Faith to Face Family
Text: Hebrews 11:4
Introduction
I. Since May 10, 2010 Nurta Mohamed Farah has been imprisoned at her home in southern Somalia because she became a Christian, according to Compass News Direct. According to witnesses, Nurta's family keeps the 17-year-old chained to a tree by day and puts her in a small, dark room at night. "When the woman's family found out that she converted to Christianity she was beaten badly but insisted on her new-found religion," a source told Compass News on the condition of anonymity. "Her parents also took her to a doctor who prescribed medication for a 'mental illness' but it had no effect in swaying her from her faith," he said. "There is little the community can do. I have advised our community leaders to keep monitoring her condition but not to meddle for their own safety. We need prayers and human advocacy for such inhuman acts."
II. A young Christian in Myanmar was forced to choose between faith and family recently when her relatives demanded that she recant her faith. On Sept. 19, 2011, 21-year-old Ying was preparing to leave for classes at an underground Christian school when her relatives locked her in the house. They threatened to disown her, beat her and withdraw support — including food — if she continued to attend school or church. In addition, they threatened to send her to a remote village with no known Christians if she did not recant her faith. Instead of giving in to their demands, Ying ran away from home and left her family behind. Ying’s mother died when Ying was young, and her father left her with an aunt and two stepsisters. Although she grew up and lived in a Buddhist family, Ying became interested in Christianity. When she was 20 years old, she overheard an evangelist telling a neighboring family about Christ. Ying approached the evangelist and asked him questions about Christianity. At 20 years old, she became a Christian. (Taken from http://www.persecution.com).
III. It is amazing what some people go through just to be a Christian! What is even more amazing is that many times persecution comes from the ones we love the most, our families. Such was the case with Abel.
Body
A. Do you remember the story of Able? We read about Abel in Gen. 4:2-10
1. Could you imagine what it was like to be him?
2. Scripture tells us that there were only a few people around, Adam and Eve, Abe’s parents and Cain his brother and some unnamed brother and sisters.
3. Able was a keeper of flocks, meaning he was a shepherd.
4. Because of his devotion to the Lord, he offered up the best of his firstborn of his flocks and the Lord was pleased.
5. Yet his brother Cain became anger because the Lord was pleased with Abel’s sacrifice and not his.
6. Could you imagine what it was like to be Able? The Bible does not give specifics. But could you image the looks that Able got from his brother as they past? We could image silence at the dinner table and the coldness that came from every encounter.
7. Slowly this anger takes hold of Cain’s life; the Bible says that Cain’s face was down cast.
a. Anger can do that to you it can change your appearance and your whole outlook on life.
8. God warns Cain to master his anger but he refuses.
9. Could you imagine how Able felt, here he is trying to do his best to please the Lord and his brother does not except it and hates him for it.
10. We read on that Cain’s anger become so intents that he kills Able.
11. So was faith important for Able even when Cain his brother rejected his faith? Did Abel have the faith he needed to face his family?
IV. We see in Luke 4:14-30 that another person of faith was rejected by His family because of his faith. Jesus Christ.
A. Could you imagine what it was like to be Jesus?
B. He read the scriptures as he probably always did and everybody thought that was good.
C. Then he started to preach in verse 23-27
D. The people in synagogue were furious; they got up, drove him out of town, and took him to a hill to through him down.
E. But he walked away.
F. Yes it was a miracle that they did not kill him.
1. But imagine how he felt, aunts, uncles, brothers, and childhood friends all rejected him?
2. It is one thing to have a bad sermon, and disappoint people.
3. It is another thing entirely to preach well and have your family and friends reject you because you are obeying God.
4. So was faith important for Jesus to have when he was rejected by his family and friends?
V. What about you and me, is faith important when our family rejects our faith?
A. What if I am doing everything right before God:
1. I want to worship in spirit and truth, but my mother does not agree with me.
2. I want to be baptized for the remission of sins and put on Christ, but my father doesn’t believe I need to be baptized.
3. I want to worship weekly and partake of the Lord’s Supper, but it upsets my spouse because they don’t feel like going to church.
4. I want to be involved in the life of the church and my brother or sister hates me for it.
5. I want to go to worship on Sunday but my family is in town and I feel bad if I go to services and leave them at home.
B. We must count the cost?
1. You and I are so blessed to live in a country that our families or government will are not beat us, place us in prison or kill us for our faith.
2. But so many of us are willing to give up the faith because of family. Someone in our family said, no. They ignored us, or they got upset because we spoke a word to them about the Bible. We invited them to services, we asked about their soul, or we told them we prayed for them. So they got angry with us and won’t talk to us!
3. Family rejection is sometimes the worse kind of persecution. So is faith important when our family rejects us?
C. Jesus told us we were going to face these problems with family Luke 14:26-33.
1. "Hate" in Greek is not defined as in English it means, "love less".
2. This is the same idea as found in Matthew 6:24 "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.
a. Mat 10:34 -39, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. "Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me.”
3. Jesus does not mean HATE our family, but that HE must come first.
4. When we truly put Him first in our lives, our relationships with our families will be different for some it will be better because our interactions with them will be in accordance with the will of Christ; others it will be worse.
