Good morning. As Pastor Holcomb said, my name is James Booth. I'm the youth director here and have the privilege to be able to share with you all this morning as Pastor Brian is gone. You can go and open your copy of the scriptures to Hebrews 11 and We'll look at the first seven verses this morning. We're going to be talking about faith. As I was preparing and studying I've read the word faith and said the word faith a lot. And as I was thinking about it, I was thinking how often we see the word faith, maybe not in regards to Christianity, but the word faith is often around us. I think of the signs that people have in their homes where it says faith, family, friends, or faith, family, love, Maybe a sign that says, faith makes all things possible. I'm not making fun of those signs, but they're all over the place. Or maybe we think of faith as in a way of being, believe in yourself, have some faith, just have some faith. Or maybe the phrase that we often say is take a leap of faith. Maybe I was thinking back years ago, Alicia and I went to go visit her sisters who lived in Hawaii. And there was a rock that we were all supposed to jump off of into the ocean. And so I got up there and I said, you just got to go up and jump, right? You just got to do it. And you just got to take that leap. You know, there were some that were just on the edge. They didn't know what they wanted to do. And I didn't know you were supposed to time the wave coming in. And so I, that's why they were waiting. Or maybe it's in more of a figurative sense and taking that leap of faith to try something new, to try something different. Or maybe faith is in regards to different religions. What faith are you? Or that song that was stuck in my head all week long, that stupid, catchy George Michael song, Gotta Have Faith. If you like that song, I am making fun of you. So... Faith mentioned here is completely different than most of those things. Those signs, of course, there's a lot of good ones connected to that. But faith mentioned here, mentioned here in Scripture, is different than those things. And so our hope this morning is to see that, to see what it means to live by faith, to see what faith is. So let's go ahead and read Hebrews 11, 1 through 7. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it, the people of old receive 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 way he would not see death, and 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 reward 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 come by faith. Let's see if that is better. As we've looked slowly through the book of Hebrews, we've seen the focus on the supremacy of Christ in this book. Maybe another way of saying that is that Jesus is better. And here in this section, what's often known as the Hall of Faith, we see that still. we still see that Jesus is better. And we're going to look at that maybe in a broader sense. But this section here is split into two groups. The first is a matter of what is faith? What is faith? What is the definition and the nature of faith? And then the second group, which is much larger than the first, and we're only gonna look at a portion of that second group, is lessons or examples of faith. Where men, by faith, followed the Lord. Ways that people had trusted in the character of God and lived obedient lives for him. Maybe another way of thinking of that is that they trusted in that Jesus is better, laying hold of Christ. And so our hope this morning is to do just that, to look at what is faith and look at examples of those men here in the scripture that laid hold of Christ. First thing that we see is these first three verses and we see the definition of faith As I said earlier, the word faith is often around us. It's not something that we see occasionally. Yet faith is not just positive thinking. Faith is not just a hunch. Faith is not taking just a leap. Faith is not just hoping for the best. That everything will just turn out. Faith is not a matter of feeling optimistic. thinking that somehow having faith in faith and you will be okay. Faith is not these things, yet often I would say that's how faith is mostly defined and identified, is being optimistic, of having that hunch. And so what is faith? Well, faith is a cure for our drifting hearts. Hebrews, in the verse right before our passage this morning, the author hints on that. In verse 39, he says, but we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith, preserve their souls. In previous chapters, the author had talked about apostasy, those that may be seen like Christians but are not. And the difference between those people and those that are followers of the Lord is faith. And so as we see here in this passage, we see the character of faith, that faith is neither brainless or a feeling, but rather a solid, firm belief which rests solely on God's words. And as we see here, it makes the future present and the invisible seen. See, in the first part of verse one, that's what it says, is that it says, the assurance of things hoped for. That first part of the verse is talking about future certainty that faith brings. Assurance of things hoped for. To know that it is certain. We all in this room probably have things that we hope for. Things that we wish would happen. Maybe it's a promotion or a new car, or our favorite team to win the Super Bowl or the National Championship, or to inherit or get a bunch of money. Maybe it's a good diagnosis from the doctor, or maybe for those that are younger in the room, maybe it's that one boy or girl would talk to you at school. We all have something that we wish would