Living in Present Reality with Future Hope
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Introduction
Introduction
1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 For by it the people of old received their commendation. 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.
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. 5 By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. 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. 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.
Prayer
Prayer
I was listening to a sermon, and I heard this story from this preacher where he was reading his Bible and he was in . In that text is said “With God all things are possible.” He took that literally, and so him wanting to make the basketball team goes out to his driveway to practicing dunking the basketball. Now he’s in 8th grade and the shortest kid in the class who has never dunked a basketball before. So, he is in his driveway he bends down to pray. “Lord help me dunk this basketball.” So he gets up and starts running. Now the plan was two steps before he would close his eyes. This was so he would picture the angels lift him up to the hoop and he would throw the ball in the hoop and grab the rim. So he runs as fast as he can, he goes he closes his eyes. He feels something on his right and left shoulder…and then boom forehead to the pole.
Now he tells this story and the people are laughing at him, but he makes a statement that was challenging.
He says, “I wish I would take God at his Word like the 8th grade boy in me that read “With God all things are possible”
Tonight we are looking at faith. A word that can be troubling when we hear it all the time, but wondering what it means.
It carries several different meanings in both the Old Testament and New Testament.
Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible Definition
It may mean simple trust in God or in the Word of God, and at other times faith almost becomes equivalent to active obedience.
At first in the Old Testament it was confidence in God’s covenant promise with Abraham and his descendents.
When we talk about the New Testament, faith was the response to Jesus Christ.
Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible The Synoptic Gospels
Faith is the medium by which the power of God is made visible. It moves mountains, heals the sick, and is the means of entrance into the kingdom.
Paul uses this word several different ways. In Romans, ‘justified’, in 2 Corinthians ‘redeemed’, in Ephesians, ‘made alive’ and ‘adopted into the family of God. And the phrase ‘set free’ in Galatians.
One books says that SINE QUA NON = ESSENTIAL CONDITION
Faith is, for Paul, the sine qua non of every aspect of salvation, from the grace that convicts to the receiving of the full inheritance at the coming of the Lord.
Robert W. Lyon, “Faith,” Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 763.
When we talk about faith, we must also talk about reason. These two cannot be separated.
We are asked to have faith in a lot of things. But we want there to be a good reason, or logic why we should believe. The chairs you are sitting in, you have faith that those will hold you up. Now the reason behind that is because there are four legs and a solid base to those chairs.
Now if next week two of those legs are gone, and the chairs look a little run down, reason would tell you I do not have faith this chair will hold me up.
Reason without faith may deteriorate into a mere gathering of facts that never get put together. Faith without reason can trail off into vagueness and lack of meaning. We need both.
So we look at the verse one where we get the first point
Take God at His Word
Take God at His Word
1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Now to put this in context in chapter twelve he exhorts them
1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
To exhort them to do this this whole chapter has the people of God who only had the promises of God to trust in. They had no visible evidence, yet they would revolve around their own life around these promises.
One commentary says,
The Epistle to the Hebrews 1. Prologue: The Nature of Faith (11:1–3)
Their faith consisted simply in taking God at his word and directing their lives accordingly; things yet future as far as their experience went were thus present to faith, and things outwardly unseen were visible to the inward eye.
God promised them a future.
Sometimes, God made promises that the people did not see the visible results. They lived their life in faith never to see the results. Abraham was and Sarah wanted kids, yet God promised as many as the stars.
Look at verse 13
13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
Hebrews 11:13
They died with the conviction that God would fulfil the promises he made. This was true of the people in the Old Testament. They did not see the promise of the coming Messiah. The one that would save them. Abraham lived a life of faith knowing that he was a stranger on this earth. He was just passing through this world onto the heavenly one.
Now verse one we read that faith is the assurance of what is hoped for.
‘assurance’ meaning “foundation”
Some of your translations may say reality or confidence but the idea is that faith grabs hold of what is hoped for.
And then the rest of the verse saying that we hope for. What do we as Christians hope for?
We hope for Christ’s return. The hope of the glorious appearing that our savior is one day coming back for his children.
We hope for the resurrection that we are given a new birth through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
We hope to one day be glorified that we may see Christ as He is.
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We hope to reign with Christ that one day there will be no night. NO tears. No pain. No more suffering.
Faith the assurance of things hoped for.
It is also the conviction of things not seen.
Faith is what lets us see what is not seen. That there is a spiritual order to this universe. We read in our Bibles things about angels that have six wings. We read about people riding horses that their head is a lion, and we have never seen these things, but by faith we believe they exist.
We live by faith in the present that Christ is coming back one day. We live in the present that as Christ was raised from the dead, we will be raised from death to life. We have faith that we will one day see Jesus face to face.
2 For by it the people of old received their commendation.
The faith we just talked about in verse 1 is how people in the Old Testament received their commendation.
Verses 4-38 shows men and women of the faith who had the verse one kind of faith. The author here puts them in this historical outline to show how God was faithful to them. God was continually faithful to the men and women who were seeking after him.
The author continues to talk about faith and the conviction it has.
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.
For school I have been doing a lot of different assingmnets about this idea of the universe and logical arguments just to get the atheist or agnostic to believe that there must be at least a God in the universe. Without a God, morality cannot exist. The idea that evolution is where humanity came from is to devalue the concept of life itself. What is the purpose of life if there is no immorality to our soul?
