This morning, if you will, this is going to get crazy, turn in your Bibles to Hebrews 11, but also turn to Romans 4 and Galatians 2. I know it's a lot. I know that's unusual, but hang in there with me. We're going to start in Hebrews 11, but it would be a good idea to go ahead and have a bookmark in the other two places. We are continuing our series this morning on the five solas, a tour of the Reformation. and this morning we're going to be discussing Sola Fide, Faith Alone. Part of the reason for the different verses is I could choose one of two things. You could hear in depth God's truth from one verse or you could hear a little less. Admittedly we won't do justice to any of the passages but it'll give you a better biblical picture of what God is consistently telling us and hopefully either individually or as a family you can review these three passages and more later. So this morning we will begin in Hebrews 11. We'll read the first two verses and then verse six. This is the word of God. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old receive their commendation. And now verse six. 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. Let's pray together. Father, we do give you praise for your word. Already, again, we could close this time and give praise for the things you have told us. This is your word, God-breathed, the ultimate authority as we heard last week. Lord, today I pray that by it you would change our hearts, mold us to be more and more like Christ. Lord, I pray that you would direct our eyes to see you, and I pray that we would be confident in the things that we know in our minds and we know in our hearts because of the great things you've done on our behalf. But mostly, Lord, and more importantly, I pray that you would be glorified as we proclaim your truth. Lord, I pray that you would get all the glory, and I pray this in your name. Amen. All right, help me finish the phrase. I gotta see it, too. Believe it. Good. We often hear the expression, seeing is believing. And other than being a frequent title of UFO documentaries, it's typically a response to unique or amazing events, things you might see on YouTube or on ESPN or even Eyewitness. Another way to say the same concept is to use the phrase, perception is reality. Same concept used differently. In that place, what it often means is it doesn't matter what you, the speaker, or you, the actor, meant to do. What matters is how somebody else saw it, or how somebody else felt it, or how somebody else heard it. And in an age of hypersensitivity and microaggressions, it is something I think we're all accustomed to. But I want to suggest to you this morning that reality is quite the opposite. That seeing is not believing. And here's how we're going to do this. Consider the following. We're watching TV tonight after the evening service, and we see a magician on TV. The magician saws a lady in half. And then, even more remarkably, because any of us could do that, he puts her back together. He puts her back together. How does he do it? Or better yet, here's the question. Do you believe it? Don't answer, just think in your head. Next question. Many of you may have watched the Georgia football game yesterday. Many people have said that Georgia has a national championship caliber team this year. True or false? You don't have to say it, just think it. Another one, to bring it more to the Bible, Jesus has an abundance of miracles that he did in this world. Just for instance, he walked on water. When he walked on water, was that a true historical account? Or was it a myth that his followers created in an effort to build up their credibility? Which do you believe? What you are coming to conclusions in your head with these things, that these things are not rooted, your beliefs on all the things mentioned in Moore are not rooted in the things you've seen. They're rooted in what you believe. If you believe that the magic is not real, it doesn't matter what the guy on TV does. You're not going to believe him. If you're not a fan of Georgia, you're gonna look at their cupcake schedule. If you are, if you're a big fan of Georgia, you're gonna talk about their great defense and how Fromm has stepped in at the last minute. If you believe that Jesus is who he said he was, you'll believe his miracles and the things that he said. C.S. Lewis says, experience by itself proves nothing. Experience may prove this, or it may prove that, or it may prove nothing. All it shows is the preconceptions that we have brought into it. In other words, what we believe shapes the world that we see. And in many ways, this is an apt description of faith, which is where we turned to this morning, talking about justification by faith. The Bible has done us a great privilege by defining faith for us here. It says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Going deeper in the original text, the word assurance there actually means the real essence, or better said, the substance of something. Faith then, to use this definition, is the substance of things hoped for. The things that are abstract, that are distant, that are hopes or dreams of ours, become realized by faith. Or said another way, things which have no existence yet, whether they're things that we hope for in the future or things that we have heard about in the past, become real by faith. The future can be present in the faith, the past can become present in the faith. And people in the Old Testament, as we've seen in this chapter would show us if we read more of it, were convinced of this beyond a shadow of a doubt. So much so that they lived and acted as if this state of affairs or their hopes were already present. They believe that God is so faithful to his