GOT FAITH?

“GOT FAITH?”
Hebrews part 14 (11:1-7)
Rev. Grady Davidson / 011512
This morning we arrive at the “faith chapter” of the Bible, Hebrews the Eleventh. I anticipate taking four weeks to work our way through this amazing passage. With your Bibles open before you, I invite you to take just a second to skim through chapter 11 with me. Even if this chapter is brand new to you, your eyes will pick up on the repetition of two words…. “by faith.” (Review in the first dozen verses.) In this chapter the writer to the Hebrews is going to teach us what faith is, and what faith looks like in the real world, by way of Old Testament example after example after example. So I believe it will be worthwhile for us to take some time together reviewing these figures from the Old Testament, and letting their biographies instruct us about the life of faith. That’s the plan for the next couple of weeks, as I understand it at this point.
I came across a story this week that I believe will provide a good place to start. The story was about a very long and rarely-used trail across Nevada’s Amargosa Desert—a desert wasteland fit for neither man nor beast. Along the trail through the desert, somebody dug a well long ago, offering the only hope of water for many miles. The well was fitted with an old-fashioned pump handle. The following letter was found in a baking-powder can, wired to the handle of the pump.
This pump is all right as of June 1932. I put a new washer into it and it ought to last five years. But {if} the washer dries out, the pump has got to be primed. Under the white rock I buried a bottle of water, out of the sun and cork end up. There’s enough water in it to prime the pump, but not if you drink some first! Pour about one-fourth and let her soak to wet the leather. Then pour in the rest medium fast and pump like crazy. You’ll git water. The well has never run dry. Have faith. When you git watered up, fill the bottle and put it back like you found it for the next feller. (Signed) Desert Pete. PS Don’t go drinking the water first. Prime the pump with it and you’ll git all you can hold.
If you can “get” this story, then you’ll get this chapter. The situation is critical: you have one bottle of water, and an old pipe sticking out of the ground with a pump on the end; and a promise from Desert Pete that if you’ll take that precious water and pour it down the pipe, that you’ll get all the water you need and more! Desert Pete says that if you drink out of the bottle first, you won’t have enough left to prime the pump! Your thirst, and your animal instinct says, “Don’t trust the letter; just drink the water.” But hope says, “Maybe Desert Pete knows what he’s talking about, and if I just pour this quart down the pipe, then the washer will swell and re-seal the pump, and the pump will be primed again, and I’ll get plenty of water to complete my journey.”
Verse 1 says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Faith is about laying hold of God’s promises, specifically his promise that our Lord Jesus will return to Earth as glorified King and Judge of all the world; at that time King Jesus will vindicate His own people to the astonished eyes of the unbelieving world, and He will validate our faith! He will show us that our faith in Him was right all along, even when it looked like we were pouring our lives down a rusty pipe sticking out of the sand!
Two things in this description of faith.
(1) Faith is “being sure” of our hope in Christ, for no other reason than that God has spoken, and we believe His Word… even when your faith in God’s Word leads to criticism that you’re really too narrow-minded and old fashioned; even when you’re being chided that there are aspects of your faith that are politically incorrect, even when you’re being scoffed at by the world, even if and when you’re being arrested for your faith, and your property is being confiscated… you are “sure” of what you hope for, because your hopes are delineated and spelled out in God’s Word. Faith is an attitude which says, “God has spoken, that is enough for me.”
(2) Faith is being “certain of what we do not see.” (a) There are some things—many things!-- God’s Word tells us about which we do not see, because God’s Word describes spiritual realities which go far beyond the scope of our 5 senses – angels, demons, heaven, hell. By faith we declare that those realities are just as true and verifiable and real as the white oak of the pew in which you sit. (b) There are other things which God’s Word tells us about which we do not see, because they’re events which lay in the future. Faith enables us be certain about events which God’s Word tells us are yet to come. In our passage, Noah was warned that a devastating flood was coming, and although there had never been any such catastrophe in human experience up to that point, Noah believed God’s Word, and because of his faith – he built a boat!
The second half of verse 1 tells us that faith acknowledges that there are many things which we cannot see or experience by our five human senses; however, our human limitations in that regard don’t make those realities any less real!
(3) As we’re building our definition of faith, notice also verse 6: “And 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.” So thirdly we note that the life of faith is the only life which pleases God. God wants you to come to Him by faith, although you cannot see Him here and now. He wants you to seek Him with your mind made up, and your heart set upon the fact, that you’re seeking One who wants to be discovered! He “rewards those who earnestly seek him.” The reward is that you do in fact find the One you seek!
Verse 6 reminds me of playing hide-and-seek with Hannah when she was around 3 years old. We’d go in the back yard which was full of sweet gum trees – perfect for hide and seek. I’d cover my eyes and count to ten… but when I got to ten, SHE would leap out from behind a tree and say “Ready or not, here I come!”
