Great & Precious Promises: Faith

Intro:

In our last precious promise from Romans 6 we looked at the work that God accomplishes in us as He sanctifies us. We saw that contrary to what many Christians believe and teach that sanctification is actually a work of God’s grace in us not the work that is left to us after God justifies us. Sanctification is God’s work where He sets us apart for Himself and in the work of sanctification we saw that we are to seek to see sin mortified in our lives, mortification, and we are also to seek to walk out this new life of righteousness that Christ has prepared for us, this we called vivification or to use the words found in Romans 6 the “presenting of our members or bodies to God as instruments for righteousness.”

Now we made the case in that last message that:

“...as with our seeking to put to death our sin so also our seeking to live righteously is not a matter of willpower and trying harder but a matter of faith in the work and promises of God. “

That faith is essential in all of this. That the process of sanctification is worked out in our lives by faith just as every other element of our salvation that was purchased for us at the cross by our savior comes to us through faith, salvation as the Solas of the Reformation remind us is by faith alone.

Now this does indeed raise an important question and it is one that several have asked about after that message and so I thought it might be good to take our time today and sort of expand some more on that last promise by looking at the nature of faith, what it is and how it is that it is through faith that we are to see these things brought about in our lives.

So lets take a moment to pray and then we will dive in.

PRAY

Our starting point for today is going to be Hebrews 11:1, now there are plenty of verses that we could look to to help us understand the nature of faith and how it is that faith works in our lives but this verse seems to be a great natural starting point because it is the closest we can find in scripture to a straight up definition of faith.

We read here in Hebrews 11:1

Hebrews 11:1 ESV

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Those to whom the book of Hebrews was written were in the midst of a struggle of faith. They had endured much as a church but they were continually being assaulted and tempted to turn their backs on their love for God and drift back into their old sinful ways. This letter then served as a warning that they ought not do so and that they needed to persist in the fight of faith.

They were a people who had lost sight of the essential nature that faith was to play in their lives and the letter almost serves as one long exposition of just what it is that we have faith in, that being the finished and completed work of Christ.

In chapter 5 we find that these people were in need of maturing, they had become dull, they had stopped growing in their faith. They are told:

English Standard Version Chapter 5

12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14

Then the writer in 6:1 says:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2

Now we could dangerously understand this verse to mean that maturity means leaving behind the foundational elements of repentance and faith… Let us leave, he says, the elementary doctrine which is associated with the foundation of repentance from sin or dead works and faith toward God.

However, the writer is not encouraging them to grow beyond those foundational elements but to rather grow from them to build on them. Leave behind doesn't mean to let it go it means that they needed to stop repeatedly laying the foundation over and over again and to rather now begin to build on it.

If what the writer had meant was that they were to leave behind these elements he would not have then continued to build on them and then come around in chapter 11 to give us what has become known as the hall of faith. No this is an encouragement to take a stand on that foundation of faith and to see that faith now to again be powerfully worked out in their lives.

And so that leads us to ask again, what is faith. We will see that now in chapter 11 and then we will have to ask also what is the object of our faith, where does faith come from, and then how it is that this faith takes action or how it is that we see and know that faith is at work in our lives.

What is faith, what is the object of faith, where does it come from, and what is the outworking of faith. This would be a loose outline of where we are going today.

What is faith:

Now as we ask what is faith we see again that Hebrews 11:1 tells is:

Hebrews 11:1 ESV

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

So we see that faith is, this is definitional, the writer is telling us what faith is. He says it is the assurance or in other translations the substance of things hoped for and the conviction or again in other translations the evidence of things not seen.

The differences between translations arise because of the difficulty of bringing these words into English.

Now that first part of the definition says that faith is the assurance or the substance of things hoped for and it could well be that substance is a better word there. The word literally means the substance or the essence of something. The meaning behind this first part of the definition seems to be that through faith we have been given such a foretaste of the glory and wonder of what is to come, what is held out in the promises of God that we know that these promises are real. Our faith doesn't make the promises real but it does give us a taste of their goodness and glory such that we don't have to blindly wonder at their truthfulness, we don't hope in vain, we hope as people who have tasted of the goodness of God and by faith we rest assured that all of His wonderful promises are true. In this way faith is more that mere confidence, faith arises out of our having tasted of the goodness of our God and that taste gives rise to a complete and utter confidence in the goodness of God.

We also read that in addition to this substantive tasting of the good and glorious promises of God that faith is also the conviction or the evidence of things not seen.

