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Ephistle to the Hebrews and chapter eleven, and we shall begin to read at verse one. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen. For therein the elders had witness borne to them. By faith, we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear. By faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness in respect of his gifts, and through it he being dead yet speaketh. By faith, Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and he was not found because God translated him. For before his translation, he had witness borne to him that he had been well pleasing unto God, and without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing unto him. For he that comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek after him. By faith, Noah, being warned of God concerning things not seen as yet, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, through which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. And God use his word to strengthen and provoke the faith of every one of us. Tonight, and in our future studies, I want to talk to you on what it means to be a believer. And as you see, we are about to base our, our study upon the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, an exceedingly famous chapter in an exceedingly famous epistle. The letter to the Hebrews, as you may remember, was written to Hebrew people, as the title tells us, who in earlier days had made a profession of trusting the Lord Jesus as their Lord and Savior and Messiah. And when they had first trusted the Savior, they had been very bold and courageous people. Many of them had endured considerable persecution. They'd had to stand by when various of their number had been hailed off to prison by monsters like the unconverted Saul of Tarsus. They had had their homes broken into, their goods smashed or stolen, and some of them had suffered personal pain. They had borne very menfully and courageously the reproach, the despising, the social ostracism that had come their way. And they'd done it, as I say, very courageously. But as we read the letter, we discover that in recent times things weren't going so well. Many of them were no longer coming out to the meetings of the Christians, which by and large is always a very suspicious sign, you know, when people who once have been very keen and out at the Lord's Supper and preaching in the gospel or supporting those that preach and at the prayer meeting and at the Bible studies and so and so, suddenly drop off from the meetings, and when you ask them, they begin to make all sorts of excuses. Oh, I can worship the Lord at home? Hmm. Perhaps you can. But that's no reason, is it, of course, why you shouldn't come out to the meetings anyway. And it was raising in the mind of those that had the care of them the serious question, if they weren't coming out to the meetings exactly, where were they going? And what did it mean? Were they by any chance going back to their old Jewish temple and synagogue. And if they were, what did that mean? How could they really go back if they still believed what originally they professed to believe in the sacrifice of Christ rather than the animal sacrifices of the temple, in the priesthood of the Lord Jesus and not the priesthood of any other mediator, and so and so. And so obviously the writer who writes this letter to them is concerned, and deep down in his heart is very concerned. Because while as he looks back, he thinks he can see evidence in their lives that they were really genuine, now their behavior is raising a problem. Raising a very serious question, well, were they genuine believers after all? Raises a question, doesn't it? How would you know whether anybody is a genuine believer or not? How would I set about proving it to you if you were to ask me now, are you a believer? And I said, of course I am, what do you think? And you said, like James, dear old James, yeah, but it's okay if you to say so. Yeah, anybody would say so, but prove it to me that you're a believer. What should I do? And we're going to think this weekend together, if the Lord will, on what it means to be a believer. One of the evidences that we are true believers is to be found, so these early verses tell us, in the doctrines that we believe. I don't know if you'd been writing the New Testament, whether you'd have put that one first. Perhaps you would have put first one of the true evidences that somebody's a true believer is that their face shines from the nose down to the ears. Uh-huh. And if you have a glum face, you're not liable to be a believer. Could be a pinch of truth in it, perhaps, but you wait till you get rheumatism, and then you'll revise your estimate. See? Ha. Here in this epistle, in chapter eleven, the great chapter upon faith, the first series of evidences of what faith is, is this, that true believers believe the basic doctrines of the gospel. That's not to say that you have to know all the doctrines of the Bible before you can be a Christian. The dying thief didn't know many doctrines, did he? He trusted the Lord Jesus and went home to glory that day. I sometimes wished I could have done the same thing. Doors ahead. And I'm not saying that you have to get all your doctrines one hundred percent correct in order to qualify to be a believer, because I'm sure that not all my doctrines are one hundred percent correct. I don't know about yours, and I am a believer, whatever you say. But a true believer is marked progressively by this, that he or she believes the basic doctrines