Have Faith in God, No Matter What!
Notes
Transcript
The Message that God has given me, is probably more for me than probably any one else, but God has lead me to preach this message, and as I have told some different ones lately that I have sought for Godly advice, is that my biggest thing is and always has been is to be in the will of God, no matter what that is.
Being in the will of God is not always what we want, is not always where we want, or even doing what we want, but in order to bring glory and honor to God we must be in the will of God, and I so desire that with all of my heart.
This morning as you can see, I am preaching on Have Faith in God, No Matter What! I will be preaching out of the KJV, due to the main text that I am using I have it pretty much memorized in the KJV and when I try to read it from any other translation I get messed up.
This morning we will be looking for our main text in Hebrews 11:1-3, a familiar text, chapter 11 of Hebrews is what we generally refer to as the hall of faith.
Starting in verse 4 it begins listing the forefathers of the Faith. And really we could have just went down through the chapter, but that is not where or how God has lead me for this message.
God has lead me to the first three verses and then to dissect them in some different directions.
Therefore, if you are able, will you stand with me in honor of the reading of the Word of God.
1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2 For by it the elders obtained a good report. 3 Through 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.
Pray
I. What is Faith?
I. What is Faith?
1 Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen.
1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
So there are a couple of different translations to just give you different perspectives of how it has been translated into the English language.
One might ask why is there so many different ways that it has been translated into English, and I could have given more examples there, well to answer that, is that Greek words for this first verse, the majority, well really, the words with the exception of the words like - now, faith, is the, not - all the other words have multiple words that they can be translated into, and therefore, the theologians have to do their best due diligence to figure out what best describes in English what is being meant, and if you have ever taken any Greek classes that is not even close to being easy.
So what is Faith?
Well Merriam-Webster Dictionary give some different definitions for it
Faith:
Allegiance to duty or person
fidelity to one’s promise
sincerity of intentions
belief and trust in and loyalty to God
belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion
firm belief in something for which there is no proof, complete trust.
According to the Lexham Bible Dictionary - Faith is the Reliance upon and trust in God; a central emphasis of Christianity.
Then looking at Scripture, for me, I believe that Proverbs 3:5-6 gives us a definition of faith if you will.
5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart;
And lean not unto thine own understanding.
6 In all thy ways acknowledge him,
And he shall direct thy paths.
See Faith is trusting in the Lord with all thine heart, even when things do not seem to make sense, when we do not understand what is going on, we are to trust in the Lord with all our heart.
We are not to lean in our own understanding, that is we are not to rely on our own wisdom, our own abilities because when we do, we fail, we mess up, we fall short of the glory of God.
In all of our way we are to acknowledge him, that is God, in everything we do, in everything we accomplish we are to give God praise, glory and honor.
God will direct our paths, when we trust in the Lord with all of our heart, when we place our trust in Him fully, we will not put our trust in ourselves.
See faith is trusting in God for all things, for all our needs, for every breath, in every moment of every day.
As verse 1 says, Faith is the substance, the assurance, the reality, of the things hoped for, another words Faith is believing in the things that we hope for, we hope that when this life ends we do not go to Hell’s damnation, we hope all of this is true, no we have faith, we believe, that is why we are called believers, we are not those that assume, or those that pretend, or those that wish for, but we are believers because we have faith, we believe every word of what God has given us in His Word.
Faith is the evidence of things not seen, we have never seen God the Father, for that matter, I have never seen Jesus Christ the Son of God, I have never seen the Holy Spirit, but I also have never seen the wind, I have never seen my brain or your brain, I have never seen my heart, but I believe, I have faith that they are are all there, I have seen evidence of all these things.
I have seen evidence of God the Father, I have seen evidence of Jesus Christ, I have seen and felt evidence of the Holy Spirit, I have also felt evidence of wind, my brain, my heart.
See I have faith not because my dad and mom told me too, not because a pastor told me too, not because this Bible told me too, but Because I have witnessed the evidence of what I have faith in.
II. Faith Pleases God!
II. Faith Pleases God!
2 For by it the elders obtained a good report.
Before Jesus was Crucified on the cross, before He died and shed his blood on the cross, the men of old, as they are referred to in Scripture, were counted righteous by their faith.
If you go through and read the whole chapter 11 of Hebrews here, you will see example after example.
From Able, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, and on and on.
As I think of faith that pleases God, I think of a lot of the different stories of the Bible, stories that we were told as children if you were raised in church, stories that tell of faith.
A Story of Faith that we probably have all heard of is of Noah and the ark which we see in Genesis 6 through 8.
Here is a man over 500 years old, the world has become very wicked, to the point that God says, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth.
Noah out in the middle of nowhere, not in a port city, not near a river, or a lake, or a ocean, but in a desert area, God tells him build this ark, this gigantic boat.
God told Noah, what type of wood to use, that it was to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. This was a huge boat and the thing is up to this point the earth and the people had never even seen rain, or a flood.
Here everyone thought Noah was a quack, except his wife and three sons and three daughter-in-laws, and they may of had their times.
But that is faith to build an ark in the middle of a desert.
Another great story of Faith I think of is from Genesis 22, when God instructs Abraham to take Isaac, his son to the mountain in Moriah and offer Isaac as a sacrifice.
Now Isaac being a teenager or preteen, ask his dad, where is the ram for sacrificing, Abraham answers God will provide, Abraham believing God would provide, either by giving the ram for sacrifice, restoring Isaac’s life, or by giving him another son, because God has already promised Abraham that Isaac would be the father of many nations.
