Hebrews Part 12
Notes
Transcript
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1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Tonight we are going to talk about Faith
What does the word faith mean?
Here, Option 2-B in Webster’s dictionary is how most people in modern western culture define faith:
Firmly believing in something that has no proof.
Is this how the Bible defines faith?
If not, how did we get to where most people think that faith means this?
Well, IMO, it all started with a man named Martin Luther.
He Lived from 1483 - 1546 in Germany.
He was a Catholic Priest, and monk.
And he is widely known as the primary catalyst for what later became known to be the Protestant Reformation.
Who was he Protesting, and what was he trying to reform?
The Roman Catholic Church is the answer to both questions.
Luther correctly surmised that the RCC was becoming very corrupt
It was also a very “works based” religion.
On the contrary, Luther begin to reinterpret the writings of Paul
And he did so with this new idea that salvation comes without any human action whatsoever.
If the human does anything at all
Then they are able to take credit for their own salvation
and it wouldn’t be 100% based on Jesus.
This idea came from Eph 2.8-9
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
From this single verse,
Luther decided that faith alone could save us
and then concluded that faith could not involve any human action at all.
Later Reformers would build upon Luther’s new doctrine
and take it to its logical extreme
Which is determinism
Also know as predestination.
John Calvin is perhaps the most famous one
And so, many call this doctrine Calvinism.
And it is the idea that humans can’t do anything
not even believe
but that God has already decided
through his own sovereign will
who is saved and who is not saved.
Luther didn’t mean this,
and probably didn’t anticipate this happening
but it is what happened as a direct result
of his new idea that Faith means no human action at all.
Just believe and you are saved
anything more and you didn’t receive a grace
but you earned it.
It was through this lens that Luther began to associate
The Jews in the book of Romans with the RCC
And the Gentiles with the real Christians
Because the Jews though they needed to continue
the “Works of the Law”.
Luther on Romans
Luther on Romans
However, Paul was not intending to tell Jews and Gentiles
To never do any action (or work)
He was simply trying to show that we are saved
apart from the OT Law
Because if we need the OT Law to be saved
Then Gentiles would be excluded from salvation
For Paul it was more about the Law than it was about the actual “works”.
The Jews still believed that it was God’s grace that saved them
They just thought that the grace was only available to those who kept the law.
And not because they were “working to earn it”
but because the Law was given to them in a covenant
and keeping the covenant was essential to receiving the promise of that covenant.
Again, it was more about the Law (or the covenant) that it was about the actual working or doing of the Law to the Jews.
Luther didn’t think this was true.
He began to read Romans with his new definition of faith
which required no human action at all. None.
Reading Romans with this idea distorts the message
And it is evident in the fact that it causes a contradiction with the book of James
and and we will see, the Book of Hebrews too.
Luther recognized this contradiction
But instead of changing his interpretation of Romans
He wanted to remove the book of James from his Bible.
Why?
Luther said you are saved by Faith ALONE.
Does Ephesian 2.8 say that?
Let’s read it again.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
Do you see the word “alone” here?
Nowhere in the Bible does it say we are saved by Faith alone.
In fact, here it doesn’t even say we are saved by faith at all.
It says we are saved by grace THROUGH faith.
It is the grace of God that saves us
It is the grace of God that is a free gift
It is the grace of God that cannot be earned
It is the grace of God that paid the price on Calvary’s Cross.
Even our Faith had nothing to do with that.
Jesus died while we were yet sinners
Way before you had faith
Jesus had Grace to save you.
So, already we see that Luther was misinterpreting the text here.
And then used that misinterpretation to read Romans in a new way
that causes a contradiction with other books of the Bible
How?
Look what James says about Faith
And we will see what Luther hated this book.
14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?
17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
This part is key here
We are going to see how this relates to Heb 11 in a minute
But James says… you can see my faith by looking at what I do.
Faith is something you can see…
Not just something you can think…
To make the point, James uses a polemic here which would indicate that the demons are saved if all they need to do is believe.
19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
It seems James was talking to an early version of Luther
Because whomever he was writing this to
believed that all they needed to do was beleive
and that was it.
And that is was Luther came to believe 1500 years later
and James came out of the Bible and preached to Martin Luther too.
And Luther hated it.
After this, James proceeds to prove this concept to them
ANd he uses two example
One is Abraham and the other is Rahab.
If you read these examples
It looks as if James is either copying Hebrews chapter 11
Or Hebrews chapter 11 is copying James
Or they are both copying from the same source
But it is very clear that they are preaching the same message
20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?
21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?
22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works;
23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God.
24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
Luther says you are saved by Faith alone
James, the brother of Jesus, the pastor of Jerusalem said
You are not saved by Faith alone.
Who will you believe?
Luther or Pastor James?