of the gospel. That is exceedingly important, and I want to emphasize it as hard as I can punch the old desk. In a day when so often we look to subjective emotions as an evidence of whether people are truly converted. And emotion is good, of course, and joy in the Lord is good, and high and wonderful spiritual feelings are good. But they're not the first thing that you will judge by. In a stable Christian life, true believers are built on a belief in the fundamental doctrines of the faith. So here in these verses we have read, I want to pick out four basic doctrines that true believers believe. And the first one is referred to in verse three: By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the Word of God, the basic doctrine of creation by the word of God. That is absolutely basic. Let that go, and you couldn't begin to be a believer. Secondly, verse four: by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. The doctrine of sacrifice. If in the first place we believe that the world was framed, created by the word of God, then of course the next thing that will occur to us, that the world as we now know it is not perfect, is it? It is marred by all sorts of evil behavior, and that raises the question, how can I come and find God, and how can I be accepted with God? The question, therefore, of approach to God, sacrifice, redemption, forgiveness. Doctrine number two. So first creation, then redemption. And then the third great doctrine that we are reminded of in verses five and six By faith, Enoch was translated so that he should not see death. That's Old English, of course, got nothing to do with translating English into Irish, you'll see. Uh, this is translated in the Old English sense in which, uh, bishops used to be translated to a higher sea and become archbishops, you know, moved up higher, it means. Transferred is our modern English. And here it's referring to the fact that Enoch walked with God, and one day God took him, and he was taken home to heaven without dying. Pause a moment if you find that difficult to believe, because I've got a bigger miracle to tell you about. It isn't only that some thousand or two or three thousand years or more ago, one man called Enoch was taken home to glory without dying. Tell you something bigger than that, that one of these days, millions of people are going to be taken to heaven without dying. You'll see. For this is our Christian hope, isn't it? This is at the heart of our Christian gospel. This we say unto you by the word of the Lord, says Paul, that we shall not all sleep, we shall all be changed. In a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel on the trump of God. The dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive and remain still physically alive upon earth, when the Lord comes, we shall be caught up together with the resurrected believers to meet the Lord in the air, the consummation of our Christian hope. Doctrine one then is creation, and doctrine two is approach to God through sacrifice, that is redemption. Doctrine three is the Lord's coming, the consummation of our redemption. And doctrine four, we are reminded of through Noah. Uh, verse seven, by faith Noah, being warned of God concerning things not seen as yet, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, through which he condemned the world. Now, Noah is, uh, referred to in the New Testament in a number of contexts, but two in particular are relevant at this moment. The Lord used Noah and his flood as a warning of what's going to happen when the Lord Jesus comes in power and great glory to execute the wrath of God on this sin-soaked world. As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, they built their bungalows right up to the moment that the flood came and took them all away, utterly unprepared. So shall it be when the Lord comes in power and great glory to execute God's judgment. In two Peter three, uh, moreover, Peter also refers to the flood in a slightly different connection, and the lesson he draws is this, that if in Noah's day God used a constituent part of our world to destroy it with, for the world was made of solid matter and water, and God, uh, used the very water, which was a part of the earth, to destroy it with. Then Peter reminds us of what God has done once, he'll do again. He will not because he has promised he won't. He won't destroy the world with water, but he will use the very constituent parts that make up our world to destroy it with. One day, in God's good time. The very elements, the basic elements of which our world is made, will melt in a colossal fusion. And the world as we have known it will be a thing of the past. Final judgment, ladies and gentlemen. What does it mean to be a believer? Well, these are not all the doctrines that you have to believe, but these are some of the basic ones, aren't they? And we're just going to put our through ourselves through the checklist before we go to bed, saying, am I a believer? How, how would anybody know? Well, do I believe? Do I stand for these four basic doctrines? And first of all, creation. Now, I have another confession to make. I shall have a lot, I suspect, uh, and even so I shan't get through in the course of this weekend, will they? But in my youth, in those far distant part times, we'll say the turn of the century, in my youth, uh, it used to distress me a little bit that these verses make everything depend upon faith, you'll say. I said to myself, what a pity. Wouldn't it be far better, more effective if I could prove it? Particularly to my fellow students who