The Foundation of Faith

as he brings us the word. Kevin,
would you come? I greet you in the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ. I need to do some adjustments
up here first. Even though I didn’t come here
knowing that I was going to preach before I packed I would know that the saints
back in Oklahoma would have me greet you in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ this morning. It’s wonderful to be here. Great
to share this pulpit with Ron. Thank you for having me here.
Whenever I come to the pulpit, whether it’s my own pulpit or
someone else’s, I’m reminded of Samuel Johnson’s words where
he said something to the effect that there is a wonderful focusing
of the mind that comes with the prospect of being hanged. And
I think there’s a sense of that whenever I step into the pulpit.
There’s just a little bit of that anxiety that comes from
the knowledge that you’re going to open the Word of God, which
is the most powerful force in the universe. But it’s great
to be here with you this morning. I have a pastor friend who’s
a missionary pastor, actually. who often comes back to the States,
and he fills the pulpit for a number of different churches over here.
And whenever he’s in the pulpit, he tells those churches, and
I’ve heard him say this before, he says, every preacher needs
a break. If he’s a good preacher, he needs
a break. And if he’s a bad preacher, you need a break. And we know
what kind of a preacher you have here, though. You have a great
preacher. One who loves the Word of God, one who is passionate
about its truth and the wellness of the church. Not too long ago
in my own church, also called Providence, I spent some time
studying Hebrews chapter 11 in greater depth. Such a rich study. And it’s a study in the New Testament
of Old Testament faith. Old Testament saints. And as
you may already know, Hebrews 11 is the wonderful faith chapter. And in it, we see the foundation
of faith, and we see it as a faith in action. It’s a faith that’s
not just intellectual, it’s not just in the heart, but it’s a
faith that moves out and advances forward with action. And so we see this in the lives
of God’s people. All of Hebrews 11 is really an
expanded teaching of what the last two verses of Hebrews 10
say. If you would look at the last
two verses of Hebrews 10 verses 38 and 39, I’m reading from the
ESB Bible. But my righteous one shall live
by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul
has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink
back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve
their souls. So the concept of having faith
and preserving our souls is connected here to being of those who don’t
shrink back. Now, what does that mean? What
does it mean to shrink back? Well, in this context, shrinking
back means not acting according to faith when that way has been
clearly revealed by God. He’s revealed the way, obviously,
so you must act on it. And so you’ll recall from your
study of Romans, that the last part of Romans 14, 23 says, whatever
does not proceed from faith is sin. And so shrinking back is
some species of unbelief. It is the sin of not acting according
to faith. And so Hebrews 11 answers the
question, what does faith look like when it doesn’t shrink back,
but it trusts in God with action? One faithful saint put it like
this. Faith is to believe what we do
not see, and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe. Isn’t that beautiful? You may
have heard the old saying that a picture’s worth a thousand
words. There’s something about a picture that just teaches so
much more than a paragraph. Well, this chapter is like that.
This chapter, though it’s written out in very simple prose, It’s
a picture. It’s picture after picture. Not
giving us so much of a definition of faith, but giving us flesh
and blood pictures of what faith looks like. Now to begin with,
you need to understand that from the author’s perspective, salvation
has always been by faith alone. From the earliest chapters in
Genesis. This is a key point that the author of Hebrews has
to make because his readers, the Hebrew Christians, might
have thought, well, we always did it by work before. And he’s
saying, no, no. Salvation, justification has
never been by effort, never been by work. It’s always been by
grace through the means of faith. And so he’s saying, this is not
something new. This is not just a New Testament
truth. This is a theological truth that
started in the beginning God has always justified sinners
by grace through faith. Every Old Testament believer
understood that reality in principle. And by giving us here a roll
call of redeemed sinners who trusted what God said by faith
alone, we now have a faithful pattern that we can follow. So
this chapter outlines the great cloud of Old Testament witnesses
who are referred to in Hebrews 12.1. These are those witnesses.
