October 12, 2008
Morning Worship
Text: Hebrews 11:1
Subject: Faith
Title: Receiving What God has Promised - Part 2
A businessman was in a great deal of trouble. His business was failing, he had put everything he had into the business, he owed everybody it was so bad he was even contemplating suicide. As a last resort he went to a pastor and poured out his story of tears and woe.
When he had finished, the pastor said, "Here’s what I want you to do, put a beach chair and your Bible in your car and drive down to the beach. Take the beach chair and the Bible to the water’s edge, sit down in the beach chair, and put the Bible in your lap. Open the Bible; the wind will rifle the pages, but finally the open Bible will come to rest on a page. Look down at the page and read the first thing you see. That will be your answer, that will tell you what to do."
A year later the businessman went back to the pastor and brought his wife and children with him. The man was in a new custom- tailored suit, his wife in a mink coat, the children shining. The businessman pulled an envelope stuffed with money out of his pocket and gave it to the pastor as a donation in thanks for his advice.
The pastor recognized the benefactor, and was curious. "You did as I suggested?" he asked.
"Absolutely," replied the businessman.
"You went to the beach?"
"Absolutely."
"You sat in a beach chair with the Bible in your lap?"
"Absolutely."
"You let the pages rifle until they stopped?"
"Absolutely."
"And what were the first words you saw?"
"Chapter 11."
Though this story is just that, a story, and though the method is a little messed up, the one truth that it contains is that you can trust God’s word. I want to speak to you today about having the kind of faith to receive what the word of God says you can have. I guess nearly every one of you here would say that you think you have the kind of faith to receive God’s promises. That’s a good thing. But if we have that kind of faith, then why aren’t we receiving those promises?
Let’s look at what the word says about the kind of faith we need in order to receive.
1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 2This is what the ancients were commended for.
3By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. 4By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.
5By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
Lord open my eyes to see and my ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.
I. AN EXPLANATION OF FAITH (1-3) Verse 1 gives us a pretty clear definition of what faith is. Faith is not a New Testament concept. I did a quick word study in the OT and the NT and I want to share some of my findings with you. First of all there are three words that refer to faith; faith, trust and believe. In the OT I found that the first mention of having faith in God is in 2 Chronicles 20:20, “20Early in the morning they left for the Desert of Tekoa. As they set out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, “Listen to me, Judah and people of Jerusalem! Have faith in the LORD your God and you will be upheld; have faith in his prophets and you will be successful.” The first mention of believing the Lord is Numbers 14:11, 11The LORD said to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the miraculous signs I have performed among them?” Now that is questioning Israel’s failure to believe but the implication is that they should believe in the Lord. The first mention of trusting God is in Exodus 14:31, “31And when the Israelites saw the great power the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.” The word that is translated faith, believe, trust is the same Hebrew word, aman (awman). It means to build up or support; to foster as a parent or a nurse; to trust or believe; to be permanent or quiet; to be morally true or certain; to go to the right hand. In the OT they all mean the same thing. Now if you go to the NT there are different Greek words. The word faith and believe come from the same root word pistis or pisteuo. It means, persuasion, moral conviction of a religious truth, to have faith in or to entrust. The word translated “trust” is a different word but it has a similar meaning. Elpizo means to expect or confide (too have the things hoped for) to anticipate with pleasure, expectation or confidence. Let’s look at verse 1 a little more closely. 1Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (KJV) or 1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Faith (being fully persuaded) is the substance or being sure of (something tangible, concrete assurance) what you hope for (expect; have confidence for) and the evidence or certainty (the proof or conviction) of what we do not see. 2This is what the ancients were commended for.
That kind of faith is why Abraham was justified in the eyes of God and called a friend of God. Look at verse 3, 3By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. Everything that now is came into being out of what was not. By faith we accept that the universe was formed that way. It came about by God’s command or His word. So, now if we have God’s word about something why do we have a difficult time in believing that the promise is as good as done even though it may not be seen right now. Let me put it to you this way. Faith is being fully persuaded that something tangible, real and expected will see its proof or concrete evidence in what has been promised.
II. A COMPARISON OF FAITH. (4-5, 7)Three things about Abel; 1) 4By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. It doesn’t say here that the substance of Abel’s sacrifice was better than Cain’s. It was the faith connected to the offering. The difference is that Cain offered out of obligation and Abel offered out of a relationship. Cain was practicing religion and Abel loved God. 2) By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings.… Literally, Abel was "witnessed" by God to be righteous, with God "witnessing" (testifying) about his gifts. God provided the witness that faith is what he values, that faith is what characterizes one as righteous, as one who belongs to God. 3) And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead. Abel’s faith didn’t end when he died. It was the kind of faith that God commends that lives on after death. It is the kind of faith that brings eternal life. 5By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. What made Enoch so special to God? It was his faith. Jude wrote about Enoch, 14Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied… Enoch was a prophet of God. He was willing to stand against the world and speak God’s word by faith. He prophesied about the coming judgment in the last days. Even though he couldn’t see the judgment, by faith he understood that it was going to come.