We are going to read almost these same words in Heb 11
And the same is true for the example given about Rahab
25 And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?
26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
If you say you believe
but you don’t do anything with that believe
James says, you are dead.
Single Point of Salvation
Single Point of Salvation
Now, the issue for most people is that they are trying to pin down
The exact moment they are saved.
Why do they want to know this?
Because they want to point back to a point in time
and say, that’s when I was saved
but listen, you’re not saved until you get to Heaven.
I know people don’t want hear that today
It isn’t popular.
But that is the entire point of the book of Hebrews.
He is warning them to not fall back.
It is in that very context that he begins to preach about faith.
Recall the last verse we read last week from chapter 10.
39 But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.
Folks, salvation is for the one who endures until the end.
The Bible speaks about being saved in the past, present and future tense
But people today want to only talk about it in the past tense
We don’t want to imagine that at this moment I’m “being saved” in the present
or that in the future tense I “will be saved” in the end.
But that is 100% true.
John Calvin preached predestination
but it took away human will
and placed salvation entirely in God’s hands
But my Bible says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
If the will is not involved in salvation
Then Lucifer would still be in heaven
and Adam and Even would still be in the Garden.
But they aren’t
Therefore, they used their will to contradict God’s will
and that rebellion took them from a place of eternal salvation
into a place of eternal death
That is the case for every person that chooses to sin
but thank God we have a redeemer
who, through his free gift of grace
died on a cross for us
so that we might be saved
but that salvation doesn’t come by force
it comes by faith
and faith involves action.
Right after the writer of Heb says we don’t shrink back
but instead we have faith and preserve our souls…
He says…
1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
What does this mean.
I will admit that I do not like this translation
and I’ll tell you why.
Most Christians today have some form of Lutheran ideas about faith.
We just simply believe, they say.
Not all Christians, but most do.
And I don’t think the actual words of this verse sits well with them.
Let’s look at a few other translations
1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see.
What we are seeing in these modern translations
is a bit of a hesitancy to define faith as something visible.
We can call it confidence, and that can be in our minds.
Right. Confidence is a mental thing.
We can call it assurance, or being sure
and that is still a mind thing.
Not something you can see.
We can call it a conviction
because, convictions are in our hearts and minds
See the trend?
What about the CSB:
1 Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen.
Ok, here we see a hint of what the real words are.
Faith is the “reality”
Faith is the “Proof”
Here you can start to see that Faith is being defined as something you can see
verses something you cannot see.
Faith is real, as opposed to “hope” which is not yet real.
Faith is “proof that you CAN see”, as opposed to “what is not seen”.
That’s a little better.
Look at the amplified.
1 NOW FAITH is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses].
It still uses “assurance” as the main translation
but adds the words confirmation and title deed.
That word “title deed” is the literal meaning of the word we have been translating as “assurance, confidence, or reality”.
The Greek word is “hypostasis”.
There are 4 definitions given for it in the most respectable Greek Lexicon
The 4th one being the actual physical thing the word referred.
BDAG ὑπόστασις
ὑπόστασις, εως, ἡ (ὑφίστημι; Hippocr.+; Polyb. 4, 50, 10; 6, 55, 2; Diod S 16, 32, 3; 16, 33, 1; M. Ant. 10, 5; ins, pap, LXX;
Now, it seems of all the translations we have, the CSB was the closest to being correct, and the amplified Bible gets close only before it’s parenthetical alternatives that it provides.
1 Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen.
Faith is reality - Faith is proof
This was pulled directly from the BDAG Greek Lexicon that I was reading from.
I can let anyone of you read the entire definition from the BDAG
after service, or let me know and I’ll email it to you
I wouldn’t expect you to purchase this resource
as it is quite expensive
and unless you’re using it dozens of times a week like I do
It might not be worth the cost.
What the translators are doing is following Luther’s definition of faith
and trying to read that back into the text
but it doesn’t work
because the context is still there
And we will see that in chapter 10
Faith was being setup to mean
Staying with it
as opposed to “shrink back” or “falling away”.
Staying with it, holding fast, that is something real
Something visible
Not something mental.
Furthermore, the rest of the chapter is replete
with example after example
like the ones we saw in the Book of James
of saint after saint
who kept the faith by DOING something
as opposed to NOT doing something.
Luther had it wrong folks.
He overcorrected from the ditch the RCC was driving in
and went into the ditch on the other side of the road.
This was all happening in the 1500s
I happen to have a Replica of the Geneva Bible from 1560
and my 1611 KJV
Let me read what it says in them.
1 NOw faith is the grounde of things, which are hoped for, & the evidence of things which are not sene.
The archaic word “grounde of things” means firm or solid foundation… concrete.
In other words, hope is unseen, but faith is concrete.