They are witnesses in the sense of illustrations. They’re pictures. They are examples to us. They
are examples that we can follow as we live for Christ in this
same fallen world. This morning, we’re going to
look at the first seven verses, and I’m calling this message
the foundation of faith. The foundation is established
first in verses one through three. That’s really the introduction.
And then verses four through seven present the lives of Abel
and Enoch, and Noah as illustrations of this faith. So to get us started,
let me go ahead and read the first seven verses of Hebrews
11. And again, I’ll be quoting from the ESV. And if you’re Abel,
in honor of God and his word, would you stand with me for the
reading of these verses, please? Now faith is the assurance of
things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, for by it
the people of old received their commendation. 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. By faith, Abel
offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through
which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting
his gifts, and through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. By faith, Enoch was taken up
so that he should not see death, and he was not found because
God had taken him. Now before he was taken, he was
commended as having pleased God. and without faith it is impossible
to please Him. For whoever would draw near to
God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who
seek Him. By faith, Noah, being warned
by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear, constructed
an ark for the saving of his household. By this, he condemned
the world. and became an heir of the righteousness
that comes by faith. Would you pray with me? Father,
I do thank you for your written word, the Bible, on this first
Sunday of a brand new year. I ask that you would please use
these verses to move our faith in this body into obedient action
where we live, where we work, in public as well as in private.
May each of us honor Christ as Lord not only through our words,
but also through our actions. And we ask this for Jesus’ sake.
Amen. Please be seated. While we don’t know who wrote
the book of Hebrews, that is unknown to us, we do know from
what this anonymous author wrote some things about the audience
to whom it was written. We know a few things. For example,
we know that they were largely Hebrew Christians. So these are
believers. We’re referring to them as Hebrews,
but understand they’re Jewish Christians. They have heard the
gospel. They have at least made a profession
of faith. They are most likely living in
Israel, and they are living in Israel shortly before the destruction
of Jerusalem, which would have been 70 AD, AD 70. So the book was written sometime
around AD 67 to 69, somewhere right before the destruction
of Jerusalem. So you can imagine persecution is heavy already,
not only from Rome, who’s persecuting Israel anyway, but also from
the other Jews, the Orthodox Jews, who are persecuting these
Hebrews because they’re not practicing Judaism. So times are very hard
for them. These Hebrew believers are struggling
from persecution. Some of them are beginning to
weaken in their faith. But you need to understand, I
think this is critical for interpretation. There are two groups of Hebrews
in view. Two groups in view from the author’s
perspective, and he’s writing to both of these groups. In one
group are the true believers who genuinely came to faith.
They were truly regenerate. They came to Christ as Hebrews.
They are standing firm, but they do have difficulty, and they
do have struggles. That’s the norm. But in the other
group are Hebrews who made a profession of faith. They heard the same
gospel message. They even made some external
changes for the sake of Christ, but they never truly believed
unto salvation. Their hearts were never truly
changed. In other words, to use the author’s words, they stopped
short of salvation. They, according to chapter six,
had tasted of the heavenly gift, and yet they were never saved.
Now, there were some in both of these groups who were wondering
if they should just go back to the cut and dried familiarity
of Judaism. That’s where it was easy. At
least we didn’t have persecution from our kinsmen. Let’s just
go back to the synagogue, some of them were saying. And so the
author of Hebrews is rallying the forces to say, don’t do that.
Don’t do that. This is the way. This is the
only way home. Yes, the way is rough. The way
is bumpy. There are struggles. There are
obstacles. But this is the only way to God. This is the way through
Christ. And he says, don’t go back to
an apostate form of Judaism. That’s not the Judaism that God
gave anyway. This is not what Moses gave.