like to think that they were eggheads, d'orsay. I have to go and tell them that everything depends on faith. Well, they just laugh, of course. Now, if I could prove it to them, they'd have to believe, wouldn't they? Does it have to be by faith? But it was not the Bible that was stupid, it was me, of course. You'll see there are some small things that you can prove by logic and mathematics. But when you've taken notice of all those things, they are the lowly things in life, the really big things you couldn't possibly prove by logic, and you have to take them by head. Ah. Mm, does your girlfriend love you also? Of course she does, she's gonna marry me. Ah yeah, but that doesn't prove, uh, she loves you. Of course it doesn't. She's after your money. You say she isn't. I say prove it then. Does your mum love you? So all she does, she darns my socks. Well, what does that prove? She's only doing that so she can keep a hold on you. You prove it to me by logic and mathematics, if you can. You can't, of course. And when it comes to that supreme thing that is love, you'll never know it unless you get to the point where you're prepared to believe. Of course, that's true of a lot of lesser things even. How would I prove to you that a daffodil is beautiful. I could get out, if I were a chemist, uh, analyze the old daffodil into all its funny juices. They don't taste half taste horrible. I tasted one the other day, it's wrong. But I mean, you don't get very far tasting daffodils, do you? And a chemist can tell you what the chemicals are made up, and if you want to go deeper than that, you can go from the chemist to the old physicist, and they'll tell you all about the atoms in it. Josie, but who wants to know about the atoms in daffodils anyway? And then the chief things about daffodils, is he? Chief most important thing about daffodils are that they look beautiful. You prove it to me they look beautiful. Can't get any. Things like beauty and truth, the higher things, uh, uh, beauty and love. These are things that you'll never enjoy unless you're prepared to bring an attitude of faith. You'll see. That doesn't mean blind faith. If I were to say, how do you know your girlfriend loves you, chap, you'd, you'd list off to me all sorts of things, wouldn't you? Of course you would. Yes, there's a lot of evidence around. She bought you a box of chocolates for your birthday or something. Uh, you'll see, uh, but uh, you've got a lot of evidence, but there comes a point where you'll have to step out in faith on that evidence. You imagine a modern prodigal son, and he's wasted his goods with riotous living, and he's uh, uh, now thinking about possibly coming home, and he's met his millionaire father in the Ritz in London, you see. And dad is saying that if he comes home, everything will be forgiven, it'll be reinstated, and the boy is sitting there now, shall I or shan't I? And father says, son, I really love you, you see. I do really. And I won't reap up the past if you come home and let bygones be bygones, and uh, and uh, uh, I'll make it worth your while, and you'll be my son and heir, and uh, and the boy's sitting there. Yeah, well, sounds reasonable, but, but... Yes, here's a father's check. Look, boy, we'll put it in your account this afternoon, if you like. Yes, as evidence. And then the boy says, but will dad, uh, when he's got me, screw me down again? Now he's got to weigh up the evidence, hasn't he, and take his step of faith. He will never know that his father really loves him until he's prepared on the basis of the evidence to take his step of faith. All the biggest things in life are like that. Now it says our, uh, says our wor- the word of God that when it comes to creation, by face it is we understand that the worlds were made by the word of God. In the last analysis, you will not prove it by science or mathematics, of course you won't. That doesn't mean that the doctrine of creation has no evidence at all, and you've got just to take it on blind faith. No, you haven't got to do that either. It's not silly, is it? Take the, uh, first part, by faith, uh, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things that, uh, are seen are not made out of the things that do appear. Well, very early on in Greek philosophy, the Greeks who invented the atomic theory had already come to see that two, three hundred or four hundred years before Christ, you know, the atomic theory was invented, ain't so modern as you might imagine, and they had already seen that matter must be made up of tiny atomic particles that you cannot see. And modern science has underlined it, hasn't it? The Bible was right there. Things that are seen are made out of things that do not appear, and the more and more we hunt to the very basis of matter, and we get down to the old quarks inside the atom and inside the nucleus, we're faced with the ultimate question, what on earth is matter? What is the basic stuff of the universe? And some there are that say, well, it's energy, packets of energy. Can't see energy, can you? Bible is right in that bit. Isn't talking stupidity. And then the Bible says this th- this a very interesting thing, that the worlds were framed by the word of God. And Genesis one, that famous chapter on creation, keeps on telling it, then in case you don't notice it the first time, it says it about ten times. And God said, and God said, and God said. Creation by the word of God. That's a very interesting phenomena, because in fact, when we w- phenomenon, for when we look at nature, we find that nature is not made up just of so much