5. Sometimes family gets in the way of following Christ, Yet Christ must come first. Acts 5:29, “But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than men.”
a. It is true that it would be a blessing for our whole family to serve God. But this is not always the case.
b. We as Christians are sometimes put in situation where we must choose between our loyalties to God or family.
c. For example: Do we allow family events, company, or friends etc. to interfere with our church attendance, service to God, etc.? Why is it that when family comes into town we allow them to hinder us from going to church? Why do we allow them to control our relationship with God? If they respect us they will either come with us or stay home while we go to church.
6. This includes just not our families but our friends, Young people as well as older people, may be dating or have friends who hurts us spiritually, and though it may be painful, we have to sever that relationship, or reject Christ.
a. Notice: Jesus doesn't say, "You can't be a GOOD disciple." Rather, He says, "Cannot be my disciple" - period!
b. You cannot follow a person in ANY way that is not within God's way.
c. Are you willing to count the cost of giving up loyalties to friends and family to follow the Lord?
d. We must count the cost or pay the price.
VI. Christianity is costly.
A. We must remember that Christianity is costly. If it cost nothing to be a Christian it would be worth nothing.
1. We value things in relation to what it cost us.
2. It cost God and Christ all. It must cost us our all.
3. Jesus Christ is either Lord of all or He is not Lord at all.
a. It is the habit of many American Indians to say “yes” to everything they are asked to do. This leads to confusion as to when as Indian means “yes” and when he means “no.”
b. Each year there is a meeting of the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia. At the meeting in 1952 the question was brought up on the floor of the assembly, “When does an Indian mean “no”?
c. An elderly Indian with a deep bronzed, wrinkled face arose and in a deep voice stated, “It is plain when Indian mean ‘no.’ When Indian say ‘yes’ and do nothing, then Indian mean ‘no‘!”
4. Indians are not the only ones with the problem. Sometimes we as Christians say yes when we mean no. Yes I will study the Bible and go to worship, and then don’t go when family comes to town. We sing “I’ll go where You want me to go, Dear Lord! I’ll do what You want me to do.” Yet we don’t even invite others to come to worship with us.
a. How can we say yes to the Lord in the big things if we won’t even do the little things?
b. Yet I know that many of us are at different levels in our Christianity and just being here is costly thing?
c. Did you ever wake up on Sunday morning and look out to see everything quiet, with a light rain falling? You wanted to go back to sleep, but you got up, awoke your family, ate breakfast, dressed, and went to Bible class and worship. It costs to be a Christian!
d. Did you have to leave a job early or go to it late because it was the Lord’s Day? Did you have to leave a sick or elderly loved one to be here? Or did you risk your own health to come to worship knowing that if you caught a cold or the flu would keep you in your house for weeks or months? It costs to be Christian!
e. Did you ever leave the dishes in the sink, the ironing undone, the beds unmade to go comfort one in sorrow, sit with a mother whose child was in surgery, run an errand for someone, or go to shopping for a shut-in? It costs to be a Christian!
f. Did you ever say “no” to social events that were planned on a Sunday evening? Or a ballgame that was played on a Wednesday? Did you ever tell your friends you could not stay out late on Saturday because of worship Sunday? It cost to be a Christian!
g. Did you ever get into a situation where truth would suffer and someone would be led into error if you kept silent, and yet you knew you might offend someone and become unpopular if you said what needed to be said? It costs to be a Christian!
h. Did you ever turn your TV off and just spend time with God and His word? Do you get up early in the morning or go to better later to pray and talk with God? Do you talk to your children about the Bible and model the Christian life before them? It costs to be a Christian!
VII. Are we willing to love the Lord more than our father, mother, spouse, children, brother or sister, in order to follow him wholeheartedly?
A. Able did listen to Heb 11:4, “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.”
B. Jesus did notice, 1 Peter 2:21-23, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.
C. Will we?
1. When we count the cost of following Christ there is a price to be paid in this life. But we must weigh the earthly with the heavenly, the temporal with the eternal, and the righteous with the wicked. To this we must take into count what the Bible says about those who follow Christ and those who don’t.
2. Jesus says in Mt. 10:28 our souls cannot be harmed if we chose to follow Him.
a. Whereas the cost of trying to please relatives, and the things of this world is not worth the price to pay in eternity.
b. Matthew 16:26 "For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
Conclusion
A. It has been said, "It doesn't cost anything to be saved."
B. This is true in the sense that we cannot earn it, we cannot be 'good enough' to achieve it, and it is "by grace through faith" (Ephesians 2:8-9).
C. Yet, Jesus did teach us that there was a cost involved. The 'cost' is not a 'payment.' It is really an acceptance of the cost involved in making the decision to follow Jesus Christ.
D. Did those of us who are Christians really count that cost before making the decision? Are we willing to continue to count them?
E. For those who are not a Christian, are you willing to count the cost and understand what it means to make that decision? Is faith that important? Many have said yes and have been very blessed, but what will your answer be?
F. Today Jesus is either Lord of our all or He is not Lord at all! We must count the cost or pay the price. What will your answer be?