happen, maybe things that we wish would happen today. But whatever those may be, that's not what the author is talking about. See, the hope that he's mentioning here is not in those material, earthly things. The hope that he's mentioning here is in regards to our relationship and our standing with the Lord. That's the hope that he's talking about. Also, the hope mentioned here is more than just wishful thinking. but rather a confident expectation. An assurance. An assurance because it's not rooted in our ability and our skill and in our work. An assurance because it's rooted in the finished work of Christ. And so faith is a solid sureness, a certainty of what we hope for. This solid certainty about the future. And so what are these things in regards to our relationship and our standing of the Lord that we hope for? Well, one of those is we hope for the return of Christ, the second coming of Christ. That's something that we long for. Maybe even in the world now we long for it even more. Hebrews 9, 28 says, So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time not to deal with sin, but to save those who eagerly await for Him. One of the greatest joys of my day is when I come home, right, and I open that door, and there's just a little girl that's staring at me, just waiting, right, and just runs on over. With that same hope, the same thing is for us as we eagerly wait for the second coming of Christ. Galatians 5.5 also speaks of this as it says, Or maybe another thing that we hope for in terms of our standing with the Lord is we hope for the resurrection. That Christ has been defeated. A defeated death. Sorry, Christ has defeated death. First Peter 1.3 said, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Being born again through the resurrection of Christ, that as believers there's this new life because of our union and our identification with the resurrected Christ. says hope that we have. Or maybe we hope for glorification. First, John 3 to talks of this. The love we are God's children now and that we will be yet has yet not appeared. But we know when he appears, we shall be like him because we see him as he is. This longing and this waiting to be with the Lord. Will be fully glorified. But even as now, as we grow in our sanctification, as we grow in our understanding of who Christ is and our daily need of Him and of our sin, as we grow closer to Him, to eventually be like Him. See, a believer's faith gives us such an inner certainty that our salvation, the return of Christ, the resurrection, our glorification, and our reign with him, all become present to us. As if it were now. Right now. Not something that we hope for that might happen, but they all become present to us. William Lane says it like this, he says, faith celebrates now the reality of the future blessings, which make up the objective content of Christian hope. Faith gives to the objects of hope the force of present realities and enables the person of faith the full certainty. The full certainty. Not half, not partial, but full. See, this is where our confidence lies. That faith is the assurance of things hoped for. But faith is also the conviction of things not seen. A matter of connecting visual certainty that comes by faith. Being certain of things that we do not see. There's a lot of things that I don't understand. Specifically, maybe dealing with the invisible spiritual kingdom around us. But by faith, our eyes have been opened. Not that when we become believers, we just start seeing angels everywhere. It's not a physical, not things that we see physically, but that we now can see by faith. We see God at work in the hearts of others and in this world, still today. We may not understand these things, But we now know that they do exist. We do see the Lord at work. You know, verse 2, it says, for by faith the people of old received their commendation. They received their value. They received their worth, their identity. Not in who they were, but by faith. One story I can think of in scripture where we see this is Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace. A story that you learn when you're a little one. And you think of those three, that they had nothing but the Word of God to turn to. It wasn't like they had walked up to the furnace and were like, that's not that hot, we're good, right? Or if there had been someone before them, right, that had walked through, and they're like, oh, okay, well, they got out okay. Or maybe Nebuchadnezzar wasn't that strong with his words, and he would just let them go free. There was no visible or physical evidence that they would be delivered by not bowing the knee, that they trusted solely in the word of God. There was no physical evidence that they would not be consumed by the fire. Rather, by faith, they denied to serve these false gods. That by faith, they walked into the fiery furnace. You see that in Daniel 3.17. It says, O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of your hand, O King. Whether they came out of the furnace or not, that they solely trusted in the Lord. They solely trusted in the Lord by being obedient to Him, by faith. They had not seen this invisible world, But they definitely saw it when God delivered them from the fire. Maybe there's testimony of our lives. I love hearing people's testimonies. Often we will say, you know, my testimony is just boring. There is no boring testimony. A testimony of God's faithfulness, of how he's worked in our hearts and our lives. It might be a testimony that we've grown up in the church as a little one. hearing the word of God and have come to know the Lord, but we see the