Abraham had the faith to go as far as to tie him to the altar that he and Isaac has prepared for sacrifice, and raises his knife to slaughter his own son, when an angel stops him.
Now that is faith, that pleased God.
How about young David, who gets to the camp his brothers are at to deliver supplies to them, and hears this warrior blaspheming against the Lord of the Armies of Israel.
We see this in 1 Samuel 17, David was not having it, and ask what is going on and why was it allowed to continue. The soldiers explained that the warrior was a giant and wanted someone to come fight him.
David volunteers to go and fight this giant, we know is named Goliath, he was believed to be 9 feet, 9 inches tall or somewhere around there, his armor weighted 125 pounds, the head of his spear weighted 15 pounds.
The weight of Goliath’s armor probably weighted more than David did, David was believed to be between 14 and 16 years of age, and he tended his father’s sheep. Therefore, he was in good physical shape.
But even though Saul want David to wear his armor, it did not fit, and David did not want it or need it. David said, I have fought wild animals with my bare hands, all he took was his sling and five stones from the creek.
Goliath started to make fun of him, but David said, the Lord who rescued me from the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of the Philistine.
David told Goliath, 1 Samuel 17:45-47
45 Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. 46 This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. 47 And all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give you into our hands.
That is God pleasing faith.
How about not bowing to other God’s like the three Hebrew young men in Daniel 3, like Shadrach, Meshach and a billy goat, ok yall are still awake, it is Abednego.
We know the story, Nebuchadnezzar has this huge statue made of gold it was 90 feet tall and 9 feet wide.
He sent word that everybody was to gather on the plain of Dura, and when the music started everyone was to bow to the statue, and if they did not they would be thrown into the furnace.
Well the music started and everyone bowed except, three people, the three friends of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they refused to bow.
The king sent a servant over to them and said hey did you not hear, when the music starts you are to bow down to the statue, they said we will only bow to God Almighty the Creator of the universe.
King Nebuchadnezzar said fire up that furnace wide open, the music played again, the three Hebrews once again did not bow, the king had them bound hand and foot and thrown into the fire.
But when he looked in to see what happened to them, he sees four people instead of just three, and says the forth looks like Daniel 3:25
25 He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.
Here these men are faithful to God, and God has delivered them from the punishment of King Nebuchadnezzar.
Faith that pleases God, is willing to follow him even when it means putting our life on the line.
Then over in Daniel 6, we have the famous Daniel in the lion’s den, Daniel’s enemies trick the king into signing a decree saying that no man can pray or petition any God or man besides King Darius shall be thrown into the lion’s den.
Well Daniel being the faithful man that he was, heard the decree, when it was his time to pray, went up to his room, and as normal opened the windows facing Jerusalem and got on his knees and began praying.
Knowing that Daniel would do this the other leaders of the country were waiting to catch him, and that they did, they took him immediately to King Darius and reported the violation to the decree.
Daniel was thrown into the Lion’s Den, but as he was being faithful to his God, his God would be faithful to him, and kept the mouth’s of the lion’s shut.
The next morning when King Darius came to check on Daniel, he was still alive, with no hurt, nothing wrong at all.
Daniel showed great faith by continuing to follow God, even in the face of danger.
Here we have five different example of people living out faith from the Old Testament, we are told in verse 6 of chapter 11 of Hebrews.
6 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.
All five of those examples in the Old Testament have one thing in common, the people in the stories had faith, they believed that God would provided, that God would take care of the situation, that God was in control of everything that was going on.
We must remember that those in the Old Testament did not have the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but they were still found righteous by their faith.
8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
We are saved through our faith in accepting Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, and therefore, counted righteous because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ, those before Jesus’ death and resurrection, were counted righteous because of their faith in God Almighty.
Practically the same thing, we have to have faith, and when we demonstrate that faith like those did in the examples that we looked at, it pleases God.
Walk by Faith
Walk by Faith
3 Through 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.
It is by faith, that we believe Genesis 1 and 2 the biblical account of creation. If you attended public school, they have tried to teach you everything but the biblical account of creation.
Things that just do not make any good sense to me, but we read the biblical account and we have to have faith that the universe and the earth was created like the Bible says, by God speaking things into existence.
Now the Big bang theory could be, as when God spoke the universe into existence, it may have sounded like a big bang, but no one was around to hear a big bang but God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
But any ways it take faith, to believe any of the accounts to be honest, whether your going to believe in the big bang, the biblical account, or that we evolved from a monkey, and honestly, in my opinion you better have a lot of faith to believe we came from monkeys and still not seeing half monkey, half humans walking around.
7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)
We have to walk in this world by faith and not by sight, and if we really think about it that goes for more than Christianity.
I mean think about this country right now and the mess we are in, if you live on social security, you live on faith, that you going to get a check again next month.
Every time you go to the grocery story you have faith there is going to be food there, it seem like every time I go with my wife there is less and less there, and we get less and less and it cost more and more.
Then there is the gas, you got to have faith you are going to have enough money to buy gas, enough gas to get you through until you can get more.
But the times we live in, just shows us that we as believers must walk by faith, that God is in control, that He will take care of us, that He is there fore us, and that He is going to supply our every need.
30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
Jesus tells us in His sermon on the mount, that if God will take care of the grass in the field, that is here one day and gone the next, than we need to have the faith that He will also take care of us.
God will supply our needs we just need to have faith.
We need to walk by faith, because we are to please God, and we please God when we walk by faith.
Do you have Faith today?
Are you walking by that Faith today so that you can please God?
If you do not have that Faith, can I share with you how to get that Faith?
If you are not walking by that Faith, these altars are open, if you need prayer, I am here to prayer with you!!