FAITH,OUR STRONG FOUNDATION
Hebrews 11:1-3
My brothers and my sister as we approach this series on faith, I am inclined to believe that we all have faith, but on different plains. As I had shared ever so briefly last week, that there are some that have faith in the things that are tangible, such as having faith in a person that you do not know, to give you a job with pay, and having faith to plan for tomorrow, but when it comes to having faith in the things that seem impossible or the things that are unseen, we struggle with having that kind of faith. Now I must admit that we all struggle with as Pastor Hudson puts it “water walking faith,” but some struggle more than others.
Last month I was struggling with my faith. Until Deacon Wilson sent me, an e-mail called the Handy Little Chart. This chart gave me renewed faith when I thought there was very little. But, God through His word was saying we can. The chart had two columns, one said “YOU SAY” and the others said “GOD SAYS.” In the “You Say” column it said “It is impossible.” Then in the “God Says” column it said “All things are possible,” and gave the scripture (Luke 18:27). I hope you get the point. You see I had to refocus on what God was saying through His word. People were relaying to me what their eyes saw and had good intentions in trying to believe, but I’ve learned that we lose out on many blessings because of someone’s good intention. So I had to hear what the Lord was saying about our situation through His word and only consider what the eyes have seen.
In the Scriptures we’ll find faith passages tailored just for us. All we need to do is to learn to ask of the Lord. Matthew 7:7 says “ask and it shall be given” Matthew 21:22 says, “And all things, whatever you ask in prayer believing, you will receive” John 14:13,14 says, “And whatsoever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father might be glorified in the Son.” 14. “If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.” My personal favorite is 1 John 5:14; “And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hearth us”;
So in this series coming from the book of Hebrews, I hope that we can get on the same page of biblical faith and to follow the Lord’s lead in things concerning not only our need as a church, but also your need as His people.
First of all . . .
1. THERE IS A NEED TO UNDERSTAND WHAT FAITH IS (v.1)
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
I like how the New Living Translation reads. It says, “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about thing we cannot see.” Faith is actually believing that what we hope for will come to pass. Dr. Oswald Sanders says and I quote; “Faith allows the believing soul to treat the future as if it is now, and the invisible as the seen.” I like to believe with a slight spin to what Dr. Sanders had said, that faith allows me to treat the future as it is now the past, that what I hoped for is what I’m using now, and for what I don’t see, I s what I’ve seen already. One of the perfect pictures exhibiting faith is found in a child’s belief in Christmas. Now grant it in the Christian community it is taught in Sunday School that Jesus is the reason for the season, but to a child Christmas means toys and gifts. Regardless of what myths we might try to extract from their minds, the bottom line is that they are expecting to wake up on Christmas morning to see the gifts that were left for them. They actually have the type of faith that is spoken about in the text, the substance of things hoped for, although they had not seen what is to come. But before you can have that type of faith, you first have to have confidence in something or someone that had given you the reason to believe. To a child, it is the tradition of receiving gifts on Christmas morning, but to a Believer, it is knowing what the Lord Jesus had done for you in the past through the promises found in His word. So, faith is knowing that we can trust God to deliver what He promised in His Holy Word. The secret is the more promises you know from His Word, the more faith you will have in the things not seen.
So faith is believing God promised Word, regardless of the thing not seen.
Secondly . . .
2. IT WAS BY EXPERIENCE THAT THE OLD TESTAMENT SAINTS FORMED THEIR FAITH IN GOD’S WORD (v.2)
“For by it the elders obtained a good report.”
