off a week vacation so I could be in our church for our camp meeting. I said, what’s a camp meeting? I said, that’s where you have choirs come in, preachers come in, two preachers. Two preachers a night. You have two preachers at night and they said, you took your vacation off for that? I said well, I said I did. I said, because I wanted to make sure I was there. And I’m glad that the Lord saw fit to allow us to be here because I’ll be honest with you, you never know what’s going to happen from one day to the next. Amen. The Lord encouraged my heart in every service. And I just want to thank you as a church for supporting the camp meeting. It’s a blessing, it really is. And just to see how the Lord moved and blessed each night and then to your brother Smith preached friday night was just a blessing. And I have no idea what his health issues are, but just think, a man, he didn’t have to come, why does he have to come to PAX, West Virginia? But he came here and preached to us Friday night and did a wonderful job. And I bless the Lord for it good to have our young people with us, our college students a couple of nights. That was a blessing. But the Lord has been good to us. Hebrews, chapter eleven, verses 32 to 40. I want to give you this thought this morning. It’s a continuation of last week and that is, what shall I say more part two. They may be a part three and part four, I don’t know. We may get it all done this morning. I doubt it, but we’ll look at it. Because there’s something I want you to see here that I think will be a help to you. But I want to pray first. I don’t want to lift up man, but I want to uplift the magnify of the Lord Jesus Christ. So let’s take just a moment in prayer. Father in heaven, as we bow before you, Lord, once again this morning. We thank you for allowing us, together with our church brothers and sisters in Christ, one more time on this side of eternity. Thank you, Lord, for our church family. Thank you, Lord, for our pastor. Thank you for all you’ve done. Thank you for his family. Lord, I thank you for your blessings. I thank you for your goodness, your mercy, your grace, and your great gift of salvation. Lord, we need you this morning. Father, I ask you to take the word of God and speak to our hearts. May the Holy Spirit of God, just for a few moments, arrest our hearts and our minds, Lord, and help us to pay attention, Father, to what you have for us this morning. The folks come this morning needing help, need encouragement, needing strength. And Father, I know Lord, we’ll find it if we’ll just listen to your work this morning. Guide us and direct us as only you can. Father, again, thank you for what you’ve done this week. Thank you for what you want to do today. Thank you for what you’re going to do in the next hour. Lord, again, just guide and direct. We must put a calm upon our heart and help us to hear from heaven in Jesus name, amen. Hebrews eleven, starting with verse number 32, the Bible says, and what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barrack, and of Samson, and of Jephtha, and of David, and also in Samuel, and of the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouth of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword. Out of weakness were made strong wax of valiant infight turned to flight the armies of the aliens, women received their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trial of cruel walkings and scourgings, yet, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder they were tempted, they were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted and tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and in mountains and dens, and in caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise. God, having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. I want to draw your attention again just to the title of the lesson. The Bible says there in verse number 32 and what shall I more say? You know, you and I, we looked at this last week, in last week’s Sunday school lesson. We kind of reviewed the verses leading up to this, and we saw great works that God did do. We saw God part the Red Sea. And again, can I just for a moment remind you that we focus on the Red Sea when we all be focusing on what God did. We focus on Moses, we focus on the great event and we attached Moses to the great event. And we fail to realize and to recognize that it was God that did that. And I think we fail to realize that that same God that parted the Red Sea is the same God we serve today. We talk about the walls of Jericho and we said, what a great event. We talk about Joshua and the walls of Jericho, but we fail to recognize that it was God that brought those walls down and that’s the same God we serve today. Amen. There’s so many encouraging things in this chapter, there really is. There’s so many encouraging things in this chapter. But I want to start this morning’s Sunday school lesson by just recognizing a couple of things. Number one, what is faith? Faith is the substance of things hoped for. It’s the evidence of things not seen. That’s what faith is. I want to remind you what faith is. Now I want to remind you what faith is not. Faith is not our wants being fulfilled. Think about that. It’s a lot of things we want, isn’t it? We want extra money in our paychecks to be able to pay our bills. We want a miracle to happen, right? We want the church to grow, we want our family to be secure. But faith takes it out of our hands and puts it in God’s hands. Faith is taking your hands off the steering wheel, letting go and letting God. We can’t do that. I mean it’s hard for us to do that, right? I mean you better not do that going down the road and you better not do that in your life. Let go and let God