matter, but it's made up of matter plus information, isn't it? Uh, you wouldn't remember, no. None of the ladies would anyway. But uh, in the early sort of uh, nineteen fifty fives, uh, some bright chap had invented automatic washing machines, you'll say. I was around then, and they worked as follows, you'll say. There was the washing machine, and it's a slit at the front, and you had a bit of square plastic stuff, you'll see. And when you looked at this plastic, well, it was all it was plastic, you see, but it's got a lot of funny little notches along the edges, spaced at random, it looked. Now, uh, the ladies who were experts in these things assured me it was so, so, so it was. If you wanted the linens, you know, mm, you wanted program three. So you looked at your bit of square plastic stuff, and you pushed that in the old hole, and lo and behold, the old machine went routine three. If you wanted the silks and satins, you'll see, you, you, you mustn't put them in that. You want a program uh eight, you'll see. So you turn the thing around, different set of notches, and you put that in the slit, and lo and behold, the old thing did program eight. Marvelous it was. But that raised a very interesting thing, because if you looked at that plastic and somebody, uh, uh, uh, you had said to somebody, tell me, what is this stuff here? They said, that's just plastic, old boy. So much stuff. Well, it was so much stuff. It wasn't simply so much stuff, was it? No, you say, look, look, what about those noxus? Oh, he says, that's nothing, that's just the shape of the thing. No, it wasn't. Those notches on the old plastic were a kind of language. They conveyed information, so that when you put it into the old machine, it conveyed the measure, the information the old machine needed to know, to know which program to do for the lady's washing do say. So it was stuff plus code, stuff plus information. And you'll know better than I, you've been to school since I have, that the more people study the old genetic code, you know, RNA and DNA and all those funny squiggly things that determine our growth, our color of our hair, whether we have it or don't have it, uh, color of eyes, shape of nose, and everything else out under the sun, uh, except the boots we wear. Uh, uh, you'll say, when you study that and analyze it mathematically and statistically, the claim is you can show that it bears all the marks of a language. You'll see, let me just explain what I mean by saying that. Language, you know, is not so much noise, not just so much row. You get an old barn door blowing in the wind that makes a lot of creaky sounds, but it isn't a language, is it? Doesn't mean anything. It's random. Whereas if you're trying to listen to Channel Four on BBC, you'll see, and you get keep getting a dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot. Well, this is, that's not just noise, that's the Morse code coming from somebody or other. Hm? Because it is, uh, a series of noises that can be analyzed statistically and intelligently and be found to be conveying information. And when we look at the RNA DNA codes, say, so I am told, I'm no scientist, it bears every mark of being, in that sense, an encoded message or language. By faith, we understand that the worlds were made by the word of God, who not only created the material, but spoke the information onto the material. And it's a very interesting thing, you know. In America, some notable scientists like Sagan, Carl Sagan, spent thousands and thousands of pounds in, uh, uh, uh, trying to contact intelligent beings on other worlds. Their theory is that if evolution is true, for evolutionists, then evolution must have coughed up some intelligent beings in other parts of the universe. And they live in hope that one day they will be able to receive communication from those other intelligent beings. They have already sent out, as you know, uh, signals conveying information, hoping that someone around the universe will pick them up, and they have their ear tuned, so to speak, to any messages that will come in. And if you ask them, how would you know? Suppose a a a message came from outer space somewhere. How would you know it wasn't just a lot of old crackle from some star that's in the dying throes and gasping for life, as you'll see, just noise. How would you know that it wasn't just noise, it was a language coming from somebody intelligent? Do you know those scientists say that you'd only need one message? Because if you analyze it and found it was statistically and from all a- analyses evidence of an intelligent communication, you would know it by analogy. For in our world, if you have a message that is intelligible, that is a language coming at you, we know that in our world that only comes from a person. And say they, if we got one message that turned out to have every evidence of being a language, we would know there must be a personal mind behind it. Marvellous, isn't it? And they who say that, of course, are atheists. And when we examine the RNA and DNA spiral, and it bears evidence of being of the same quality as a language. What ought we to deduce from that? Well, we ought to deduce the same thing to deduce is that it is no accident. It comes from an intelligent mind. I'm not trying to prove to you that there is a creator, because even suppose I were to prove there's an intelligent mind behind this universe, whose mind it was would still remain a question, wouldn't it? All I'm arguing now is that when the Bible says it's by faith, it doesn't mean that you just shut your eyes and refuse