In verse 7 the writer of Hebrews adds one more name to the list of people who walked with God by faith. Noah, even though what God was telling him made no sense, (it had not rained on the earth up to that point) by faith he trusted God’s word and believed that if God said it, that it was a good as done. 7By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. Each of these put his life on the line by having faith. That faith cost Abel his life, Enoch was taken from this life, and Noah’s life was saved because he had unswerving faith in God’s promise. God spoke a word to them and they believed God.
III. A LIFE OF FAITH. (6) 6And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. 1) 6And without faith it is impossible to please God… Cain tried it – it didn’t work for him. King Saul relied on his good looks and popularity – the Holy Spirit was taken from him along with the kingdom. Ananias and Saphira thought the appearance of good works would bring them favor – it brought them death. For every story of someone who lived by faith there seems to be a story of someone who tried to please God by their works. There is only one way to please God and that is by having faith in Him. It seems that the church is full of two kinds of people. The first try to please God by church attendance and charitable works but live like there is no God; the second believes in God but fail to believe that God rewards those who seek him. But it is the third kind of people – those who seek God by faith and understand that His promises are real and that He will stand behind everything He has promised. So let’s get a really good grasp of what verse 6 is saying to us. 1) Faith is the key to your relationship with God. I was sharing with the youth on Thursday night about what it takes to have a right relationship with God. I used some statistics – I sin three times a day – that’s a thousand a year. The average life span is around seventy years and growing – that’s seventy thousand sins in an average life. Here’s the question I posed to them – If in your life you had sixty-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine good things and only one sin do you get to go to heaven? Placing those things on a scale the good would far outweigh the bad so it looks like heaven is waiting for you. But that one sin is enough to keep you out of heaven. But when you have faith in God through Jesus Christ His Son, you please God. 2) You come to Him because you know there is a God – you believe he exists. The evidence that there is a God is all around us. In my opinion it takes more faith to think that there isn’t a creator God than to believe there is one. 3) Real faith believes, not only that there is a God, but that He is personal, that He has communicated with mankind by His written and spoken word, that He hears your prayers that are according to His word, and He answers them. I John 5:13-15 connects saving faith with having the kind of faith to see God’s promises come into your life. 13I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 14This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him. That is the kind of faith that you can have too.
I want to close with this thought. Jesus asked a question in Luke 18:8, When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” You can look at this a couple of ways. First, when Jesus comes He won’t find faith on the earth, because all those with faith will be caught up in the air with Him to be taken out of the world. But what if Jesus was asking something different? What if He was talking about the kind of faith that Abel, Enoch, Noah or Abraham had. What if He were referring to the faith to just believe beyond all reason – to accept His word even when it doesn’t make sense, when you don’t see the proof of it yet, when it looks like there is no physical way that it could ever happen. What if Jesus is saying if you don’t have faith in Me to heal, to provide, to bless, to baptize in the Holy Spirit, or to work miracles, how can you have the faith to be saved?
Let me ask another question. How can you read from the Bible that If you confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead you shall be saved, and you believe that, but then read from the same Bible that Jesus wants to heal, wants to baptize in the Holy Spirit, wants to set you free from the bondage of your addictions, or wants to bless you and say, I’m not sure if that is really what that means? I mean, is this God’s word or isn’t it? Is it true or not?
Well Pastor Mike, how can I get that kind of faith? 1) You have to realize the source of this book, All Scripture is God-breathed… it is given by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. 2) You need to know and pray God’s promises. 14This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him. 3) You need to confess the promises out loud. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks; and faith comes by hearing the word of God.
You know, I try to keep it just as simple as possible. If God’s word says I can have I’m going to have it.
1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
What do you need to stand in faith for today?
Do you need healing?
Do you need a financial miracle?
Do you need to be set free from a destructive habit?
Do you need a blessing?
Are you looking for the baptism in the Holy Spirit?
God wants to do it today because He promised.
One final thing – there is one requirement to receiving an answer to God’s promise. 1 John 3:21-22, 21Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.
When you ask, be sure of God’s faithfulness.
He is ready to work in your life.