have control of the wheel. Amen. Let him guide you directly. Faith is not our wants. Faith is not fulfilling our world with lust. There’s a lot of things we desire, a lot of things we’d like to have. There’s a lot of things we want to accomplish in life, but that’s not what faith is. Faith is trusting in God for whatever the outcome may be. We may not know what it is, but God does and we trust Him for that result. Amen. Faith. What is faith, Brother Mark? Well, I gave you the biblical definition. Let me give you another way to look at it. Faith is placing our complete confidence in our great God to fill in the blank. He said, what could the blank be? Well, the blank can be meeting our needs physically, meeting our needs spiritually, giving us direction in our life. Amen. Trusting the Lord, walking by faith, coming to the Red Sea and saying, lord, you’re going to have to party because I sure can’t. Amen. One thing I’ve learned about coming to the Red Sea, number one, you’ve got to be there before the Lord can provide the need. By that I’m saying this. You’ve got to be in a position, in a place where God can meet that need. God can meet that, do what needs to be done. That great work. Amen. Faith is not our wants. It’s not fulfilling our world. We lost. Faith is placing our complete confidence in our great God to meet the need, supply the meal, pay the bill, follow his direction, whether it be in your life’s vocation or whether it be in your life’s journey, faith is just trusting. Complete. Complete. See, I like complete. I like the box of complete pancakes so I don’t have to do anything but add water. I can do that. And stir. I like that. Amen. It’s probably not the way Jessica would make them. She’d go out and harvest the wheat, grind the flour, and I’m glad she does that. Amen. But not me. I don’t have time for that. Just give me a box. Give me some water. I’m good. Amen. But complete confidence in God. And sometimes let me say this sometimes God has to drain us of all our human resources before he can meet the need. When the bridge crossed over the Red Sea, there’s not one of these guys back here has had lifeguard training. Ain’t one of them back here knows how to swim. Lord, I said, I got this. Amen. Complete confidence in the Lord. Faith is not easy. It’s another thing faith is not you know why faith is not easy? Because you have to let go and let God. And for many of us, we can’t do that. Amen. Now, I’m going somewhere. I just need you to, like I said, press a foundation, just a basis for us to go off of. So I want you to know what faith is, and I want you know what faith is not. I want to ask you something else. I thought about this as I was preparing the lesson. We talked about faith and having faith and a lot of things we heard this week in the camp meeting. But think about this. God has a plan for your life. God has a direction for your life and your faith and your confidence, your complete confidence is in Him, right? May not be what you want. May not be what you’re thinking, but we follow God’s will, follow his direction and trust Him. Amen. We agree with that. Okay? We agree with that. How could any of us even want to or why should we want to change the will of God for our life? We step out by faith, and we trust Him. That’s what we should want for our life, no matter what it may be. There’s a lot of jobs. There’s a lot of occupations. There’s a lot of things that our young people are looking at doing, and different directions are looking at going, but the only different directions are looking at going. But the one thing that I can always tell Him it doesn’t matter what you do, just make sure that what you’re doing is what God would have you doing, that you’re bringing honor and glory to the Lord. Amen. But put faith in him. So now with that foundation, set the word of God here in Hebrews eleven has given us some great examples of faith. So far to this point, we’ve seen tremendous, tremendous lessons. But he gives us some more in verses 32 through 40, some great examples of faith. And I want us to kind of look at these. I don’t want us to go into detail. I don’t want to take each one of them, do a Sunday school lesson on all of them. Number one, because Brother McBride did last Sunday morning and I’m not going to follow up with what he said last Sunday morning. Amen. No, I don’t want to do that. I want to hit the highlights. And if you want to go back and look at my, I encourage you to do that. I want you to look at what the Bible says. And what shall I more say for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon. What about Gideon? Well, we heard about Gideon last Sunday morning in the morning worship service. Gideon at first was cowardly and had to be coached to do what God would call him to do. He had an amazing victory with only 300 men, over a million knight army of 1350. He did a great work for the Lord. Now, later on in his life, the Bible would tell us that he built an ephemeral out of gold. But even with that circumstance, the work that God did for Gideon is mentioned here in Hebrews. Why? Because if God can do that for Gideon, what can God do for you? God took 300 Israelites. And like Brother McBride talked about last Sunday morning, he changed the hearts of the many nights there was fear in their hearts. Amen. Only God could do that. You see, what I learned about that lesson is god works on the inside. Amen. We try to affect the outside. We want our hands on the steering wheel. Amen. And that’s not what our hands need to be. Our hands need to be trusting the Lord. Amen. Our hands need to be focused upon what God wouldn’t have us do, what direction he’d have us to go in. You see, Gideon had to be coast gideon, gideon had to see, Gideon had to have a sign. But once Gideon was confident in what the Lord would do, gideon put his faith and his confidence in the Lord. And God did a great and mighty work. And if God and he did can do that with Gideon, what can he do for us? Now, look at Barrack. He says at the end of Bear, the Bible says there in verse number 32 of Beric. Beric won a great victory for Israel over an army that had 900 chariots but he did that because I had a prodding of a woman by the name of Deborah who used and did what God would have her to do. So you see, it’s not limited to just one person. God can use whoever he chooses, whenever he chooses. But that party has to be willing to be used of God faith. What can faith do? Faith can do great things. Faith is not fulfilling our world or lust. Faith is not fulfilling our wants. Faith is complete and complete. 