Verse 3 gives us a great clue to how this works. It says:

English Standard Version Chapter 11

3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

Now this is something that none of us saw. We weren't there when God created the universe by His word. This is the ultimate trump card for something unseen, it was literally before there were people and yet we read that by faith we know or understand that it took place this way. Well, how it is that faith serves as evidence for this creation. John Piper connects this to Romans 1:20 where Paul tells us that God’s invisible attributes have been clearly perceived through what was made. Meaning in essence that we see the fingerprints of God in creation and that when we spiritually perceive these fingerprints this becomes evidence for the creation that we did not see. That seeing or perceiving by faith the fingerprints of God in creation is the evidence of an unseen reality, namely here that God created the universe out of nothing by His word.

Piper gives a great analogy he says:

“Here is an analogy at the physical level. A few years ago one of the rages was hidden 3-D images. These are pieces of art that, on one level, are one thing, but at another level are something quite different. At first glance all you see is the surface presentation. But if you let your eyes focus more deeply, or more distantly, you may see a train or a boxing kangaroo or a globe not only appearing, but actually standing up off the page. Now some people stare at these pages for several minutes and see nothing but color and chaos. But others almost immediately see the head of Beethoven or a lamb. If someone says, "How do you know a lamb is there?" the answer is, "I see it." Your seeing is the evidence. They may not see it, but that won't change your mind.

Now this is what it is like for some to look at God's creation. Some see color and chaos. Others have a deeper view and suddenly God's fingerprints come into focus. What evidence can they offer? They see it. It is as undoubted as a lamb in a 3-D image. No one can talk you out of it.”

So then faith is a way of seeing, not a physical seeing, after all God’s word is not wrong in telling us we walk by faith not by sight but that faith is still a way of seeing with certainty a spiritual reality that others without faith have no ability to see.

So faith is apprehending the truth about God and His promises in such a way that we stand firm in them because we have both tasted their sweetness and because we see in them the fingerprints of God and know for certain that these promises will come to pass as assuredly as we know that the universe was created by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

Now we might naturally press from this point on into the last question we have for today and that is what does faith look like in practice. How can we know that it is faith that is at work in our lives. However we need to take two stops at our other two questions before we end there. And so we next consider the object of our faith.

The Object of Faith

For this we need to jump to the next chapter of Hebrews and consider again a bit of the text that we looked at in our first message on the great and precious promises of God this summer. It is fun to see these things intertwine so much!

In Hebrews chapter 12 we read of the race that we are to be running, the race that we said we have been promised the ability to run with strength and endurance and race that we can run without growing weary in our souls and do you remember how it was that we were to run this race with endurance in a way that we would not find ourselves weary?

We see it here at least twice:

English Standard Version Chapter 12

let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,

English Standard Version Chapter 12

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.

Look to Christ, consider Christ.

We are going to consider the evidences of a living faith in a moment and we need to understand that the way to see this living faith take root in our lives and grow outward in all kinds of faithful actions is not that we learn and study all the 12 step books that we can find on any one particular pursuit of holy living. These may have their place but if your library is filled with a ton of books on holy living and you miss this part of how it is that we are to live by faith then you will likely find all of those books to simply lead to more and more frustrations. This is because the way we are to see our faith strengthened is not, again as we said last time, and act of the will but rather an act of faith and that faith is grounded as we see here in seeing and apprehending more and more of the glory of our crucified and risen Lord!

Consider Paul's instructions to Timothy as he is encouraging Timothy to press on faithfully in the ministry that God had called him to in 2 Timothy 2:8-10

2 Timothy 2:8–10 ESV

Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.

The entirety of the walk of faith can be summed up in the first line! “Remember Jesus Christ!”

This is why the central element or one of the central elements of the gathering of God’s people for worship each week is the Lords Supper, that special meal given to us whereby we might feast on these elements that are given to so simply and yet pointedly remind us of what Christ has accomplished for us.

This is the foundation that the writer to the Hebrews talked about in chapter 6, the foundation that we aren't to move on from but that we are to stand assured in and reach up into all the glory and wonder of who God is and what He has done for us. The starting point for the child of God in receiving and believing all that God is and is for us is the cross of Christ and the empty tomb.

To cast our minds often on Christ and from there to reach out and lay hold of all the glorious mysteries of the Godhead that are brought to us through the precious word of God is how through the grace of God the Spirit enables us to taste as we have already considered this goodness and greatness of God and how that tasting becomes for us this sure and steadfast faith that evidences these unseen realities that suddenly as a result of being joined to Christ we are now enabled to receive and rest our lives on through the eyes of faith.

English Standard Version Chapter 11

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

You want to grow in this faith? We haven't said it really but the Bible makes it clear that we can grown, that our faith can get stronger and that it can also atrophy for a time. So if you want to grow in this faith then fix your mind by faith on the object of our faith, that is fix your mind on Christ, read about Him in the Word, listen to preaching that continually holds Him before your ears, read books that extol the greatness and glory of the crucified and risen Lord, in your prayers give thanks often for all that you know by faith to be true about Christ and you will find that you faith will grow.

