Christ, The Substance of Faith

Hebrews 11:1

Well welcome back to Hebrews. I’m excited to be here as we begin chapter 11. I want us to think rightly about this chapter as we begin it which is largely the reason we spent so much time looking at indwelling sin. Perhaps you think I just like Romans 7 and 8. Well I do, but that’s not the main reason we were there.

Turn with me to Hebrews 10 and let’s look at the way this last chapter ended so we can make the connection here between these two chapters.

32-38 he makes a turn in his warning against falling away to encourage the saints to understand difficulties in the Christian life in the proper way. God is not out to harm you, he is out to sanctify you. And much of what we will see in Chapter 11 is about the saints of the Old Testament who suffered persecution and many times death for their faith.

Now the purpose of this chapter is not to make you feel bad because you haven’t suffered martyrdom and so you aren’t a super Christian like they were. No in fact the purpose is to explain to us that Christians can and do face suffering because their hope is set on Christ who is better. Remember that, Jesus is better is the theme of the book.

Well the reason we went to Romans 7 and 8 like we did is because many of you said to me, but where do I get to see the evidences of my faith to test the genuineness of it, if I haven’t experienced persecution as they did? That is a very good question isn’t it? That’s a question of a believer. I’m concerned to examine my soul and see that i’m in the faith, how can I do that?

So I began reading how pastors had applied this to their congregations who were asking the same question. And to a T, everyone of them went straight to the issue of Indwelling sin. All of them saw the daily struggles with sin and temptation as an even more intense suffering than martyrdom. In fact one of them even said, it is a light thing to die for your faith, but to endure temptation and deny your sinful desires and take up your cross and follow Christ, that is the real difficulty of suffering in the Christian life.

And I wanted you to see that because, believer, you have the opportunity every morning to wake up and examine your soul before Christ to see how your heart is reacting to the desires of the flesh. And you have the spiritual duty of preaching Christ to your own soul, point your heart to him.

Now, the second thing we did in that is that we turned and looked at the way that faith responds to suffering. And the big lesson was that beholding the glory of Christ is transformative. That we behold him by faith now, and someday we will behold him with sinless glorified eyes.

So what is it we see the author of Hebrews doing here as he turns from the issue of suffering? He takes us into what faith is and what faith does. And just notice verse 1 which is probably all we’ll get to today, but notice he says that faith sees things not seen. He’s talking exactly what we’ve been talking about. Faith beholds Christ now and proves that our hope is not futile but is transforming us into the image of the Father’s beloved Son.

So what is faith? or maybe better yet, what does faith do or how does faith behave? There’s two parts of this answer given in verse 1. We know that we are saved by faith alone. We are justified by faith. God declares us righteous by faith. But what does the faith of a justified person look like or how does it behave?

Well first, it is the assurance or the substance of things hoped for.

Now this needs some unpacking, because we have 1. Hope, 2. The things hoped for which are the promises, and 3 The substance.

We’ll we’re well acquainted with hope. Hope is a confident expectation of good. But even in that definition we have to ask what gives the confidence or the expectation?

This is where the things hoped for come in. What are we speaking of here? These are the promises of God. Things divinely promised to them that believe. All of our present grace and future glory. Now understand… that’s a lot. Perhaps something worth doing this week since I don’t think I have time to also preach Ephesians 1 this morning is for you to sit down and read that chapter. Just exactly what has God promised to his children? Remember last week in Romans 8:17 he said if we are children of God then we are heirs of God. We get everything

I remember as a kid thinking that must mean there’s a gold xbox in heaven. What a small view of “everything.” We are afforded the fullness of God in Christ!

But here’s what it means for it to be the substance of things hoped for. We all understand what it means to mentally assent to something right? Perhaps we call all believer the logic of what is written down for us on paper. There’s a difference between believing the facts of something and for it to become and inward reality within you.

This is exactly what faith does. Faith is like a spiritual arm that grabs on to the things promised and gives them a reality within us.

Faith gives the soul a taste of the goodness of God’s promises. Taste and see that the Lord is good. There’s a difference isn’t there between reading about the good outcome of a recipe and putting the cake in your mouth.

The Father has promised us glory with His Son but it is something we experience now. The way we experience it now is by faith. Edwards would say that we experience a taste of heaven when the church is gathered. This is what he means by it. Some of us here are experiencing the joys of Christian fellowship that will exponentially grow in eternity, and some of us are just with people in a room. There is a difference between faith and simply claiming something to be true.

Now think for a moment about the goodness of the Father who gave us these precious promises. He didn’t have to tell us about the wonders of Christ and the joys of heaven. Though we would still receive them in glory, he didn’t have to give us the grace of telling us of them. Have you thought about this?

Understand how this works. Kids, as your birthday gets closer, there is an excitement and an anticipation of that party, isn’t there? This is close to the way that faith acts. Grabbing on to something and stirring you up in excitement.

Or Grandparents. There’s a different between being told your grandbaby is coming to visit and being surprised when they show up on your doorstep. There isn’t less excitement or joy at the reception of their company… But there is something about the excitement of knowing their coming that stirs something up in you.

I know some of you are just thinking through lists and how much you have to get done. Try to set those aside for this illustration!

This is how Faith is the substance of things hoped for. It takes in the very word of God and stirs us up so that the promises of God are not merely facts, but they are joys to us. William Lane said it is the nature of Faith to render our hope secure.

This is exactly what scripture means when in 2 Cor 3 and 4 Paul speaks of beholding Christ by faith. Look back up just a few verses and see verse 25 of Chapter 10. How are we to see the day approaching? We have to be beholding Christ by faith. I can tell you when Christmas is coming… I’m much more excited Dec 24 than I am Dec 1… Maybe that’s a bad example, I’m always excited about Christmas.

Christian are you exercising this spiritual muscle? Are you taking the eyes of faith and turning them not just to sign on the dotted line of the promises but to allow it to internalize them and make them your own?

This is how suffering is endured. Suffering was not endured by any of these saints in this chapter because they held on tight enough through the pain, rather because they longingly gazed at their savior. Stephen as he was being martyred wasn’t even really aware of the fact that the stones were flying at him. He was too busying peering up straight into the throne room of his savior who was about to accept him into his arms.

Well I don’t think we made it more than 10 words into this chapter but that’s ok. We can camp out here for a while because it is God’s word, he spoke to us for our help and our God. May all of God’s people be filled with the knowledge of him. Amen.