110% trust and confidence in God that God will supply. And when we have that, God can do and will do great things for us. Number one, here we see a great battle. One with Gideon, with only 300 men. Number two, we see Barric, who won a great victory for Israel over an army that had 900 chariots. That seems like an overwhelming force. How would you like to be Barrack? How would you like to be Gideon? When you started out with a great host and ended up with only 300 men, have you ever put yourself in those shoes and thought about that? What would you do? We like to sit back and say, well, I’ll bear God now, Gideon, he just need to trust the Lord. That’s easy to do until you’re Giddy. It’s easy to do until you’re Barricade. Amen. And we have the illustration of Samson, he says, and of Samson, who through faith in the power of God, slew so many thousands of the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. And he performed many, many other astonishing achievements. Maybe it wasn’t what we would picture as the perfect saint of God and he didn’t always live his life to bring praise and honor and glory to the Lord. But we see that God used the jawbone of an animal to perform a great work because one man had faith in his God, in his great God. I think about it often. I hope you do as well. When you’re driving down the roads and you see how beautiful the mountains are this time of the year and you see great things, how great a creation we have. I mean, don’t you love living in West Virginia? I mean, into the beautiful state? I love it. Jessica talked about going to Texas and how it’s flat. That don’t excite me. That don’t excite me. But now the mountains of West Virginia always excite me because you never know coming around what turns, especially at night around here, what you want to run into aven. We’d come around in the corner, come to campaign one night and there was a deer, not in the road, but right there on the ditch line. Like it was daring me to get closer to it. So I slowed down. I showed that dear who was boss. I told Chris, said, Roll the window down, but you never know what you’re going to see. We saw a raccoon and some babies on the way to church one night. But West Virginia is a wonderful place to live. Amen. It’s a great place to live, and we bless the Lord for it. And we thank God that he’s put us here and he wants us to live here and do a great work for him. And we can do a great work for him here in the small town of PAX, in the small town of Beckley. We can do a work for the Lord if we only have the great faith. You see, there was nothing great about Samson. Go back and look at Samson’s like, tell me how great he was. Sure wouldn’t fit the mold of most independent Baptists. Say, men. Go back and tell me how great a man Gideon was. When you see him struggling with all these men in the battle that lay ahead and bear with those 900 chariots facing you, tell me how great these men were. It wasn’t the men. It was their god. That same God that created the heavens and the earth is the same God that saved your soul. And if God can save your soul and take a sinner and make him a righteous person on the inside, god can meet whatever need you have. There is nothing too big. There’s no Red Sea. There’s no Jericho. There’s no battle of 900 cherries too big that our God can’t overcome. So tell me how big your problem is. I promise you God can overcome it too. He said, Brother Mark, you’re giving us hope and promise in troubling times, and you’re giving us hope and promise. You don’t know my situation. No, I’m giving you hope and confidence in a great God. And no matter what the outcome will be, god is still great and God is still good. Amen. Samson. In the Jepta we see of Jephtha, the Bible tells us about jept, who through believing God’s promise to Abraham that his posterity should possess the land of Canaan and through obeying the divine impulse which moved him to fight against Ammonites, obtained a great victory over these enemies of God’s people. He was able to do that because of his faith in the Lord. Then you see David. The Bible talks about a barrack of Jepta and of David also, who his faith was manifested as in many other heroic acts, but especially in his combat with Goliath. Amen. Goliath was covered from head to toe, had a sword that I’m sure stood like the Eiffel Tower to David. All David has was a sling in some smooth stones. Amen. But he had faith in the great God. Who’s going to talk to the nation of Israel like this heathen down here in the valley is going to I’m not going to let this man say these things about this awful about our great God, this awful heathen. The Philistine down here I’m not going to stand. But where were the mighty men but the young boy stood against a great giant because he had faith in a great God. If God can do that for him, what can God do for you? I go back to our title, and what shall I more say? What shall I more