to look at any facts. It does not mean that it is silly or stupid. There is evidence all around us galore, as Romans one says, for the great infinite power of some godhood, some godhead. And on the basis of that evidence, we take the step of faith, reasonably enough, and then discover, yes, that is true. Behind this universe, there is a personal mind, and that mind is the mind of our creator. Let me just remind you how vastly important is the doctrine of creation. I have friends, I expect you have, who call themselves humanists, atheistic humanists. They don't believe in God. How they manage to call themselves humanists, I don't understand, really. But that's supposed to mean that they're interested in man, you'll see. Now, let me point out what happens to you if you don't believe in God. If you don't believe in God, says, uh, the Ephesians chapter two, you are left without hope. And if you don't believe in God the Creator, then of course you are absolutely without hope, aren't you? You have no ultimate hope for the human race. Because your own scientists will tell you that one of these days, the old sun up in the sky will blow up and become a red giant. In the moment it does so, little Earth will evaporate and all that's in it. So that all the vast progress that the human race has made down the centuries will all come to dust and ashes in the end. They are without hope. They're not only without hope for the race, they're without hope for the individual, aren't they? I'd like, so to speak, to invite my humanist friends. I say, come on now, come and let's meet this lady here. She's thirty five, mother of two children. She's just been diagnosed as having terminal cancer. What would you say to her? I said, I'll go first. I'll tell you what I'll say. I say, my dear, I'm so sorry to hear it. This is a broken world. I want to tell you, my dear, that you are made in the image of God. You're not just an accidental collection of atoms and molecules. You're made in the image of God, like the rest of us, fallen. But God loves you still, and you can be redeemed, saved, and become a child of God, and be assured of a glorious future. One day you shall reign in life and reign eternally. And even your present sufferings. God can take, and your light affliction, which is but for the moment, to work for you an exceeding great and eternal weight of glory. Now come on, you old humanist, now you have a go. You tell us something. What can the humanist say? He's utterly without hope. All he's got to say is, well, I'm sorry to hear it, but that's it. Your body may be some use to the medical researchers, and it might help somebody else later on to, to get a cure for cancer, perhaps, but as far as you're concerned, there is utterly no hope. You might as well shoot your brains out. There is no gospel. There is no hope. If the doctrine of creation isn't true. It's not a something you can keep in a watertight compartment and say, well, I don't bother about creation, do you see? I just preach the gospel. Well, of course you, well, you can go on preaching the gospel, yes, do, but underneath, for your gospel to be sound, it's got to be the gospel of the blessed God, who is the creator. God give us who are believers the grace and the courage, the energy to study his word and to study our physics and study our chemistry, study our cosmology. We're not going to put our heads in the sands, are we? But on the other hand, to stand boldly in our day and age, in school, at work, at college, or wherever, unashamedly for the belief of a personal creator. And then, of course, there's a question of redemption, isn't there? There's something gone wrong, obviously, with creation. That doesn't take a lot of seeing, eh, eh, Jose. Yes. Yes. Question is, how can it be put right? How can I approach God? How can I be accepted with God and know I'm accepted? The doctrine, therefore, of redemption. And we read that by faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain. Now we shall have to be careful how we interpret that. Many preachers have said forthwith and at once, ah, the difference was this. Cain came to God bringing his offering, the fruit of the ground. It was rejected because it was not a sacrifice involving the death of an animal. He came simply with the works of his own hands, and that's why he was rejected, where Abel came as a sinner with a blood sacrifice and found acceptance with God through the blood of the sacrifice. Well, I'm sure that that is underneath true, but it isn't exactly what the passages in the New Testament say, is it? So you mustn't cheat. Huh? Why was Cain rejected? Well, if you read one John chapter three, the Apostle John will give you two reasons. He slew his brother because his brother's works were righteous and Cain's works were evil. That's number one. Cain came to God with his sacrifice, and you would have thought for the moment he was very religious. All the apples had been polished till you could nearly see a face in them, and you'll say the oranges were as sweet as they could possibly be, and also delightful, and you would have thought he was a very devoted man. No, he wasn't. He wasn't intending to give up his sinning. No, no. No. He was just, uh, bringing God a sacrifice, you know, to, well, like I do to the traffic warden, you know. I have been known, none of you have, of course, but then plead innocence or something. I was once parked on a clearway, and when I came out, it was five minutes over the time. There wasn't a car to be seen in either direction for a mile, but I had to pay the fine