Monday, July 01, 2013

"Faith" Sermon: Hebrews 11:1-3


“Faith”

[Hebrews 11:1-3]

June 30, 2013 Second Reformed Church

            We’ve heard before that the character, Archie Bunker, on the TV show, “All in the Family,” once defined faith this way:  “Faith is something you believe that nobody in their right mind would believe.”  I hope we all understand that is wrong.

            However, have we ever heard anyone say, “I can’t explain it, I just have faith.” Or, “It can’t be understood, you just have to take it on faith.”  That is not biblical faith – that is “blind faith.”  Certainly there are difficult things in the Bible.  But the Bible is a rational document based on historical evidence and eye-witness testimonies.  We don’t talk about other historical events as those they are irrational or mythological or unknowable, but we talk the Bible and the teachings of the Bible that way – we shouldn’t.

            Last week we began considering faith as we saw the author of Hebrews turn to his readers and remind them of how they suffered after their conversion to Christianity, and did so, believing by faith that “a better possession and a more abiding one” lay beyond everything in this life.

            We saw him argue, using the most quoted verse in the Bible, “the just shall live by faith,” that justification – being declared righteous through Jesus’ Work of receiving our sins and giving us His Righteousness – can only be received through faith.

            And we used the example of the gutters and leaders on our homes or apartments to understand faith:  faith is like those gutters and leaders – just as the rain in guided to wherever we want it to go by the gutters and leaders – the rain is received by them – so we receive doctrine – the teaching of the Bible – what God has said – by faith.  Faith is the means by which we receive what God has for us.

            And the author of Hebrews reminds his readers that they need endurance – patience – because God brings to pass His Will in the right time – and that may be awhile – we may not see Jesus on earth in our lifetime – we may encounter suffering for Christ and not escape persecution in this lifetime.  But, if we have faith, and have received what God has said and promised, we can be patient.

            He continues – in this morning’s reading – first, by looking at two aspects of what faith is:

            “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

            First, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for.” 

            Faith is the assurance, the substance, the ground, the foundation.  Faith is the reason or reasons – it is the logical argument – the rational understanding.  Faith – as the receptor of the Word of God – receives God’s Word and the promises in it, with the arguments for it and the proof that it is true – and this becomes the assurance – not the wish for something to be, but the proof – the evidence – the unshakable reasoning that forms the base of it.

            “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for.”  Faith is the rational foundation for believing in the things we hope for.  What do we hope for?  World peace?  Riches?  Weight loss?  We use the word “hope” to refer to things we would like, but which may not happen.  In our text, we are referring to the things we hope for – the things we look forward to – the things that God has promised which have not yet come to pass, but will come to pass because they have been promised with air-tight reasoning behind them.

            Through faith, we are assured that Jesus is going to return, just as He left – is that not our great hope?  We believe – unshakable – by the witness of God’s Word – the argument – the reasons and proofs given – that Jesus will most assuredly return – just as He said He would – just as it is promised in the Scripture.  Faith says, “God said it – that settles it” – and if you take a look, there is historical and eye-witness testimony – including the testimony of God, Himself, which is indisputable and incontrovertible.

            Through faith, we believe that when Jesus returns, He will remove all evil and sin from the earth, restoring the earth, and bringing we who believe into glory, so we will be holy, just like Jesus, and live in His Presence forever.  Don’t you hope for that?  Don’t you look forward to that day, believing that that is what God said will happen, and God’s Word and the argument of the Scripture are proof that it will happen, just as He has promised?

            So, faith receives the Word of God, the history and promises and witnesses statements therein, and believes with absolute certainty that everything that God has promised and said will come about, will come to pass, exactly as it has been given to us and received by us in faith.

            In having faith – “the assurance of things hoped for” – we have a taste of what will be, we have  encouragement to continue on – even through persecution, as we look forward to those things we hope for.  We can stand amidst anything that occurs and not worry as we look forward in patience and with all hope.  Nothing that occurs to us can take away our sure hope, and no matter what we endure in this lifetime, everything will be far greater than we can even imagine in our hope.