promises that what he has told them is already a done deal. Faith is merely the title deed to claim the promises of God. Again, it tells us the second part of the definition, the conviction of things not seen. In many ways, it's repeating the same concept, but in a more general way. Faith literally means to see the things that are unseen, to see that which is invisible. But before we get ahead of ourselves here, we've got to put some guardrails on this. We can't just hope to see anything and it comes true. The Bible is not giving us a genie in a bottle, but it very clearly here in verse 6 gives us some guidelines to how this faith is to be used. And very simply, the only effective faith is faith that pleases God. And that faith has two conditions to it. See in verse 6, towards the end, anyone who would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. So the first, we must believe he exists. In other words, we must believe God is simply who he says he is. He tells us all through his word that he is king, that he is Lord, he is creator, he's covenantal, he's loving, he's faithful, he's powerful, he's all of these and more. The word there exists, so it says believe he exists, is really just the verb to be. So literally translated, it would be, believe God is. And that might seem simple, that might seem kind of almost harder to get your head around, but it's very consistent with what God has told us from the beginning. In Exodus 3, God tells us his name. His name is, I am. He says, call me I am, because I am who I am. And so we believe, he who calls himself I am, is. God is. He is. You are. I am. That is what we believe. And through the conviction of faith, he who is not seen by our eyes can be seen. He who is. And this pleases the Lord. The second condition of faith is that he rewards those who seek him. Another way to say this is that he will do the things he said he would do. Very simple. God has promised blessings to his people, and he will do those things. And he has promised curses to those who are not, and he will do those things. Essentially though, we have those things already through faith. To pair these two verses together, believing that God will do the things he says he will do, enables us to have assurance of the things hoped for. And to use the other part, believing that God is who he says he is, helps us to have the conviction of things unseen. It is through these two truths this morning that we're going to have a lens to see really all else. Paul affirms this idea of faith being eyesight in 2 Corinthians 5, 7. A very simple verse, you can memorize it right now. He says, For we walk by faith, not by sight. In other words, to use what we've just established, we walk by trusting that God is who He says He is, and trusting that He will do the things He said He would do. And through that, our lives are shaped. Through that, we see the entire world. We see relationships. We see circumstances. We see our jobs, our family, our neighbors. We see everything. And so I hope it's become plain that faith is an eyesight. It is a form of seeing. Simon Kistemacher says it is the organ of the soul which enables people to see that which is otherwise invisible. Let's define it negatively for a minute. What is faith not? Faith is not blind optimism. There's no such thing as taking a blind leap of faith. If you've established that it's eyesight, then you're seeing what you're jumping into. Faith is eyesight. Even if you don't have faith in the Lord and something else, you see what you're jumping into. Faith is not manufactured, I hope so, feelings. I hope God really is what he says. I hope the Bible's true. Faith is not intellectual assent and faith is not belief in spite of evidence. So many times we think, you know what, it doesn't matter what those people prove about the Bible or the scientists say about the world. I'm just going to believe regardless of the evidence. That's not faith. Believing 2 plus 6 is 19 is not faith. It's silly and it's nonsense. We cannot say that we are similar if we believe Bible stories. Bible stories that may be characterized as silly or fantastical or mythical. That's not what we believe. We believe with eyes of faith. We believe that we see the truth of God's Word. Faith is a very real spiritual outlook on the Bible and in the world in which we dwell. It is not blind, but very much beholding the glory of our God. We, in fact, see the world as it really is through the eyes of faith. We are not subjected to feelings. We are not subjected to the changing circumstances, the spirit of the age, or the flow of time. So, having established faith, let's see how that plays out in everyday life. Turn over to Romans 4, if you will. Even though we're turning around, I tried to keep us in the same neighborhood, so it's only a few pages over. Romans 4. Here we're going to read Verse 13, and then jump down to verse 18 and read to the end of the chapter through verse 25. And again, these are awesome sections of scripture. Strongly encourage you to go back on your own or with a family and look over this. We just don't have time today. So verse 13 and then 18 through 25. For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be the heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. In hope, this is verse 18, in hope he, Abraham, believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations. As he had been told, so shall your offspring be. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead, since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why faith was counted to him as righteousness. But the words that was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. I hope it's become immediately plain to you how Abraham or what Abraham is seeing, how he's seeing. He is seeing, just to use one of the phrases, he is seeing the promises of God and they are already real to him. He says he did not weaken in faith because God said I'll have a son. He says he was fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Or in other words, he was fully convinced that God is who he says he is and he would do the things he said he would do. Just to use the example Paul gives us here, it says Abraham hoped against hope. Now in that situation, what he's hoping against is that he would have a son. Now here, the Bible gives one of the least charitable terms to age I've ever considered. He says Abraham was as good as dead because he was old. He was 100 years old. And so when he looked upon himself, and then when he looked upon his wife, husbands, don't tell your wives that as you get into the mountain climbers. And he looked upon their past experience, the fact that up to this point, they've never had a child. Many other people have, we haven't. When he looks upon himself, his wife, and his experience, any earthly eyes would say, yeah, ain't gonna happen. But when he looks with eyes of faith, he sees the promise, God says. That's literally what he looks at. So shall your offspring be. And because of that, Abraham's not concerned. Most of us, including myself in this, would default to despair. We would default to, what words did I put? We would default to apathy. We would default to bitterness. But Abraham here, he's hopeful because by faith he knows that the question is not if he's gonna have a son. The moment God made that promise, it was just a question of when. When will I have a son? In fact, if we use the idea of faith being the substance of what we hope for, Abraham already has a son. He just hasn't been born yet. The alternative would be for God to not be faithful, or in other words, to not be who he says he was, or to be not able to do the things he said he would do. And that's just not an option. And so Abraham knows he has a son. We see this characterized several episodes throughout Abraham's life. His whole thinking, his whole feeling, his whole way of being is influenced and directed by eyes of faith. His relationship with God and others as well. The Bible gives us several stories, I'll mention two, to where we can see this calm, cool, and collected faithfulness of Abraham. For instance, in Genesis 12, God says, Abraham, I'm going to give you land, but to get land, you need to leave your land, and your city, and your inheritance, and your property, and your safety and go into a desert. To get your land, leave your land. That's backwards. That doesn't seem to make sense to us. What is more, in Genesis 22, God has delivered Isaac unto Abraham. He has promised him the son and he delivered, very literally, through Sarah. And so this is the son that God has promised will bring about Abraham's family, which we saw in our responsive reading will be as great as the sand by the seashore. But God says what in Genesis 22? This son by whom I'm going to bring your family, I need you to sacrifice him. I need you to kill him. You want a family? You want the promises I've set for you? Kill the means to those promises. But in those verses, if you go back and read them, I strongly encourage you to do so, we never see any reluctance, we never see any hesitation from Abraham. It drives me crazy when I see depictions of Genesis 22 in particular, movies or stories or whatever, where you see Abraham dragging Isaac up the mountain and he's weeping and he can't believe God is doing these things to him. And don't get me wrong, that version of the events makes sense, but that's not at all what we see in Genesis 22. In Genesis 22, Abraham tells a servant, Wait here, the boy and I are going to go up and we're going to come back. Abraham has no doubt that Isaac, regardless of what happens to Isaac on the top of the mountain, that he's the promised child and God is who he says he is and he's going to do the things he said he would do. So Isaac will be back. Hebrews 11, as we also saw in our call to worship, tells us that Abraham was so confident of this that he thought God would raise Isaac from the dead if he were to actually go through the act. How can Abraham believe those things? because he has eyes of faith, and he knows who God is, and he knows what God said he would do. This same kind of backwards idea, the idea of to get your land, leave it, to have your son kill him, in many ways is how our salvation works too. We who have sinned, who have rebelled, who have cursed and spat in the face of God, how can a people like us be saved? How can we ever pay back to God that which was lost? How can we ever mend the relationship, make up for it? God tells us. He says, I'll do it. God says very simply, rest with faith. Rest in eyes of faith. See the things he is doing. Believe he is who he says he is. Believe he will do the things he said he would do. And rest in his promises. But we say, that can't be right. Our normal response to these things, no, no, God, let me work for it. Let me work it off. I'll do chores. I'll do whatever you want. I'll scrub the toilets. I'll do anything. Just let me work it off. Or no, no, no, God, let me pay. Seriously, I got my checkbook. Let me just pay off the debt. What is it? Even if I have to work for it for years and years, eternity is a long time. Let me pay it off and I'll make it right. Or just punish me. Just let me get it over with. Just punish me. Let me take it. Because what you're offering, God, is too simple. It's too easy. It's not fair. It can't be right. It's crazy. But it's good news. It's good news that we can rest in the works of Christ and not our own. It is backwards. It