nonetheless. We'll say no more about that. Dulce. Cost quite a lot, but if I were desperate again, I might park in the same place. Wicked, isn't it? Well, I paid the fine. Some people think like that about God, don't they? They bring God a present now and again, a sacrifice that keeps him quiet. It pays a fine. No intention of doing differently or living differently. Ah, multitudes, they go by the thousands to offer the sacrifice of Christ. They have no more intention than man in the moon of altering their lifestyle. That's not faith, you know. That's adding insult to injury. Said God to Cain, now look here, Cain, I cannot accept it, and I know what's happening to you now, Cain, I can see it on your face. Ooh, the resentment is coming up, isn't it, when you say I've accepted Abel and I haven't accepted you. Cain, my boy, says God, that old sin in your heart is like a wild beast that's coiling itself up like a leopard to spring on you until it will master you. You must get on top of that resentment, Cain. You must get on top of that sin, else it will master you and kill you. Man, you'll have to learn to repent. Just coming, offering God's sacrifices, so to speak, it could be what you suppose the body and blood of Christ and offer it without repentance, without any intention of changing your life. That's not faith. And the second thing about Cain was, according to John, one, John chapter three, John points out that there are in this universe and in our world two families. There are two fathers, two lots of children, Two families. The one is God the Father. The other is... your father, the devil. The one family are children of God, and the other family are children of the devil. And there are only two families, ladies and gentlemen. There are not three or four. And Cain was of the evil one. Came offering his sacrifice to God, utterly unregenerate, never been born again, never come out of the power of darkness into God's wonderful light. He still walked according to the power of the prince of this world. He was of the devil. It's possible to be very religious, but not saved, not born again, not a believer. Abel offered a better sacrifice, Josie, he offered it by faith through which he had witness born to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness in respect of his gifts. We shall have to be careful with that too, shouldn't we? It doesn't say that by faith Cain, I'm sorry, by faith Abel did a lot of good works, and God therefore accepted him. No, it's the other way around. It says that by faith Abel offered a better sacrifice. That's what he did by faith. And God accepting it gave witness that Abel was righteous. That is, not absolutely perfect, but he was right with God. And he lived a life consistent therewith. So it started this way round, that, uh, by faith Abel offered a sacrifice. Now that tells us volumes, you know. Because when the Bible talks about faith, it doesn't mean that I suddenly get an idea that, uh, this would be, this would do nicely for God. Now, faith isn't just a lot of confidence I work up inside here that I think God would like this, and if he doesn't, he ought to. No, faith in the Bible is response to something God has said. So that if you read in the Bible that by faith Abel offered a sacrifice, you may take it for granted that he was responding to some word of God. You say, where did Abel get his idea of sacrifice from? Well, here surely the old preachers were right, weren't they? Perhaps when God slew an animal to make coats of skin for Adam and Eve, perhaps on another or many other occasions when God taught the first sinful couple the way of approach to God through sacrifice. In response to some word of God, it was that Cain, uh, that Abel offered that better sacrifice. God bore witness that he was right with God, and his works were consistent therewith. What does it mean to be a believer? It means to believe in the Creator. Secondly, it means to accept the doctrine of the fall, that all men are born under the power of Satan, sinners, that we need to be born again, come out of the family of darkness into God's marvelous light. It means, in our sin, to respond to God's word the way he has told us of approach to God, and to accept the sacrifice that God himself has offered us as our way of approach to him. That's true Christianity. And then comes creation, redemption, the way to God, and the doctrine of our consummation. By faith, Enoch was translated that he should not see death and was not found, for God had taken him home to glory without dying. It serves to remind us tonight of our great Christian. The Lord's coming, you know, is not a sort of a little decoration upon the Christmas cake of Christianity. The hundreds and thousands that decorate the old ice, but the cake would be just as good without it. No, no. Doctrine of the Second Coming is an integral part of our gospel. Witness what happened to the people at Thessalonica when Paul went along and they got converted. So much was the doctrine of the second coming an integral part of the gospel, that when they got converted, Paul can say of them, they turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his son from heaven. If Jesus Christ is the son of God, you may be sure he's coming again. How's that, you say? Well, you don't suppose that God's son can come to our world, be spiked on a cross and thrown out, and that's the last you'll hear of him. Does that strike you as sins? Indeed not. You'll hear of him again, all right. Because he is God's son. He will come again. Oh, how marvelous. What does it mean when it says by faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death? Well, it means this, you have to be a believer if you want to be taken when the Lord comes. Isn't that so? All my dear good friends, don't let's be above it, shall we? Just tonight before we go to bed, let's ask ourselves, suppose the Lord came tonight, hey what? And took all the believers. Would he take you? Would he take me? You say, how will I be sure? Well, are you a believer? By faith Enoch was translated. You see, he was a believer. You say, how would you know he was a believer? Well, you know he's a believer because it says in the Bible that he pleased God. At least that's what the Greek translation says. The Hebrew, in its quaint fashion, says he walked with God. Daily walked with God. He pleased God. He wasn't sinlessly perfect, but he was a believer. You'll see it from this, that he walked with God, step by step. He pleased God. Because he was a believer, and you could see it if you'd have watched his life, he was one day taken home to glory. You know, if I want to go when the Lord comes, I got to be a believer. What does being a believer mean? That means that in nineteen twenty eight when I was, uh, eight and a half, I trusted the Lord. Well, I hope you did. That means more than that. It means if I'm a believer, I must be walking with the Lord, surely. You know, sometimes we get funny notions into our head. A good lady said to me the other day, now look, she said, she was explaining to me how her life had been, well, it had been difficult, and there were all sorts of reasons. And as I heard them, my heart was full of sympathy. Difficulties galore. But you see, she was wanting to say, now look, but I am saved, am I not? You know, I mean, uh, if I died, I would go to heaven, wouldn't I? In spite of the fact she meant that I'm living as I oughtn't to live. I said, my dear, that's a very interesting question you ask. Because I mean to say, do you want to go on living like this? And do you really want to go to heaven? I said, because, you know, when you get home to heaven, do you know what heaven is like? Means walking with the Lord Jesus every second of the clock for all eternity. You want to do that? Why are you so keen to go to heaven? Or if you really want to go to heaven, you're really walk with the Lord Jesus then, as the Bible puts it, they shall walk with me in white. If I want to go to heaven and walk with the Lord Jesus then, of course I shall walk with him now, can't I? Would be a funny way of thinking, wouldn't it, to say, yes, I want to go to heaven and walk with the Lord then, but dear me, I don't want to walk with him now. Goodness me not. I want to enjoy myself first because I've only got seventy years to enjoy myself, men. Oh, pray, I've got a whole eternity to spend with the Lord. La la, it's going to be a long time, so do let me enjoy myself before I get there. Be funny logic, that wouldn't it? It's believers that will get taken when the Lord comes. And the mark of a believer is that she or he walks with the Lord Jesus now. And if today I have sinned and gone astray, God in his mercy, before I go to bed, bring me back. Back. And finally, the Lord coming to take his people home will be glorious. The Lord coming in power and great glory to execute the wrath of God on this evil world. How solemn that will be. Do you believe it? What does it mean to be a believer? It means you believe in the coming judgment of God. There's no good our getting sentimental about this. You say you believe in the love of God, and you don't like the thought of God judging anybody but half a minute. You say you're saved. What do you mean you're saved? Well, you say God loved me and gave his son for me. Whatever for? Says the ancient verse, he loved us and gave his son for us, so that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish. If it needed that God gave his son for us so that we shouldn't perish, then by definition, they who reject God's son will perish. You can't have the one belief without the other, can you? You can't say, I believe that Jesus died at Calvary to save me from perishing, but I, I, you know, I wouldn't like to say that anybody who rejects Christ will come to much harm. That's nonsense. And being a believer means that you believe that the Lord is coming, and this world is going to know his judgments. It means believing that one day the very world will end, and there is an eternal heaven. There is an eternal hell. Do you believe that? How can I say that I believe in the coming judgment and that men and women all around me who reject the Savior will be lost eternally? How can I say I believe it if I'm doing nothing about it? We can't all be missionaries, we can't all be evangelists, can we? We can all pray, we can all do something. If I believe that judgment is coming, I shall want to do like Noah and do something about it, that under God I may be used to bring the message of salvation to those that need it and to save them from eternal perdition. What does it mean to be a believer? It means to believe the basic doctrines of creation, of redemption, of the coming of Christ to take his people home, of the coming of Christ to inaugurate the great day of the Lord, the judgments of God, and the end of the world. The Lord use our time together so that we shall help one another, and amidst all the joy, fellowship, and the fun, to ask God to speak to us this weekend so that where we need it, our lives can be adjusted, and that we may the more effectively give the evidence to all and sundry that we are genuine believers.