Faith is so different from the cynicism and skepticism that is so prevalent today. Faith says, “The invisible God wants to be found, and He is going to reveal Himself to all who truly seek Him!”
So what IS faith? It’s being sure of what we hope for in Christ because we have the certainty and authority of God’s Word to stand on. It’s being certain of what we cannot see, but trusting that God’s Word is a reliable guide regarding that invisible world and those future events which we can’t see. And faith is the one and only kind of life that pleases God.
And so in verse 3 we see that faith is the only mechanism that allows us to makes us the existence of the physical universe. The phrase in theology is that God created the universe “ex nihilo,” out of nothing! We look at the amazing photographs taken by the Hubble telescope; and we study the tiniest of subatomic particles: by faith we recognize the unseen hand of our Creator behind the wonders of the universe. Please don’t think that somehow faith is opposed to reason; it’s not. It is human reason at work which leads to the only logical conclusion that in the origins of the universe is God making something out of nothing.
And so we see in verse 4 that faith leads us to worship, as the example of Abel gives us. What was the relationship between Cain & Abel? (Brothers; Cain murdered Abel because of Abel’s worship of God. Abel was the first Christian martyr!)
In verse 5 we see the example of Enoch. Genesis 5:21-24 tells us that Enoch walked with God, and then Enoch was no more, because God took him away. Enoch was a Godly, faith-filled man, and God took him straight to heaven.
The author is showing already that the outcome of faith will look differently in different lives. Abel’s faith got Abel martyred; faith got Enoch home without even going through physical death. Although the outcomes look different, it’s one and the same faith.
Here’s the issue for you and for me at this point in our study of the faith chapter. And I have to phrase it in terms of a two-part question, so listen carefully to both parts.
Q1: If today you believed with absolute certainty and conviction that God exists, and that He loves you unconditionally, and that He is preparing a place for you in eternity which is so glorious that just one square foot of that place is far more valuable than all the riches of this world…if you believed that, how would you live today?
A1: Your reply: I do believe that! I believe in God! I believe He loves me and has shown his love through Jesus Christ. I believe in God’s coming Kingdom.
Q2: Then how would your life be different today if you didn’t believe? We’re already seeing that faith is an active life. Faith is an unflinching, unquestioning, active obedience to God’s Word. By faith boats get built (v. 7) and people worship God even upon pain of death (v. 4). Would your life be any different if you didn’t believe in God? Your answer to that question reveals where, and to what extent, faith is at work in your life.
If you give 10% or more of your income to God’s work in the local church because God commands it, and because you believe that in so doing you really are laying up treasures for yourself in heaven…. That’s faith!
If as a husband you choose to love your wife as Christ loves the church, even when she’s being hormonal and a bit squirrely, that’s faith. If as a wife you gently honor your husband, even though he can be such a jerk, that’s faith.
For those in the dating scene, if you’re seeking unflinching obedience to Christ in every aspect of your dating relationships, even if it means losing the person for the sake of honoring the Lord, that’s faith.
If you’re physically sick, and you do what James 5 says—you pick up the phone and call the elders to pray over you and anoint you with oil in the name of the Lord – that’s faith. (BTW, that’s very different from just saying, “please put me on the prayer list.”)
If you read Hebrews 10:25, which says, “let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing,” and having read that verse you take your day timer and you fill in those slots with the opportunities that your church provides for meeting together; and then you build the rest of your weekly schedule around those priorities – that’s faith.
In each of these examples, God’s Word calls us to step beyond the known and the comfortable and the familiar – in fact to step out into places in which the immediate outcomes are far from certain. However, the ultimate outcome of your relationship with Christ and your glorious, unimaginably wonderful eternity with him is certain.
I have a challenge for you. This week buy a bottle of water. Don’t drink it. Don’t even open it. Set it on your dining table as a reminder that we’re people who trust the message from the One who has been through the desert before us!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barnes, Albert. Barnes on the New Testament: Hebrews. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1966. Print.
Bruce, F. F. The Epistle to the Hebrews: the English Text with Introd., Exposition, and Notes. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1978. Print.
Calvin, John. Calvin's Commentaries. Trans. John Owen. Vol. XXII. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989. Print.
Guthrie, George H. Hebrews: the NIV Application Commentary ; from Biblical Text ... to Contemporary Life. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999. Print.
Hughes, Philip Edgcumbe. A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. Grand Rapids (Mich.): W.B. Eerdmans, 1990. Print.
Lane, William L. Hebrews: a Call to Commitment. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1988. Print.
Miller, Keith, and Bruce Larson. The Edge of Adventure. Tarrytown, NY: F.H. Revell, 1991. Print.
O'Brien, Peter Thomas. The Letter to the Hebrews. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2010. Print.
Wiersbe, Warren W. Be Confident : Live by Faith, Not Be Sight : NT Commentary, Hebrews. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2009. Print.