As the Sunday School is studying in the Old Testament, they are hearing of many things that the Old Testament patriots had to go through. Even though they had to face overwhelming odds that often resulted in death, they had one thing and one thing only and that was the promised word of God that was spoken through the prophets of that day. They did not give in to their situations because they had heard about through the prophets and their forefathers, the miracles that the Lord God Jehovah had done. Not only did they hear of these things but they had reason to believe them because there were times when the Lord had brought them out as well. And their faith in the reports that they heard pleased God. The Father is very pleased, when we believe Him and His promises. This is the point of this verse. The elders and great men of God who lived in the past, believed God and followed God. They turned away from the world and its possessions and pleasures and followed God. They believed God that He had much more to offer and His promises of an eternal land and of eternal life were true. Therefore they staked their lives, all they were and had, upon that hope. And their faith in God pleased God to no end. We will find later on in verse six of this chapter and I must remind you of what it says, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him; for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” I will cover that text when we get there, but as for the elders, God accepted their faith and had honored them because of it. He had, of course, honored them by recording their faith in His Word and using their example as a challenge to believers of every generation.
My brothers and sisters there should be no-mountain too high to climb, no valley too low to get out of, and no situation too big for God not to handle, all we have to do is fall down on our knees and tell Him all about our problems. In other words, as the song says, just have a little talk with Jesus, and tell Him all about your struggles.
Finally in verse 3 we see that . . .
3. WITH FAITH WE CAN UNDERSTAND THE MYSTERIES OF GOD (v.3)
“Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”
My brothers and sister, as we all know that without faith it is impossible to please God, but also we should know that without faith we cannot understand the mysteries of God. In the halls a secular academia, there are discussions about the truth of creation. Many believe in the big bang theory and conclude that life came from spontaneous generation or small living organisms. While yet other believe that homosapiens or modern man came from monkeys. And many believe this theory because they have more faith in science then they have in God’s word. But if you have faith, you can understand the mysteries of God. The text says that the worlds were framed by the word of God. If we would venture back to the book of Genesis chapter one, we would find God creating the universe, then out of no where and out of nothing the world began. It did not have form and it was void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. But look at verse three. “And God said, Let there be light.” Verse six said, “And God said, Let there be a firmament.” Verse nine said, “And God said,” and there was water. Verse 11, “God said,” and there was vegetation. Verse 14, 20, 24 and in verse 26 God spoke and created man in His likeness. The point that I am trying to make is that my faith allows me to believe that everything was created by God, not by spontaneous generation. Whatever God said would happen, happened. That is why it should not be hard for the Christian community to have faith. Not only faith that would allow us to know that there is a mustard seed, but to have the faith of the size of a mustard seed. So God spoke His Word and the world was.
CONCLUSION
In closing, I read a little story about faith. In fact the name of the story was “The Evidence of Things Unseen.” It was rumored that underneath a certain piece of ground there was iron to be found, and two men were appointed to go and inspect the land and see whether there was really iron there. One man, a scientist and mineralogist, was very conscious of his own limitations and knowing his own weaknesses, he took with him a proven instrument. The other man, who was buoyant and self-confident, said, "I believe what I can see, and what I can’t see I won’t believe" and so he walked over the field, and got over it in no time. He said, "Iron? Nonsense! I see no iron; there is no iron here." This man went to the syndicate and said, "There is no iron there: I walked all over the field and I could not see a trace of it." The other man did not trust to his eye at all. He carried in his hand a little crystal box, and in that little crystal box there was a needle, and he kept watching that needle. He paused, for the needle in that crystal box had pointed down like the very finger of God, and he said, "There is iron there." He passed on, until again that needle pointed down, and he said, "There is iron there," and when he handed in this report he said, "From one end of the field to the other there is iron." "Oh!" said one of the adherents of the first man, "how do you know, when you did not see it?" "Because," he said, "that which cannot be seen with the eye can be magnetically discerned.” Bible Illustrations
I need you to know that some things in this Christian walk, are just like that iron ore. You cannot see it, but it doesn’t mean it is not there. That is when the little chart comes in.
• When You say: “It’s impossible” God says: “All things are possible.”
• When you say: “I can’t go on,” God says: “My Grace is sufficient.”
• When you say: “I can’t do it,” God says: “You can do all things.”
But most importantly when you say: “I’m not able,” God wants you to know that: “I am able.”
With that being said, I have some questions.
Is He able in your life?
Can He do it?
Do you have the faith to believe Him?
Is He able?
