Defining Faith

Intro

Welcome back everyone and welcome to the second night in the spring semester. Go ahead and turn in your bibles to Hebrews chapter 11. As you’re doing that I have just a couple announcements for you.

Baptism Packets Are Available - Next Baptisms Are March 6

Looking for a Full Time Admin - Let me know if you want more info

Everyone in chapter 11 of Hebrews? Good. Let me pray for us.

Prayer

Alright, as I mentioned last week and in the GroupMe this week. We are starting our brand new series tonight in the book of Hebrews. It’s called “By Faith”. And the reason for that is because if you glance through the 11th chapter of Hebrews, you’re going to see that phrase all over the place.

I took some time a few weeks ago and actually underlined every time in the chapter that the word “by faith” or “through faith” are used. 20 times. 20 times that that phrase is used as a way of driving home the point that the author of Hebrews is trying to make.

Simply put. The Author is trying to drive home that Faith is a mighty thing that God uses in the life of a believer. It’s a spiritual concept that has very physical realities in our life. Faith should shape us, inspire us, cause us to act, and bring about a security and assurance in our lives that can only come from God.

Faith is something that doesn’t just exist in the lives of those who have come after Jesus died on the cross, but rather Faith is something God has used since the beginning of time. And in Hebrews 11, we see what is called the Hall of Faith. That is, a list of many of the saints of the Old Testament who “by faith” saw God work mightily in their lives. And “by faith” conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the moths of lions, 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…and so many more thing.

And, through their faith…they were commended. Meaning, honored by God. Now, they did not all receive what they were promised…we’re not saying they lived in prosperity because of their faith…but they were honored by God…and…their lives exist to show us that there is something better in life than receiving promises. That is the ultimate promise. Jesus.

Take a quick look at the beginning of Chapter 12. In order for us to understand what we are doing in this semester, we need to see where we are going. Our desire as a leadership every spring semester is to show you the value, the richness, the importance of the Old Testament. We want to show you how it is a valid part of the life of a Christian…and how it demands to be read in order to have a fullness in your discipleship and understanding of God.

And Hebrews 11 is the perfect springboard to do that. And the beginning of Hebrews 12 shows us why.

Hebrews 12:1–2 ESV

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, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

“Therefore”…meaning because of everything listed in Hebrews 11…all the saints of old… “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses”…that’s the men and women of Hebrews 11 that we are going to be studying… “since we are surround, 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, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter…of what?…of our faith.”

So all the people we will read about in Hebrews 11, should cause us to turn our eyes to Jesus. The Old Testament…should inspire us to deepen our relationship with Christ. And not just deepen it…but the saints of Hebrews 11 should cause us to have endurance for the race that is set before us.

That’s why the graphic for this series has a runner, looking down the road…not seeing the finish line…not seeing the end goal…but commited to run with endurance until he reaches the end.

Endurance is an amazing thing…any of you ever run long distances? Like over 3 miles.

3 years ago I got super into running. Ran a half marathon…13.1 miles. When I started out…I couldn’t even run 1 mile without stopping and walking. There are a few things that helped with that.

One, motivational videos and music. Things that got me excited to run every morning…to be facing a challenge that my body had never done.

Two, community. A community of other runners and small group members from our church that were also going to be running the same race and encouraged me and spurred me on to keep going.

Three, wisdom from those who had done it before. A training plan from those experienced…to help prevent injury…to keep me growing and going.

To the point where I was actually able to run 13.1 miles in a little over two hours.

Why do I bring this up?

Because the people found in Hebrews 11 are like those things that kept me going for the half marathon…that helped me run the race that was set before me with endurance.

The saints found in Hebrews 11 are meant to 1) motivate us with their stories of faith. 2) be a community to lean on...a community of people who belonged to God…and 3) show us what has been done before so that we may glean wisdom from them.

So…with all that said…here’s what we are going to be looking at tonight.

I titled the message Defining Faith.

For two reason.

We will be defining what faith means tonight.

We will be seeing how faith defines us. How it’s a defining faith.

So, look at Hebrews 11 again as we work through the first three verses together.

I’ll read the whole thing, and then we will take it verse by verse.

Hebrews 11:1–3 ESV

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.

So first point when defining faith.

Faith provides certainty.

We see this in verse 1 and if we break it down we see two specific ways faith provides certainty.

First one.

Certainty of the things to come.

We see this in the first part of verse one when it defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for”. When things are hoped for…they are anticipated. They haven’t come yet. You don’t hope for something you already have. For example, as a married man…I’m not going to sit here and hope for a wife. The Lord has already provided that. That’s why when it says hoped for…it means things to come.

But let’s talk about this word assurance. We need to make a clear distinction here between objective assurance, and subjective assurance. Because drawing that line here matters.

Objective: not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts. So…easy way to think about it…the object what matters. It is true. It is unaffected by us.

Subjective: based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions. Easy way to think about it…in subjective things…the object is subject to you, under you and your feelings about it.

So when the author of Hebrews is saying faith is the assurance of things hoped for…what type of assurance is that? One dictated by your emotions and tastes? Or one dictated by objective truth. Well, in reality, it’s sort of both…because one affects the other. But…where we should land on…and what the author is clearly stating here…is that faith is an objective certainty of things to come.

Meaning, it is factual. Unchanged by your feelings. In fact, not only is it unchanged by your feelings…but it’s the thing that controls your feelings.

So the author of hebrews is NOT saying “faith is the feeling we get when we feel certain we are going to get what we hope for”. It’s like getting a Christmas present from someone who asked us the things that we like. We told them we like something, so we hope that we are going to get it…and because we hope that we are going to get it…that brings about a happiness…and maybe even some certainty that it’s going to be a good Christmas.