Now we also need to, I believe, understand where faith comes from.

The Source of Faith:

We wont flesh this out entirely but the most clear text for the source of faith is Ephesians 2:8-9

Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

The obvious question that has to be asked of this text is what does Paul consider the “gift of God?” Is it the grace, the salvation, the faith, or all of it? Many would say that it is the grace and the salvation but not the faith. They want to make faith something that we have within us, the internal power to respond to the gospel.

Ill lean on Piper again here because he has an excellent “Look at the Book” episode on this verse and he points out among many arguments to this end that for Paul to say we are saved by grace through faith, not from works is a very Paul like thing to say.

Paul say this in Galatians 2:16

Galatians 2:16 ESV

yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

And so it seems odd that here in Ephesians Paul felt the need to add the qualifier “and this not of your own doing, it is the gift of God.” Paul didn't need to say that to fit his regular theology and so why is it that he makes this case here, well it is because he is making sure we know that even our faith comes to us as a gift from God. As Ephesians 2:5 tells us, we were dead in our trespasses and God made us alive!

Dead men don't exercise faith, it has to come to them that they might posses it, that they might as Jesus tells Nicodemus, “see the kingdom of God” see with eyes of faith and rest assured in that spiritual seeing that spiritual tasting of the goodness of God in Christ Jesus.

This is why the the father of the boy with the unclean spirit in Mark 9 exclaims to Jesus:

English Standard Version Chapter 9

“I believe; help my unbelief!”

If we were in charge of our own faith of our own believing there would be no need to plead with Christ that He would help our unbelief!

This is important because we like that man have often the need to cry out to God and ask that He in His grace would bestow and increase faith in our lives! Again we cant will power this we must turn to our God the one from whom faith is bestowed as a gift of saving grace and ask that He work faith within our hearts.

And it is important thought that even as we understand that faith is a gift from God that we can do things in our lives that make way for our faith to grow or also we can do things that make our faith shrink.

Similar to the love that one has for a spouse the love in marriage can be fanned into flame and it can shrink but the love itself is not really something that we have the power to ignite. You didn't see your spouse and decide this is the person I am going to love, love grows out of the heart. However there are a million ways that we can seek to see our love for each other grow hotter or colder and so it is with faith as we just saw in our last point we must continually fix our eyes on Christ and seek to grow up from that foundation into all the wonderful fullness of the knowledge of God that is offered to us through His word. If we neglect these things just as if we are neglectful in a marriage we can not expect that our faith will grow.

The Outworking of Faith

Lastly now we need to consider the outworking of faith in our lives.

This is the rub and the difficulty. How do we know that the righteous acts, the holy living, the running of the race that we see in our lives is an act of faith rather than an sheer act of the will motivated by fear and guilt?

These two things for a time can outwardly look the same but inwardly they are very very different.

First we consider that faith must of necessity cause actual change in our lives.

James the brother of Jesus declared in his epistle:

English Standard Version Chapter 2

So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Unlike some try to say, James does not contradict Paul, Paul would fully agree with James that a dead faith is no faith at all. Paul is clear that a life of faith must be marked by true righteousness being worked out in our daily actions. We must run with endurance, we must bear fruit in keeping with repentance, we must walk in newness of life, we must pursue the upward call of God in Christ Jesus by walking in the good works that God prepared before hand that we should walk in them. Now James and Paul and the writer to the Hebrews are not saying different things they are all saying the same thing, the faith that saves is a living faith.

Chair example

They key is to determine when you are obedient, when you are taking a seat as it were are you doing so out of a love and affection for Christ, in other words are you being motivated by this faith that we have been talking about or are you being motivated by your own will and desires to seek to be good. Only you can determine that and you must pray that God would do this work in your life.

I believe help my unbelief!

One sure sign is that works done in willpower will never last long. Are you often beset in your efforts to live out the holy demands of God upon your life? It could well be that you are walking not by faith but seeking to walk by will.

If this proves to be the case the answer again is not to try harder but to cast yourself upon the grace and mercy of God and ask that He impart faith into your life and then fix your eyes on Christ that you affections may grow for Him.

Ill let Charles Spurgeon have the last word here as he perfectly sums up how it is that we are to seek to see holiness take root in our lives through a faith that has laid hold of the glory and wonder of who God has revealed himself to be through the gospel of Christ:

Spurgeon says, “When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin: but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breasts to think that I could ever have rebelled against one who loved me so, and sought my good.”