The Spiritual Power Of Faith Series

THE SPIRITUAL POWER OF FAITH

Hebrews 11:4

My brothers and my sisters as we saw in last week’s lesson in this Faith Series. The key or secret to having faith is reading God’s Word. The more you read His Word the more you know of His promises. The more promises you know, the more you can remind God of what He said in His word. Then you can speak those things that are not as though they were. I’ve discovered that faith in the things that we cannot see or “water walking faith” as it is also known is not something that we all are born with, but is something that is developed through prayer, fasting and the studying of God’s Word. Without one or all of these things we cannot have water walking faith. Now I must tell you that just because you have enough faith to be confident in whatsoever you ask in His name that He will do it, does not mean that He would allow it to be, because sometimes the things we ask for are the things we are not ready to receive. This is why we should along with our faith, first be filled with the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit can teach us what to pray for.

As we look at Abel in the text. He is one of seventeen with six of them being honorably mentioned, who lived by faith and had suffered or died because of it. Abel was the second recorded son of Adam and Eve. His name meant “Breathe” and was a keeper of the sheep. There is not a lot to be said about Abel’s life because it was cut short by his brother Cain, but in the brevity of his life, volumes were spoken of his obedience to what was required by God for the atonement for sin. And to obtain this atonement, Abel needed faith to believe that a blood sacrifice was needed.

So let’s look together at this text and experience “The Spiritual Power of Faith.”

First of all . . .

1. WE MUST EXAMINE ABEL’S SACRIFICE (V.4a)

“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain,”

My brothers and sisters as we examine Abel’s sacrifice, we must understand what it took for an excellent sacrifice. Now Abel being a keeper of the sheep and Cain, a tiller of the soil, had the same opportunity to know what type of sacrifice that God was looking for because of their father’s experience with God, so to make clear this matter we must go to the Old Testament scriptures for further examination. In the fourth chapter of Genesis verses three and four it said, “And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. 4. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering,” Now the casual observer would note these things and would ask, “What is the problem?” And they would be within reason to ask that question. But the answer is that it took a blood sacrifice rather than a ground sacrifice. To prove this we will have to go back into chapter three verse seven, there we will find Adam and Eve after the sin with their eyes opened and for the first time they realized that they were naked, so they took fig leaves and sewed them together to make a covering for themselves. Soon after in verse eight, they heard the voice of the Lord God in the garden, and they hid themselves because they were naked. Now if we would pause right there, you would have thought that the fig leaves that they had sewed together as aprons were sufficed enough to cover them from their nakedness. But as we see in the text they were not. So after God questioned them about the events and found that Adam was getting himself deeper and deeper in his sin dilemma, God announced the penalty for sin, and He did not leave them naked in their sin, but the Lord God produced a covering of skin to clothe them. The covenant love of God required that innocent animals be sacrificed to provide garments of skin as a covering for Adam and Eve. So this shedding of the blood of the innocent animals pointed to the shedding of the precious blood of the Lamb of God. Which is our sacrifice for the remission of our sins. That it was the Blood that covered us from the penalty of sin. So, by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.

Secondly we find . . .

2. ABEL’S FAITH, MAKING HIM RIGHTEOUS BEFORE GOD (V. 4b)