I want to start off tonight by throwing a few scenarios at you guys where I want you to think about how you would feel about God and what you would say to Him, if anything, if you were in that situation. As I read each one, take a moment just to place yourself in the story and write your thoughts down on your sermon outline.
Scenario #1 – At Breakaway last week, you shared with your small group leader that you had a huge test in English class on Wednesday and you asked for prayer that you would do well. The group closed in prayer with, not only your leader, but you and a friend as well praying for the test. On Tuesday night, you spend time studying and ask God for His help once again. Again, on Wednesday, as you sat down in English class, you whispered a prayer again and got to work confident that God would answer your prayer. On Thursday, when you got to English class, you sat down and awaited the return of the tests. When you got your test back your heart dropped as you saw that your score was a 67. Where was God? How do you feel about your prayers?
Scenario #2 – Your parents have been fighting more and more lately and you are beginning to get worried. For the past few weeks before you have gone to bed, you have taken a few moments to pray and ask God to stop the fighting and make them happy again. You miss time with your parents that aren’t tense and stressful. You just want to be a happy family, just like some of your friend’s families are. After about month of praying and things seeming to get better, your parents sit you down and tell you they are getting divorced. Where was God? How do you feel about Him?
Scenario #3 – On September 11, 2001 you sat and watched new reports of two planes that crashed into the World Trade Towers in New York City and one that crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, VA. When all was said and done, there were 2,973 fatalities: 246 on the four planes, 2,602 in New York City in the towers and on the ground, and 125 at the Pentagon. Among the fatalities were 343 New York City Fire Department firefighters, 23 New York City Police Department officers, and 37 Port Authority Police Department officers. An additional 24 people remain listed as missing. Where was God?
These are only three scenarios of situations that can rattle our faith in God and challenge our belief in Him. If we really wanted to, we could come up with a number of other situations and stories that make us ask the questions “Why?” and “Where is God?” These things make us question God’s promises to always take care of us and to answer our prayers. A lot of people, when confronted with these questions decide to turn away from God and give up their belief in Him. Some would say they have given up their faith, but I think I would raise the question of whether or not they had faith to begin with to give up.
A lot of people look at faith in the following way. They take the things that are happening right now and the way they are feeling right now, (such as right after any of the scenarios we just described), and they use that to determine what they believe. (Stanley and Hall in The Seven Checkpoints). That is not faith but merely belief based upon emotion and the moment. Real, authentic faith goes so far deeper than that and is what I want to focus on for tonight.
In Hebrews 11:1, faith is defined as “the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” Let’s break this definition into two different parts to help us understand what real faith is. First off, authentic faith is not found or rooted in “the right now” but it is instead focused on the future. It is “the confidence of what we hope for will actually happen” (future tense). True faith doesn’t just latch on to everything going on around them and the emotions that are surging through them at the time of a certain situation but instead confidently hopes, being sure without evidence in the future and that God will come through in the end.
This brings us right into the second half of the definition. Faith gives us “assurance about things we cannot see.” Sometimes, the way that God comes through in the end is not what we would have expected or the way we expected it to happen. When we react according to certain emotions or a particular situation we are ignoring what God might be doing in the future through those things. Faith is sticking it out with God or whatever we may be doing, trusting that there are things “we cannot see” that are developing for ours or others benefit.
This is what real faith is like. It’s coming to the understanding that even though we may be hurt or angry with something that is going on in the here and now, we have faith that God is doing things that we can’t necessarily see at the time. We have faith in Him that it will work out in the long run. Real, authentic faith is “the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.”
Throughout the Bible, God proves His faithfulness over and over again in a number of different ways and in many people’s lives. He is a living example of this definition and the best confidence for hope and the best assurance about the unknown than we can find. Above all, there is one example of God’s faithfulness that I think is above all the others and is worth looking at tonight as we individually ask the question, “Should I put my faith in God?” Let’s open our Bibles to Hebrews 10:19-25 to look at this amazing story.
To fully understand this scripture and God’s faithfulness demonstrated we need be aware of a little background to this passage that takes us all the way back to the creation story in the Garden of Eden. When man was created, we were created in the image of God – to be relational beings with Him but also with one another. Because of Adam and Eve’s disobedience to Him, that perfect relationship that we once were able to have with God was broken and death was the punishment. Humans and God were separated from one another.
Man became in need of a Savior from death and a rescuing that would bring us back into a relationship with our Creator. It is as early as Genesis 3, right after the creation of the universe, that God makes his first promise to provide that Savior by telling Satan that the woman’s offspring will provide a deadly blow to his head. That offspring that God was talking about was really a reference to Jesus being born thousands of years before it happened. Until Jesus came, it was only by offering sacrifices to God and through strict obedience that man could be in any sort of a relationship with God.
At the time of Jesus, it was only in the Jewish temple that you could come close to God’s presence and was where you would go to offer the blood sacrifices to God. In the center of the Temple, separated by a large curtain was the Most Holy Place which is where God himself resided. No one could enter into the Most Holy Place and come near to God except for the High Priest, and he only entered once a year to offer a large sacrifice on behalf of all of Israel. Because of sin and our disobedience humans and God were separated from one another and was only available to a select few.
This brings us to the passage that we just read a few moments ago. As we just said, God promised, all the way back in Genesis, thousands and thousands of years ago that he would crush Satan and bring humans back into relationship with Himself. He did this through his one and only Son’s death on the cross. Jesus served both as the “High Priest who rules over God’s house” going to God for us and then offering a blood sacrifice of His own blood once and for all so that each and every single one of us could be restored and rescued from death and sin.
In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all three writers tell us that when Jesus dies, the curtain that separated the Most Holy Place from the rest of the Temple tore in half. At that point, God’s promise was fulfilled for the presence of God was not reserved to the Holy of Holies anymore but burst out into the world so that all mankind could turn to Him and receive life through the presence of God. Because of that, we don’t live by the laws of the Old Testament anymore or by having to offer sacrifices but instead we can “go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.”
Faith is “the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” This definition of faith defines God and the love that He has for each and every single one of us. His remarkable act of love through the sacrifice of His Son for you and me shows his amazing faithfulness. From a promise made at the beginning of creation, to the fulfillment of that promise through Christ’s death and now watching it take form in each of our lives every time we enter into the presence of God is a reminder of how worthy God is of our faith on a daily basis. No matter what happens in our lives, whether we flunk a test, whether our parents gets divorced, whether things like 9/11 happen we can put our faith in God that despite the current situations or the current emotions, God has the future in His hands and is working in ways that we can’t always see to bring more people into His presence and to continue to make our relationships with him more and more the way they were created to be.
So, because of God’s faithfulness, exemplified through Christ’s death, “Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.”