I don’t have an electronic version of the 1611 KJV, but here it is in the 1900 version, which is essentially the same as what I’m reading here in my 1611 Replica of the KJV.
1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Here is where theology colors translations.
The KJV translators didn’t have much issue
with using “substance” here in Heb 11.1
They were not yet swayed by Luther or Calvin
And faith still meant more than what it means today to most people back then
Faith was substance, it was real, you could see it.
This word is actually used 3 times in Hebrews.
The first mention of it is in Heb 1.3
and I think it was intentional by the author
to connect this idea in Heb 1.3 with the idea about faith in Heb 11.1
And it is this type of foreshadowing that I find to be a signature of Paul’s
And I see it in his other letter’s as well
It is suddle, and most people will not connect it
but in Paul’s letters, he says something about the nature of Jesus
At the start, in the opening, that is tied to something else later
that is part of his main point.
3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Here, the word “nature” is translated from the word “hypostasis”
and that is the same word that Heb 11.1 uses to define Faith.
I think a better translation is substance here
because God doesn’t have “nature”
Nature pertains to created things, and God is not created.
But God is a being that has substance
So, in the author’s mind
In the same way that Jesus is the visible imprint of God’s “substance”
Faith is the visible substance of whatever we are hoping for.
When you see Jesus you see the Father according to Jn 14.9
And when you see my faith, you are seeing what I’m hoping for.
So, the author is not telling us that Faith is some abstract thought or confidence
But rather, he is demonstrating that Faith is something you can see
Something you can hear
Something you can touch
Something with SUBSTANCE.
1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
It wouldn’t make any sense if Faith was invisible.
You can’t see something
So let me give you some invisible evidence to prove it is there?
That makes no sense
The author is trying to say… I can SEE Your faith.
And he goes on to demonstrate that in many examples in this chapter.
We won’t have time to go through them all tonight.
but they are all identical to what James said in his letter
They involve action.
Everyone of them is about doing something in obedience to God.
2 For by it the people of old received their commendation.
This verse ties what we just argue for
That Faith is visible
To all the examples of people putting their faith on display.
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.
This verse is beautiful as it is written here
But it makes it difficult to see how this is tied to the open line of this chapter.
You might see how it was tied back to Heb 1.3
3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Which is more evidence that I’m correct in saying Heb 11 was meant to be tied back to that statement about the nature of Jesus.
But it might not be clear how it ties to Heb 11. 1 and 2.
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.
What is being argued here is that when we look at creation
We can see creation, right
that is “what is seen”
And “what is seen” was made from what?
Unseen things.
So, faith is not in the invisible things we can’t see
Faith is tied to what we can see… which is creation.
I wasn’t there when God spoke the world into existence
I didn’t see it with my eyes
I didn’t hear it with my ears
I can’t see God, the creator
But I know he is there…
How?
By looking at Creation.
When I see a painting,
I know there is a painter
even if I never saw him paint.
That is faith.
Look at the visible things
as the evidence for the invisible things.
That’s how it is tied to vs 1
and how we will tie it into the examples given below.
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.
Example one:
Person: Able
Faith you can see: offerring acceptable sacrfice
Hope you cannot see: God’s commendation that came after Able died.
Even though Able didn’t live to see the commendation he hoped for
The commendation still came.
“He still speaks” it says.
And the faith that Able displayed
was offerring an acceptable sacrfice in spite of not seeing the commendation.
In each example there is an unseen thing and a seen thing.
The unseen thing is the thing hoped for.
The seen thing is the faithful actions of the believer.
If the faithful action does not occur in any of these examples
then the thing hoped for will not happen.
After the first example
The author preaches for second about faith…
6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
Notice what is required to please God, Faith.
But what is faith here in verse 6?
Is it simply believing God exists?
Is that all?
No.
3 things are listed here.
Draw near to God. - You have to make the step toward God He won’t make you come to him. This is a component of faith. Turning to God in repentance.
Believe he exists - this is as far as some make it, and yet some don’t even get this far. You must believe based on creation alone if you have to, but you must believe that God is there.
Believe that he rewards those who seek him. - People want God to find them where they are, but God says, you draw near to me, and seek me. That seeking takes action. You can’t seek by sitting still. You can draw near by not moving. You have to move.
Without these requirements, we would have absolutely no free will.
This isn’t about earning salvation.
That was paid for on the Cross
You can’t earn Grace.
We are not talking about Grace here
We are talking about our response to Grace
which is Faith.
7 By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
Last Example, and we will stop here.
Person: Noah
Faith seen: Built and ark
Hope Unseen: Saving his family from the rain.
Faith is building the ark.
It is not believing in the unseen rain.
It is also not making a raincoat
or buying an umbrella.
Faith is absolute obedience to the word of God.
and that makes you an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