All questions that logically can be tried and tested that puts the burden of proof on the atheist or agnostic to try and explian. For us as believers in this room, we by bfaith understand that the universe was created by the word of God. We can read
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
We can read that and take God at his Word that he did create the heavens and the earth. We by faith understand that there is a all powerful almighty God who has been there for an eternity.
The author goes to explain that the physical things of this world were not made from visible materials. God did not have a Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Menard’s to go shopping at and make the entire universe. It was nothing, God spoke, and then nothing became something. The visible came from the invisible.
Now we are asked, “How do you know this?”
We know by faith. We know with reason and faith and we take God at His Word. He tells us in this book and we believe this book to be true, therefore, we believe this fact.
The question for all of us is do we take God at His Word?
Do we believe His Word to be true?
Both these questions you may say yes, but does your day to day life look like a blood bought child of God living the commands of God out. Living the promises of God out. Living a life on mission, do we take God at His Word.
Now we move to the next point where I think believers also struggle with, though we may never say we struggle with this point.
Cultivate Pleasing Faith
Cultivate Pleasing Faith
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.
Cain and Abel
Cain and Abel
Most of you probably know this story where Abel and Cain bring their sacrifices to God. God found Abel’s sacrifice more pleasing than Cain.
God found Abel’s more pleasing, yet Cain could have still turned it around. It was not about material content, but outward expression of a devoted and obedient heart.
Abel brought what God wanted. Cain did not. Abel’s heart was in the right place. Cain was not.
Abel’s gifts were accepted by God, yet Abel still died at the hands of his brothers.
See the prosperity gospel movement that has picked up in recent years would have a hard time trying understand the life of Abel. The movement where if you have more faith, everything will go your way. God will get you the things you need and want. If things are not going your way, then you must not have enough faith. Obviously the preachers you listen to have enough faith because they will rebuke tornados and they have more money than they need to be able to fly in private jets. Surely they have faith or would they have all of that?
Yet Abel, whose sacrifice was pleasing to God died at the hands of his brother. His brother who was jealous. Yet Abel’s faith still speaks to us today through God’s Word.
Enoch
Enoch
5 By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.
Hebrews
Enoch, we hear about this man, was taken by God. He lived a life of faith according to this author and it was enough for God’s mercy to be shown to Enoch that he may not see death. Enoch who lived over 300 years. Enoch who lived in a world full of depravity enough to where God wiped the earth except Noah and the animals on the ark. Enoch remained faithful. We hear about him in the letter of Jude that he was a prophet preaching the message of coming judgement from the Lord. A message that would not have been popular, but Enoch was faithful.
The Bible describes it that Enoch was there and then he wasn’t. Bottom line is by faith: Enoch was taken that he may not experience death. The first man to not see death. The second man would be Elijah.
Enoch was take away because of the character of his life. Enoch was taken away first because of his faith. Second, because he pleased God.
And then the verse that centers around this point. Cultivating faith that pleases God.
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.
If we have no faith, we cannot please God. We must first simply believe that God exists. If we reject that truth, then we are in full rebellion against him. Humanity has developed cultures and religions based off the fact that there is no God. They deny his existence. They say that life is possible without him. Morality is possible without him. God is for those in society that are weak and need a crutch.
But the truth is there is not one demon in this world that is an atheist. Every demon in the Bible that encountered Jesus knew who he was. They did not deny God. They knew the power. The rule. They believe in one God, and they believe in the trinity. Demons have a better theology than some church members. You must believe God exists. You must believe that God is creator. Creator of everything. Third, you must believe in the God of the New Testament. The God who was then revealed in his son Jesus Christ.
He rewards those who seeks him.
8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.
Abraham went out and obeyed
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son,
23 By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.
24 By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, 25 choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.
Hebrews 24-25
29 By faith the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned. 30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. 31 By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.
And then the author admits that it would take too much space for him to write about all of the instances where people lived by faith. They took God at His Word for who he was, is, and always will be.
32 And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35 Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. 36 Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— 38 of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
39 And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, 40 since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.
Hebrews 11:3
The people in this chapter understood. They got the point that they were to believe God exists, and he rewards those who seek him.
I get it. Living by faith. You hear it all the time especially if you grew up in church. Have faith. Live by faith. Grow in your faith.
Faith - something that is completely trustworthy. Trustworthy evidence.
For us to have faith. If faith is a foundation in a belief, then there are several implications for us tonight.
Like verse six says, we must be seeking after God. If we believe there is a God, and that he rewards those who seek him then we must seek him. We seek him in faith. We seek to trust him in all circumstances. If faith is something that is completely trustworthy, who better than to put your faith in a God who is the source of truth.
The God who you can trust at all times. Your friends let you down. Your family lets you down. Your coworkers let you down. Your girlfriend or boyfriend lets you down, but the God of heaven and earth will never let you down. He is always there for you. He is faithful.
He makes promises and he intends to keep them.
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 John
14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
5 The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
These are just several of the hundreds of promises that you will find in the treasure of this book. This God is a God you can trust. You can put your faith in the God who created the heavens and the earth. The God who is in control of everything. The God who sent his son to die so that you may have eternity with him.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Is your faith pleasing to God? Do you believe that he rewards those who seek him? Can you describe your faith as one that seeks after God, or is your faith lacking?