Salvation has always come by grace through faith. And so the
author of Hebrews is making the case, he’s showing them that
salvation by faith alone is nothing new. It’s throughout the Old
Testament. Justification has always been
built on the foundation of faith in Christ alone. Scripture makes
it so clear that justification has always come by faith alone,
apart from the addition of any human works. Now here’s the struggle,
right? We get into trouble, there’s
controversy right at this point. Because once you distinguish
faith from works, you get into arguments with people because
they don’t understand. Yes, works are part of it, but
not part of salvation. They don’t have anything to do
with how you come to being justified. And so the author wants to make
the correct point, as James does, that faith without works is dead,
but it’s not the way you get faith. It’s not the way you get
salvation through works. It’s only faith. that justifies
us. And so scripture makes very clear
that true, justifying faith always produces works. It always results in works that
glorify God. So faith and effort go hand in
hand. Once you have true regeneration,
faith and effort, faith and work go hand in hand. They move together. And so in Hebrews 11, the author
is showing us here a faith And that works. It shows us genuine
faith in action. The author is demonstrating that
Jesus is superior to everything Judaism offered. Remember chapter
1? He’s superior to the angels. He’s superior to Moses. He’s
superior to the priesthood. Jesus is superior to the ceremonial
laws and customs of Judaism. He is demonstrating this. And
Jesus is the fulfillment of all of the promises in the Old Testament. Now the first three verses introduce
the whole chapter, and they give us some of the general and specific
excellencies of faith’s foundation. Now both the ESV and the NAS
Bible have the same reading in verse one, which is helpful.
Verse one says, now faith is the assurance of things hoped
for, the conviction of things not seen. I want to point out
four things in this introduction. First, I want you to see the
proof of faith’s excellence. The proof. Faith is the assurance
of things hoped for. That word assurance has several
nuances that I want to draw out. The word translated assurance
here was originally a legal term. It’s used in the legal world.
The authorized version, the King James, has the word substance. Substance. I think that’s a great
word. It has weight. See, this is a weighty word,
a weighty term. There is a substance. The same
word was used for documents that proved one’s ownership of possessions.
We typically use the word title or deed to describe the same
kind of documents today. And so the author is telling
them here that genuine faith actually possesses what God has
promised, even before they have actually received them. Do you
see that? He’s saying you actually possess
it. It’s like an inheritance that
you haven’t yet fully received. It is going to be yours in time. But you don’t actually have it
in your hand. It’s not in your account. It’s
not in your pocket. But it’s yours. It’s yours. And time is the only thing that
separates it. So he’s saying the believer through
faith, genuine faith, really actually possesses now the things
that God has promised and you rejoice in that by what we call
future grace. There is a future grace that
has a reality now. It bears on the present moment
now. Now genuine faith owns what God
has promised as much as the holder of a title or a deed possesses
or owns what that piece of paper represents. It is a substantive
faith. Now, this is what it means to
believe what God says before we’ve seen that substance fulfilled. You know, in our day, the words
believe and belief are big in the world of advertising, big
in marketing. I saw several banners, little
wood cutouts that just have the single word believe. When I’m
going around Christmas shopping, you see that everywhere. Believe.
Believe what? You know, there’s no object.
But in the Bible, the words believe and belief always have an object. There’s an object for our belief. Generic belief doesn’t mean anything. Atheists believe. Their beliefs
about God are wrong, but they have beliefs. So belief is just
general until it has an object. Biblical faith is not an abstract
belief in anything or everything. The verb believe always has an
object. We are to believe in Christ. We believe what God says. We
believe his promises. We believe what scripture says. This distinguishes our belief
from that generic, abstract belief of the world. So belief and faith
have always an object in the Bible. And then notice that word
conviction, which is also part of the proof. Conviction in verse
one has this idea of proof behind it. The older translations used
the word evidence, the evidence of things not seen. The proof
in view here is the word of God, the Bible. You’re holding the
Bible. This is the proof itself. The
evidence of what we believe is scripture. Scripture is its own
evidence. And as noted earlier, scripture
is a substantial proof for us as believers. God said it, that
settles it. What further witnesses do we
need? If you don’t believe the Bible, you don’t know God. If
you don’t believe the Bible, you don’t have salvation. And
so this is the proof of faith’s excellence that we find in scripture.