            Faith is also “the conviction of things not seen.”

            Again, the author of Hebrews is not talking about something we just “feel” is true.  When he talks about faith being “the conviction,” he is saying it is the inner conviction, the confident assurance, the evidence, the proof – the conviction we have is based on the evidence, not based on our feeling that something “might” be true.

            And this solid conviction – this interior assurance based on the proof and evidence before us historically and by eye-witnesses – is of those things which are “not seen.”  What things are not seen?  Things that are invisible.  Things that happened before our existence or somewhere out of our purview.  Things that will assuredly happen in the future.  These are all “not seen,” yet, through faith, we have received convicting evidence that such things are true.

            For example, as far as I know, none of us have seen an angel or a demon – they tend to be invisible to us – though there are times when they took on visible form in the Scripture.  Still, we believe they exist based on the convincing evidence before us.

            None of us have seen Heaven – the place where God has always lived – yet, we believe it exists based on the convicting evidence which we have received.

            None of us have seen God the Father or God the Holy Spirit or God the Son – prior to or after the Incarnation, but we believe God exists because of the convicting evidence we have received.

            “Jesus said to [Thomas], ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’” (John 20:29, ESV).

            Jesus, speaking of those who would come after His Ascension said that we who believe in Him not having seen Him, but receiving the truth of Him through faith by the convicting evidence we have received, are blessed.

            Paul, writing about the future glory into which all we who believe and all the non-human creation will be received into at the time of the Restoration, wrote, “For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?” (Romans 8:24, ESV).

            Paul, again, writing about how our human bodies waste away in this life, but, in the life to come, we are received into glory and restored with incorruptible bodies, like Jesus, wrote, “as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18, ESV).

            So, faith receives the Word of God, the history and promises and witnesses statements therein, and believes with absolute conviction based on the evidence we have received that things that are spoken of which are not seen by us, either by difference of time, or because such are invisible to our eyes have happened, will happen, and do exist, exactly as they have been given to us and received by us in faith.

            The author of Hebrews gives his own example of that thing which is unseen, yet we receive by faith with abundant evidence, convicted of its truth, but first, he gives a prefatory note about the people he will be talking about for most of the rest of the chapter.

            “For by it the people of old received their commendation.”

            That is, by faith, the ancestors – the forefathers – the patriarchs and faithful women of biblical history and all those believers prior to the Incarnation – received their commendation – they were approved.  The biblical persons that the author of Hebrews will talk about in this chapter – and others – received their approval – their commendation – by faith.

            And that leaves us with four questions.  Who is commending them?  For what?  And where did they get their faith?  What was their commendation?

            As we will see as we go through chapter eleven, the ancestors were commended by God the Holy Spirit.  And they were commended for their faith in the Savior that God was sending – the Messiah.

            This makes sense:  since “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The believers in God and the Savior He would send had faith in that Savior – and hoped for the coming of the Savior – even though He was unseen.  They we assured and convicted that God would send the Messiah, because everything that God had always said and everything that was witnessed throughout the ages proved that God would keep His Word and bring this about.  And so, the Holy Spirit commended them – He blessed their faith in the coming Savior, and it was accounted to them as righteousness.  For, true faith looks to Christ, first and foremost as its object.

            So, where did their faith come from?  How is it that they had a hope grounded in history and eye-witnesses, and evidence of the promises that God gave?  Where do any of us get faith – true, biblical faith?

            It is a matter of our setting our minds on believing?  Is it a matter of our thinking we can?  Do we just decide that this is what the evidence leads up to, so, we hold on to such and such until death?

            Thankfully, God tells us where faith comes from:   For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,” (Ephesians 2:8, ESV).

            What does the word “this” refer to?

            If I said, “I planted a tulip, and this is my favorite flower.”  What would the word “this” refer to?  “Tulip.” 