preserving of that soul from a little tiny one. Or maybe you have a drastic lifestyle change where God transforms your heart radically. Testimony to seeing who God is. I love when maybe college students go away to school and they come back And they had not known the Lord whenever they lived here, but they moved and someone shared the gospel with them, and they came to know the Lord, and just the drastic change in their lives. And it's just so encouraging to see, and you're like, who is this? Who is this sitting right in front of me? The invisible world seen. You even see it in the response of Nebuchadnezzar. The servants of the Most High God, blessed be their God. These three had taken God as His Word and had faithfully followed His commands, living their lives according to the Word of God. That they had laid hold of Christ, following the Word of God and living an obedient life for Him. It's by faith that the believer lays hold of Christ. See, God's favor is always by faith and not by works. We see that there kind of in the middle of the passage in verse six. It says, 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. See, this is not the hall of works. This is not the hall of man. This is not the hall of good deeds. This is the hall of faith. That by faith, the author continues his explanation here of what faith is by using different examples of men that have followed the Lord. that the man of the Old Testament would receive their approval, worth, and salvation by faith and not of works. I don't know if you guys are aware, but I see videos of all the time of people professing Christians, as they claim to be, that will say that the Old Testament has no value. A lot of it is because they don't understand the Old Testament. That would be my first thought to that. Let's just focus on the New Testament and maybe we'll even shrink it down even more. We'll just focus on Jesus' words. His actual words, right? The red print. But yet we miss so much when we do that. The author of Hebrews does a great job of being able to connect the old with the new. that these men of old, these men of faith, these men in the Old Testament, they were not saved by their deeds, they were not saved by their actions, they were saved by faith. And by simply getting rid of the first two-thirds of the Bible, that we miss so much of what the Lord is trying to show us. And so the author here draws these out. draws out these stories of men and how they follow the Lord, but maybe more importantly of the faithfulness of God in their lives. These examples are not about the greatness of these men, but rather the greatness and faithfulness of the Lord. They're examples of how faith is by the means by which the believer lays hold of Christ. It helps in giving a definition of faith and showing us the nature of faith. And so you look at this group of people or men that were chosen. Why these men? Well, one, they are kind of chronologically. I think it's more than that. Adam's not even mentioned, right? Does not mean that he wasn't a follower of the Lord. that I think that each one of these, and we're only gonna look at the first three and kind of these lessons of faith, that each one of these highlight a different aspect of faith. Abel and Enoch and Noah all show us different lessons of what faith is. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and it is the conviction of things not seen. But these testimonies also give us a picture of what faith is. So let's look at these three. The first is Abel, right? The lesson that we see from Abel is that faith is always Christ-centered. Faith is always Christ-centered. That faith is focused on the sacrifice by the blood of Christ. That the blood that was shed on our behalf that we would be made right before God. Faith is always Christ-centered. That's why it's drastically different than all of those other things that we talk about in regards to faith. Not just a hunch, right? It's not just positive thinking. That faith is Christ-centered. That our relationship would be restored with Him and we would live a life for Him now and spend eternity with Him in heaven. See, Abel teaches us that it's Christ-centered, that it's always been about the blood of Jesus. It's always been about the blood of Jesus that we can now approach God. The sacrifice that Abel gave. Think back on the story, right? Abel, or Cain brings grain, and Abel brings an animal, Cain not with his whole heart, Abel with, And as Abel brings this animal, we can think back on what the author had just recently talked about in 9.22, where it says, See, the blood of the animal actually didn't take away sins, but it foreshadowed the work of Christ on the cross, needing the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sins. But also I think that something that we can draw from this is that we don't approach God on our terms. We don't approach God on the feeling that we have or the things that we want. Well, God, you know, I'm just going to give you this. Or I'm just going to do this. You know, let's make it more of a 50-50. It's not like buying a car at the car dealership and you're trying to negotiate some better deal. It's not coming on your terms, that we approach God on His terms and in His way. See, as we see here with Abel, that he laid hold of Christ. That Christ is the only way to God. That faith starts and ends with Jesus. Not in whatever else, fill the blank, what that may be. That faith is always Christ-centered. And so we see that first lesson as the author's drawing that out. Christ-centered. But then with Enoch, an interesting choice. Enoch's verses are only three, right? Three