say? Not only of David of Samuel, who, though a prophet and a judge, yet led on the armies of the Lord on a remarkable occasion to great victory, the prophets. And by the prophets, you think about Elijah, and you think about Elijah, and you think about Isaiah and all the great work that they did. So many great pictures of faith in the Old Testament, so many great pictures listed here for us. And the one constant that has not changed is the great God. David lived. David died. Samson lived. Samson died. Barrick lived. Barrick died. Jephtha lived. Jeffrey died. Abraham, Moses. On and on, the men lived. And great works were mentioned. But the one constant that still remains is the great God of heaven. I know that we’re living in the last days. I know that if you can’t see that, you’re almost blind. Amen. We’re living in the last days. I get that. And I get that it’s the church as a whole church of the Lord. Not PAX branch, but the church as a whole is lukewarm. We see that, don’t we? We see a falling away, right? Would you agree with that? We see a falling away. I get that. But guess what hasn’t fallen away? The power of God, the might of God, the work of God. Yes. We’ve got great advanced technologies. They can take a fiber optic thing, run in your vein and go in and look at your heart and work and kind of a thing in there goes in there and does laser work, and it can stitch things up and solder things and do all kinds of things in there. Mankind has advanced in technology, but man hasn’t scratched the surface to the greatness of our God. Who would have thunk it, Brother Jim? When we was young? I say we because we got a few years on it’s not a lot. I mean, we’re still fairly young. Man amen. But who would have thunk it that we when we were growing up, that we would have a device in our pocket that we could look at pictures of our family on or that we could get 500 notifications of the basketball schedule? Who would have ever sunk it growing up? I mean, I always thought but you always think about things like, would it be cool to have something like that? And then one day here, while we’re living mankind, where we can do that? I mean, how many remember the phone you picked up right here? You put it on your ear and you spoke into the device. How many members of party line? Okay, now we’re getting everybody. I see people at Party Line. Bad thing to have a party line. Amen. Hear a click, put it down, stop talking, whatever the case may be. Party line. I remember you had the old Rover phone, and then it was really cool was when you got the phone that had the push buttons on it, hey, we moved up. And then they had phones that were wireless. I could take the phone in the other room and not worry about tangling up everybody in the house with the cord. And then the phone that came out, that was that big. And my boss thought he was somebody. He had one of the first cell phones in Greenville, South Carolina. He got out, he had this thing stuck side of his head. I thought something was wrong with him. And the antenna stuck 15ft up in the air. But now we’ve got to carry them in our pockets or you can get them on your watch. Now, I mean, technology is far advanced and we’re thankful for that. But nothing nothing that mankind can ever produce or will ever produce can compare to the greatness of our God. Amen. So it doesn’t matter what your situation is. No, we’re in tough spots. All of us are tough spots financially. We’re in tough spots physically. We’re in tough spots sometimes even spiritually and physically on some things in our life, decisions we’ve got to make. We don’t know exactly what to do sometimes. I get that. I understand that it seems like we’re in a whirlwind of just turmoil in our lives. But the one constant is that God that helped David and that God that helped Beric, and that God that helped Jepha, and that God who led God to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph is the same God that you serve today. What more he says here, what more shall I then say? What more shall I then say? How much different were these folks than you and me? They weren’t, but yet God did great things for them. God can do great things for them. God can do great things for you. Amen. So now let’s look at their illustrations. Let’s look at their illustrations because I want to try to get well, get started and we’ll finish it maybe next week. Great illustrations of faith. What did they do? Brother Mark well, who through faith, they subdued kingdoms. What in the world does that mean? Brother Mark well, that means that they overthrew armies, they overthrew governments. They only overthrew them. But God says in his word that they subdued them. Subdued means to conquer, to reduce, to subjection, to crush, to tame, to soften. If God can do that, and he did when I say if, I’m saying just think about what God can do for you. He subdued kingdoms. I mean people that had I’m not talking about one person. I’m talking about an army of people. I’m talking about a government. I’m talking about hundreds of people, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people. If a great God can come down and subdue that kingdom, what can he do for you? Not only subdue kingdoms. Here’s the thing. I want to mention this before we move on. Sometimes we tend to look at what was subdued to kingdoms. But look at what God did. He subdued through faith. He subdued. Forget the kingdom, forget the object. Forget how great that was. But think about what he did. He subdued. He subdued. And if God can do that, what can God subdue in your life? What can he subdue in your life? He wrote righteousness. I looked up the word rot. It means labor guided. He managed. It reminds me of Psalm 23 when he says he leadeth me in the pass of