So, Paul writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,” (Ephesians 2:8, ESV).  What does the word “this” refer to?  “Faith.”  “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And [faith] is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,” (Ephesians 2:8, ESV).  Faith is a gift to us.  The ability to receive God’s Word, to have hope, to believe in His Promises, to believe in what we cannot see which God has told us is or was or will be – this is all the gift of God to the believer.

So, by faith the believers prior to the Incarnation were approved.  That is, they pleased God.  By faith the believers prior to the Incarnation were found to be pleasing to God.

We’ll look more at the idea of pleasing God in a few weeks, D.V.

After this, the author of Hebrews turns to his first example, which does not look back to those believers before the Incarnation, but is addressed to the Hebrews, and we ought to receive this word ourselves today:

“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.”

            How many of you were alive at the creation of the universe?

            So, here – the first example – deals with faith being a “conviction of things not seen” – because none of us saw the creation of the universe.

            So, how do we know how the universe was created?  God has given us His Word, and He has also given us the witness of the universe which we come to understand more fully through science.  And take note:  the theologian and the scientist both understand the creation of the universe through faith, based on the evidence, because neither of them was there.

            Who created the universe?

            God, through Moses, tells us, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”

(Genesis 1:1, ESV).

            Some will not like to admit that God created the universe, but Paul explains that everyone knows that God exists and this is His work:  “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (Romans 1:19-20, ESV).

            How was the universe created?

            In the opening chapters of Genesis, we are given the repeated refrain, “And God said…and there was…”  Everything that is was created by God’s Word – God spoke everything into existence.

            Where did the building blocks of the universe come from?

            The Scripture makes it clear that before the creation of the universe, only God existed.  There was a time when there was no time, space, or material stuff – there was only God.  So, God spoke time, space, and the material stuff into existence.

            As Paul writes about Abraham and his God, “as it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations’—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist (Romans 4:17, ESV).

            And so, as our text tells us, “what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”  God did not make the universe out of anything that was in existence – God made everything in the universe out of things that did not exist – He brought them into existence by His Word – He spoke them into being.

            Although science and logic and just general awareness backs up what the Scripture says – we receive this by faith – not irrationally – there is an eye-witness and there is good proof for this in the Scripture and through science, but none of us were there, so we received what God has said in His Word and we believe it through faith, based on all the evidence supporting it, even though we were not there – it was something we did not seen.

            And we might wonder – why is belief that God created the universe out of nothing faith?  Haven’t we said that faith is only given to the believer?  Yes, but the unbeliever can come to understand and know certain things without the gift of faith, which makes it look like they have the gift of faith – such as that God exists and created the universe.  The difference is that the believer who has faith does not merely look at the evidence and see that God created the universe out of nothing – he also sees the wisdom, the goodness, and the power of this God, and he finds reason to love and worship this God.

            So we have seen:

First, faith receives the Word of God, the history and promises and witnesses statements therein, and believes with absolute certainty that everything that God has promised and said will come about, will come to pass, exactly as it has been given to us and received by us in faith.

Second, faith receives the Word of God, the history and promises and witnesses statements therein, and believes with absolute conviction based on the evidence we have received that things that are spoken of which are not seen by us, either by difference of time, or because such are invisible to our eyes have happened, will happen, and do exist, exactly as they have been given to us and received by us in faith.

Third, by faith the believers prior to the Incarnation were found to be pleasing to God.

And fourth, as a first example, we saw that we believe through faith that God created the universe out of nothing, as a conviction of something that we did not see.

Let us pray:

Almighty God, we thank You for the gift of faith.  We thank You for raising us to spiritual life and giving us the ability to receive what You have said.  We thank You that faith is not based on non-sense, but on facts, history, eye-witnesses, and good evidence.  Help us to present Your Gospel and all things in Your Word with reasons to all those who ask.  For it is in Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.

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