verses, and yet it's mentioned in the Hall of Faith. There has to be something important to draw from this. The lesson we see from Enoch is that faith is relational. Genesis 5, 21 through 24, the little passage, four verses, sorry, not three. It says, when Enoch had lived 65 years, he followed Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him. First thing that we see that's interesting is that God took him. Enoch did not die an earthly death as there's only a few in scripture where that's the case. Just so interesting to me. I want more, right? I want to know more what happened there. That's just my brain and how I think. But I think the more important thing and why the author is drawing this out is that Enoch walked with God. Enoch had fellowship with God. See, in a world where success is determined and valued by bank accounts and networking and bench presses and material possessions and beauty, this should not be the focus of the Christian heart. This is not our worth. That is not how success, per se, is to be measured. Our worth is found solely in walking with the Lord. that our focus would be of whose we are in Christ, not of those things of this world. There's a song that comes to my mind by the Gettys. It says, my worth is not in what I own. And then another line, it says, my worth is not in skill or work, not in the strength of flesh and bone, but in costly wounds of love at the cross. that we would live lives trusting, knowing, and obeying the Lord, following the Word of God by faith. One thing that's been on my heart lately is that the fruit of the Spirit is not optional. That by faith, through God's grace, in the finished work of Christ, we can now live for Him. The fruit of the Spirit is not that I pick the ones that I want, I'm gonna pick joy or love or patience. But we should see those things in our lives. That the Christian life is more than knowing God or knowing certain doctrines. That faith is a means how we relate to God. That others would know about Christ by the lives that we live, but also by the word of Jesus that's constantly on our lips. Not just by the way that we live our lives, but that we are actively professing Christ. That no one should be surprised that we're a Christian. That it's about this personal daily relationship with God. Daily walking with him. daily drawing near to God, walking with the Lord intimately. As a father, I think this is one of the greatest things that we can give to our kids, is by living an obedient life for the Lord. That they would see that in our lives, that they would want and long for that exact same thing. Next lesson we have, It's Noah. The lesson that we see from Noah is that faith leads to obedience. Even when it's difficult, even when it doesn't make sense. You think of Noah, right? To build a boat in the middle of nowhere for a coming flood. Dry ground, right? Dry ground. Build this boat, but not any boat, right? Not any boat, but a really big boat, right? A 500-foot boat. I would say none of us in here have ever built a 500-foot boat, probably will never build a 500-foot boat. You would have to dedicate probably your whole life, right? If it's just you and your sons, you're gonna dedicate your whole life. to that. Now think, take away all modern equipment, all tractors and trailers and chainsaws and all of that. By hand, a 500-foot boat is great expense, great resources, and relationships, time and relationships. There are probably people that Noah associated himself with that he did not after the mockery, right? You're building a boat? You're like, yeah, it's going to rain. And water's going to come up out of the ground. The earth is going to flood. And they're like, just laughing at him. Building a boat for water that's going to come. For the flood that's coming. See, true faith always leads to obedience. Even when we don't have the answers that Noah trusted in the Word of God and he obeyed. Matter of looking outside ourselves and following the Lord. So when we look at this passage, what can we draw from this? One is I think it does draw the nature and the definition of what faith is. Assurance of things hoped for and a conviction of things not seen. And we see that faith is Christ-centered and that faith is relational and faith is being obedient. But also it should encourage us to lay hold of Christ. Of trusting God when it's hard and when it's difficult. When things don't make sense. But also trusting in God when things are easy and things are going really well. That we should live a life for Him and follow Him even when it costs us drastically. to be daily reminded that Jesus is better. That our lives were proclaimed that in the way that we live, in the words on our lips. And so I close with Psalm 34.3. It says, O magnify the Lord within me, and let us exalt his name together. Let's go to Lord in prayer. Tell me, Father, Lord, I would pray that you would work in our hearts, that you would work in my heart, that you would allow me to constantly draw near to you, to live a life for you, that our faith is Christ-centered, it's relational, and it's obedient. Lord, I pray that you would draw us closer to you, that you would allow us to magnify your name, to proclaim of who you are, that we would live lives that are loving and are peaceful and are patient and are gentle and are kind, but that we would also proclaim of your name, proclaim of who Jesus is, to proclaim of his finished work, to proclaim of his life and his death and his resurrection that others would be able to see and experience your love. That it's by faith, not in who we are, but in who you are. In your name I pray, amen.