righteousness for his name’s sake. He wrought righteousness. He managed righteousness. We think the world is out of control, don’t we? We think it’s all out of control. Boy, we don’t know where it’s headed, do we? We think it’s an awful shape. But guess what? God’s not lost 1 minute to sleep because he don’t sleep number one. It won’t bother him. Everything is right on time in his time frame. Amen. You say this world’s out of control. We’ve gotten away from the Lord. Yes, we have. We’ve gotten away from God. Yes, we have. Gotten away from the Lord. Yes, we have. Turned our back on Him as a country. Yes, we have. But it’s all been by design. God knew it was going to happen. It didn’t take God by surprise. You think God can send revival in 2022? Absolutely. If my people, which are called by my name shall humble themselves, I believe with all my heart God can still send revival. Amen. Because it’s not in God’s ability. It’s in our willingness. Amen. So when we think about this great faith that subdued kingdoms and we think about this great faith that wrought righteousness it’s not in what man has done. It’s what God can do. What God can do. If you remember what we started off at Sunday school lesson, we talked about what faith is. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Right. Then we talked about what faith was not. Faith is not. That our needs, that our wants. That our desires, that our worldly lusts are met. Faith is just putting our hope and our confidence. Trust in God and saying, God, whatever. I’m trusting you for the end result. Moses, you think your army could you think your crew of Israelites that came out barely made it out of Egypt? You think they could blow enough water? Blow enough to make that? I don’t think I have enough air in me to blow across that water and make the Red Sea part. My wife would differ with you. But it wasn’t in them. It was in God. Aren’t we trusting God completely? Look at what God did with Barrack, with Kiddian, Samson, Jepta, David, Samuel, Those were great men. Those men were only great because they had faith in the great God. You know what? Those men were born into sin, just like we were. Those men are no different than we are. They may look different. They have names we can’t pronounce, but they’re still human like us, you said. Well, Mark, they didn’t face the things we were facing. No, but they probably did. They probably faced things a lot worse, like starvation. They didn’t have medical facilities. They probably faced things a lot harder than we did. But they also have stronger faith in a great God than we do. We trust too much on man, don’t we? We trust too much on what man can do and what we can do, what I can do. I can do this. No, you can do nothing apart from the grace of God. All right, so I’ll give you this and we’ll stop because I don’t want to get into the other one because the other one gets too exciting. I don’t want to get too excited for the morning worship service. The other thing, look at what he did. He subdued righteousness. He subdued kingdoms. He wrote righteousness, and he obtained they obtained the promises. Now, we talked about that. A great list. Remember how Abraham never saw the children of Israel going over and possessing the land? He never saw that he obtained that promise. But guess what? Abraham lived his life and died. Isaac lived his life and died. Jacob lived his life and died. Joseph lived his life and died. And then on down the road, God was still faithful and true and kept the promise. Through Joseph, promises were obtained. So let me ask you this. What’s going on in your life, brother Andy? What’s going on in your life, brother Frank? What’s going on in your life, brother Jeremy? What’s going on, brother Bill? What’s going on in your life right now that you need God’s help with? Is his arm shortened? Does he sleep for slumber? Why, no. He knows what’s going on, and he sees next week ahead he knows what’s going on next week in your life next month, next year. Guess what? He saw the end of your life. He knows what the end result is. Where’s your hope? Where’s your faith? Where’s your confidence? Where’s your trust? They say we serve a great God. Amen. And if that great God and he did do great things that we recorded in the word of God, why do you think he recorded them for us? So we could know how great he is, put our hope, put our faith, put our trust in Him. We talked about the camp meeting this week and how it seemed like all week the church wasn’t just as full maybe as you think it should be. And you think it’s just kind of a down year. Guess what? It was still good. And guess what? God’s still good. Great things. And guess what? Those that wanted something got something. Those that needed something founded. Amen. And I’m going to say this and I don’t want to be sacrilegious, but I just want you understand what I’m saying. We talked about the great faith that people record in the word of God. I think we’ve seen great faith in Brother Dale this week, too, every night to come here to put on a joyful face that was coming from his heart and lead the services and enjoy the services and bless the Lord for the services. We see great men of faith in the word of God, but we’ve seen some great examples this week as well. Our pastor, our former pastor, brother Sam, brother McBride, brother JP. You see God’s still doing the same work today. Are willing to do the work in our life. That’s prayer. Father in heaven, thank you for the sense of list this morning. Pray bless our pastor next hour and encourage him and strengthen God, even directing. Help us as we go into the next service. Lord, every song sung and praise, honor and glory to Thee. Help us to do what you would have us to do in Jesus name. Amen.