makes no sense that all we have to do is see with eyes of faith and believe God is who he says he is and believe he'll do the things he says he would do, but that's all he requires of us. He promised Eve, sinful Eve who should have never had a child, that her son would crush the head of the serpent, and he did. He promised Abraham that through Isaac and through his people, they would always be God's people. And we, church, are. He promised David that his son would sit on the throne forever, and King Jesus does. He promised Judah and all of us through the new covenant that he would forgive our iniquity and exchange our hearts of stone for hearts of flesh. And, church, this morning, if you are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, you know that he has. He has. All we have to do is grasp it through the eyes of faith. Now I want to take a step back here and make sure we're all on the same page with what this whole justification idea is. It can be a big theological heady topic and it's wonderful when understood, but I don't want to get lost in the weeds here because it's very simple. God is awesome, first of all, but God is gracious and he comes to us and he says, I am who I say I am. I'm going to do the things I said I'm going to do. And so here is my plan of salvation. And he very literally extends his hand. Now make no mistake, sure it seems like a choice on the surface, but the very fact that God has come to us, the very fact that he has given us eyes of faith, the very fact that he has offered salvation at all, the very fact that he's done anything other than curse us and let us perish, is grace. God comes to us and says, here's my hand, take it. And if you take it, I will take the works of Christ, who was perfect and innocent and died, and I will count them as yours. And I will take your sinful works, and I will count them as Christ's, and he had died for the cross on those. That is what is offered. Take his hand and you will have it. And remember, the only possible way we see, understand, know the hand and that God came is because of grace. Grace is the basis of this justification. But it is by eyes of faith that we are able to see that which is invisible and see the hand of salvation offered to us. And unless we have that conviction of the unseen, unless we know that God is who he says he is and will do the things he said he would do, we cannot take the hand. But if he has granted that to us, we can grab it and we are exchanged in places with Christ. And immediately, our sin is gone. Dead, nailed to the cross. While grace is the basis of justification, faith is the acquisition, it is the taking of justification. being right with God. And let us not forget, just a few verses later Paul is going to tell us in Romans 5.8 that we have no good works. This has nothing to do with us. Even our taking is not a work in and of itself. It is granted to us. Abraham had no good works and nothing good to offer. We have no good works and nothing good to offer. God in this relationship does not make us good and then be like, oh they're good now. Now I'll save them. No, no, no. Romans 5, 8 tells us while we were still sinning, Christ died for us. In the midst of our sin, in the midst of breaking every one of the commandments with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, in the midst of doing everything possible to rebel, it was then that Christ saved us. Our only contribution to our relationship with the Lord is to give him more cause to kill Christ. But on the cross, God made him who knew no sin, Jesus, to be sin on our behalf so that through him we might become the righteousness of God. That is our status through faith in Jesus. If we believe he is who he says he is and believe he will do and has done the things he said he would do, we can claim this because of God's grace. Dee's going to get way more into grace next week. It's going to be wonderful, but we had to talk about it this morning as well. But I want to give us a full picture as we kind of conclude all this together. Turn to Galatians 2 with me, if you will, and we'll finish up here. I want us to give a, and this won't be a long point, but I want to give a fuller vision of what Christ is actually doing in this exchange, in this substitution. Because there's one more final piece to the puzzle here that we even put in, and that we referenced it earlier, but that is that faith is only as effective as the thing we put our faith in. If the thing we put our faith in is not what it says it is, or it is not able to deliver the things it said it would deliver, then we're just lost, regardless of how strong or little our faith is. But since God is who he says he is, and he is able to do the things he said he would do, he will deliver. But I want to see how he actually has done this. Paul here says in verse 20, I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. Now here Paul is making something very simple. He's saying I've been justified, right? I have been given credit for Christ's crucifixion. I've been crucified with Christ. And that's true, but to me that's a little more abstract. This is not a new concept Paul is saying here. This is very much an Old Testament, something that's been happening all along. And I want us to give us two quick examples of what God through Paul means when he says, I've been crucified with Christ. First of all, Noah. I think many, if not all of you here know the story of Noah, but walk through it with me. We see in the days of Noah that man was evil, even to the thoughts and intentions of his heart. Totally abominable evil. After we find out that everybody was evil, God comes to Noah by grace. And he reveals himself to Noah by grace. And he reveals his plan