That’s not the type of hope coming from faith here in this passage.

In this passage, the assurance we have comes from the idea of having cold hard truth. Even if we can’t see it…even if we are at the end of the day hoping for it.

Back to the Christmas analogy…it’d be like not only telling someone what you like…but seeing the receipt that they bought it on amazing 3 minutes after you telling them…and you seeing the box arrive on the door…and them saying “your present is here, I can’t wait for you to see it”.

Now, until that present is in your hands and open…you can’t actually say with 100 percent certainty that you will receive that gift…in some ways it’s still hope. BUT…you have evidence of that gift, you have promises of that gift, you have reasons for hope…objective reasons for that assurance…and so…because of those object reasons, your assurance is settled. Despite what doubts might creep in…like oh…that present might be for someone else…or they are playing a trick on me…or that’s too expensive for them to give it to me....despite all those things…you have a certainty about what you seen that brings about an assurance of the future.

That’s what faith is. Faith is having a certainty based on what you’ve seen and experienced, that causes you to have an assurance and hope that is unwaivering. It’s your emotions forming around and objective truth, rather than allowing your emotions to be the truth.

And the author of Hebrews, over the next several weeks, will support that idea over and over again by showing us examples of men who put their faith in God…had faith because of all they had seen and God had done…men who had an assurance of what God was going to do…and that caused them to hope for the future. As we dive into this series, that will become a major theme…having assurance of the hope that is coming at (spoiler alert) the day of Jesus’ return.

So in verse 1 here, we see that faith is not only the certainty of things to come…but

Certainty of things that have been.

Now, we are going to hit this more in verse three in just a couple of minutes…so I won’t get to it all right now…but what we see here in the second part of verse 1 is that faith is the certainty of things that have been. That’s what it means when it says that faith is the “conviction of things unseen”. Meaning…you are convicted (caused to belief and action) by the things that have occured in the past, that you did not see with your own eyes.

So faith is also the certainty that God has worked in the past, even if you haven’t seen the full thing. It’s the certainty that when you read scripture, that he was certainly moving in the lives of everyone written of…even though you can’t see it yourself.

Jesus mentions this when he says in John.

John 20:29 ESV

29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Jesus is blessing the true faith of those that have a conviction of things not seen. And we are going to see the author of Hebrews accent that as well through the next several weeks. Like I said, we will also see this supported in verse 3 in just a minute.

So to wrap it all up to give you clarity...So, faith is having objective certainty of things to come, and the things that have been. Even if you can’t see them. And that certainty can and will lead to an emotional assurance as well.

So that’s the first part of our definition of faith. But faith means much more than that. Even in our modern day language, Faith has multiple facets of meaning. You can have a faith that something will happen....but you can also have a faith that saves you. and that’s our second point.

Faith provides salvation. Look at verse 2 again.

Hebrews 11:2 ESV

2 For by it the people of old received their commendation.

For by it…by faith…the people of old…the people the author is about to list and give examples of…received their commendation.

The key word to understand here is commendation. The root word in english here is commend. To commend someone is to praise them or honor them. To receive a commendation is to receive an award. In the biblical instance, the idea of commending someone in this passage is to say they were approved by God. Other translations will say that they were approved. That was their commendation, to receive the approval of God.

The truest sense of the biblical word is that by faith, the people of old received a good testimonial from God. God spoke of them in his word, he approved of not only their actions…but he approved of them. We see later in this passage that they would be “commended as righteous” (v.4)…or “commended as having pleased God (v.5)”. So all that to say…their faith…pleased God. It granted them his approval.

And the same is true for us today. Our Faith, grants us approval from God. Not only in the sense of pleasing God like it says in verse 5…but also in him approving us as righteous like it says in verse 4.

Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

So our faith…is given to us by God, so that through our faith, God would not only be pleased with us…but give us the ultimate approval....that is our salvation…and acting out our faith is us showing that we are approved by God…and pleasing him in the act. Next week that’s what we will talk about…pleasing God.

And what we are going to see throughout the course of this series are examples of how the saints of Old should cause us to turn our eyes to Jesus, be reminded of our salvation found by grace through faith. We will be reminded time and time again that not only does faith provide certainty, but it provides salvation…and we will thank Jesus for that salvation time and time again as we look at the faith of these Old Testament characters.

Last point...

Faith provides a worldview. (v3)

This last point is pretty simple, look at verse 3 again.

Hebrews 11:3 ESV

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.

So…by faith…we understand that everything that existed…was made from nothing…and God is one that did that. This resonates with our point from earlier that Faith is certainty of things not seen. Because…we couldn’t see creation. We didn’t see it happen…and yet those who have true faith…have a certainty that that is exactly as it happened.

But there’s even more to it than that. What this verse is implying, is that those of us who have faith…have our whole view of the world shaped by it.

We have faith that God created everything, that it was intentional, that it was designed…and as such…that causes us to treat everything different. To have respect and awe for it. To want to take care of it. To find things more precious and worth cultivating. It affects our entire view of the world....our world view.

It impacts our decisions. From what kind of job we have to who we choose to vote for. Those who have faith…their entire worldview is shaped by it. Faith provides a worldview.

That brings us full circle to the title of the message.

Not only do we need to have a definition of faith. But we need to have a defining faith. One that impacts everything. Our assurance and certainty. Certainly our salvation and eternal life. And a faith that dictates our actions and way we view the world. Let your faith define you.

And over the next several weeks, we will be encouraged by seeing the way that faith defined so many that came before us.