Second, and moving quickly, we have the persuasion of faith’s
excellence. Notice again. Faith is the assurance
of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Again, noticing
these words assurance and conviction, we have a persuasion here. Faith
is what gives us assurance in the proof contained in Scripture. In other words, the Bible passes
all of the tests of reliability. The Bible has always passed whatever
tests of reliability that have been put to it over the centuries.
We are therefore persuaded by what it teaches regardless of
what the world says. To the contrary, this persuasion
is about the convincing and convicting power of scripture. As I said
at the beginning, the word of God really is the most powerful
force in all of creation. It was through the word that
God created everything out of nothing. Now, Jesus Christ is
the Word Incarnate. He is the Word Incarnate, and
it was through the Word Incarnate who spoke everything into existence,
that everything that we have now came into being. I want to
say more about that creative power in just a moment when I
get to verse 3. But first, I want you to notice
something else briefly about this introduction. So, from the
proof of faith section, of faith’s excellence, I want you to notice
third, we have the praise of faith’s excellence. For by it,
that is by faith, the people have all received their commendation.
That word commendation is very important. Commendation here
refers to praise, and he’s saying their praise, these saints who
acted in faith, their praise comes not from the world, but
it comes from God Himself. God is the one who is approving
of their life. God is the one who is giving
praise to their life. And the world, this is a shocker
to some people, the world is not going to applaud your faith.
Now some of you are well aware of that. The world is not going
to give you applause for your stand for the gospel. The world
is not going to say, we love your doctrine. I love your perspective
on how society ought to be run. They’re not. The world may well
revile us, and it does. But listen, true faith is praised
by God. We have His commendation. Because
God is praising not something that we do. Listen, it is His
work that He praises in us. It’s His work that He’s doing
that is praiseworthy. It’s not the work of the flesh.
When you and I believe God’s word, it changes our lives. We’re
talking about a transformation that occurs in the hearts of
those who are truly redeemed. It’s not usually a sudden transformation,
but it’s a lifelong, daily, incremental transformation. We are moving
more into Christ’s likeness as we are more and more conformed
to his likeness. Jesus said in John 6, 29, This
is the work of God that you believe in Him whom He has sent. See,
it’s His work. This is God’s work. And so believing
in Jesus Christ in a saving way is the work of God in our hearts.
Only God can do this work. And this is the praise of faith’s
excellence. Now, from the proof of faith’s
excellence to the persuasion of faith’s excellence, to the
praise of faith’s excellence forth, I want you to notice we
see in verse 3 the perception of faith’s excellence. Perception. Verse 3 says, 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. It is faith that perceives how
God truly created the world. Now, you know the population
around us doesn’t understand or believe that God created the
world at all. If you visit most natural history
museums, you’re going to see an evolutionary model overtly
displayed. If you visit most of the sites
in the Front Range that are explaining the rock formations, you are
going to see most likely an evolutionary model being taught and displayed. I mean, that’s just our culture.
Our culture in America is dominated by the tenets of practical atheism. What I mean by that is people
may not identify themselves as atheists, but there is a practical
operating system that is atheistic at the root. It’s the operating
system. And we see this atheistic thinking in everything from evolution
to abortion to euthanasia to the whole gamut of gender confusion
and sexual perversion in our day. But as long as the scientific
world rejects what the Bible says, they will not know the
origins of the earth. They won’t. Once you’ve rejected
the Bible as truth, you don’t have anywhere to go but some
form of error, even academic error. But as long as they reject
what the Bible says, they will continue to miscalibrate their
expensive tools and instruments for carbon dating to accommodate
their fictional theories of how time and everything they don’t
understand. And we pray that their eyes will
be opened, because they’re not blind. They’re the mission field. These are the people we want
to reach. We want them to know the truth. And faith is not a
blind leap into the dark. Faith is not naive. It’s not
gullible. Faith is believing what God has
revealed to be true, and we have this assurance. Guaranteed.