of salvation to Noah by grace. And he tells Noah what to do by grace. Noah then, by faith, believes God is who he says he is, believes he's going to do the things he said he would do. And so he builds an ark because God has told him very plainly, I am going to rain my wrath and judgment upon this earth. Everyone will endure the wrath of God. And so Noah builds the boat, the rains come, the waves crash, the earth is flooded. Everyone in that time endures the wrath of God. Those who do not believe or have faith in the Lord endured on their own. The waves crash on them, the rains fall on them, the floods overwhelm them, and they perish. Noah and his family, by association, also endure the wrath of God. But where do they endure it? They endure it within God's provided means of salvation. To be sure, the waves crash on it, the floodwaters lift it, the rains beat on it. The ark, though, absorbs that wrath. Noah and his family are safe within. Noah is saved by faith alone, by grace alone. Similarly, let's fast forward to Exodus and talk about the Passover briefly. God tells Moses, I'm going to send my spirit and he is going to rightfully claim the firstborn son of every family without discrimination, Jew, Gentile. However, God again, by grace, has come to Moses to tell him this. By grace revealed his plan. By grace revealed his plan of salvation. And so what he says is, if you do not want this to happen, and you believe I am who I say I am, and I'm going to do what I say, you can slaughter a lamb in place of your son, and use the blood of the lamb to paint the doorway of your home. And if you do that, that will count in place of your firstborn son. Anyone who does this prescribed means by faith will spare their firstborn. By faith, the Israelites do just that. They kill a lamb and paint the doorway in its blood. By faith, also, the Egyptians do not do that, a faith in something much different. And so that night, just as God said he would, he comes and he demands that firstborn from every family, stopping at every single household, those households who did not have faith in God, did not believe he was who he says he was, and did not believe he would do the things he said he would do, he asked for payment and he takes, rightfully, the firstborn son of those families. There is great weeping that night. The Israelites, however, who had faith in God, their son is protected. He is hidden behind the blood. He is covered in his house that the Lord has given him, but more so behind the blood of the lamb that the Lord offered to him by grace. And because the blood of the lamb was spilled in his place, he was saved, and the Lord passed over their home. Israel's sons were saved by faith alone. Church, as we close, there is a sobering truth this morning, and that's that everyone will endure the wrath of God. Everyone will encounter these same realities. The good news from Galatians is that we who have faith in Jesus, believing He is who He says He was, and believing the things He said He would do, are saved because we have been crucified with Christ. Just like the ark and Noah's family tucked inside as the ark endured God's wrath, we are in Christ as he endures God's wrath on the cross. Just like in the Passover when the sons of the Israelites could hide behind the blood of the Lamb, God has sent his firstborn son, the Lamb of God, to bleed on their behalf on the cross and they are hidden behind his blood. This is what it means to have faith in the Lord and to be saved by faith. This morning, I dare say we all have faith. We have faith in something. Throughout time, nearly anything under the sun has been made an object of faith. People put their faith in various gods, other religions. Some of us make a faith out of the religion of Christianity. We have made it aestheticism, legalism, saints and angels, indulgences. The world too has had faith. It has had faith in its good works of charity and humanitarianism, naturalism, mystical spirituality, politics, nationalism, psychoanalysis, careers, race, net worth, education, whatever. The world has faith in something. We have faith in something. And so my question is simple. Is that faith that you have able to save you? Is that faith a shield for you? We saw in our call to worship that God is a strong tower and the righteous man runs to it and is saved by it. Is your faith able to save you like the ark, the lamb, and Christ has done? All faiths are a form of eyesight. We see the world by what we believe. And so I invite you this morning, come and see that the Lord is good. Come and see King Jesus risen up on our behalf. Proclaim with Paul who says, the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. Church, God is who he says he is, and he will do the things he said he would do. Believe it, see it, and trust it. May God be glorified by these things. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for our faith. We thank you for the eyes to see that which is unseen, namely you. And we thank you for the conviction, the assurance rather, the substance of things hoped for. We thank you Father that like Abraham, you have enabled us to see these things and live by them so that we might be made like Christ. Lord, we thank you for your grace to offer such a plan for us, a scandalous Easy, far too simple plan so that you might be our God and we might be your people. And Lord, I pray and thank you that we have been crucified with Christ. You have enabled this plan of salvation on our behalf. And this morning I ask, Lord, that we would truly place our faith in you because you are who you say you are and you are going to do the things you said you would do. Lord, we trust that because of who you are and we pray this in your name. Amen.