And we'll be looking at Hebrews chapter 11, verses 1 through 3. And beloved, this is God's Word. 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. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that You bless the reading of Your Word, and I pray that You would bless and focus our minds as we reflect upon it. As we continue our reflections on the themes of Heidelberg and look at the notion of faith, I pray that you would use these words to build us up in our faith. And if there are those here who do not know you, Father, I pray that you would call them to faith in you through your son, Jesus Christ. Father, I pray, though, that all things, you are the one who is glorified and honored and praised and proclaimed. And Father, I pray that you would do this either through me or in spite of me. And this I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. And today we're going to talk about faith. And many of you would say, or I would hope you would say, well, that's a good thing, Pastor. As Christians, we like to talk about faith. Faith is a good thing for us to talk about. And I would say yes and amen to that. But I would say that because it's a good thing to talk about, because it's something that we like to talk about, that's not the reason that I'm going to talk about faith this morning. The reason that I want to talk about faith this morning is that while we talk a lot about faith, I'm not entirely convinced that as Christians we always have a very clear understanding of what faith is. We say in times of trouble that you need to have faith and God will work you through that time of difficulty, and that is true. We say to people who are challenging the faith, when we're defending our faith, that in Christ there is salvation, and that is through faith alone. Not through faith plus works, but it is in faith alone that we are granted salvation. And that is true. But when you ask the person then to say, then give me a definition of what you mean by faith, Oftentimes that's when you get the blank stare and the slack jaw and people go, well, uh. And so we're going to talk this morning really about what faith is. And the Bible talks a lot about faith. It talks about what faith does. It talks about how God uses faith. It talks about faith's work in our lives. And we're not going to focus so much on these things. Our purpose this morning is to talk about what faith is. And if we're going to do that, we need to really begin with the Bible's definition of faith, which is found in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1. And by the way, you've heard me say at different times that there are certain passages of Scripture that every Christian ought to be able to know and go to, like, right away. This is one of those. This is one of those that I should be able to ask you at any time and any day in the middle of the week, catch you off guard and say, where's the definition of faith? And you should be able to look at me and say Hebrews 11.1. You should be able to know that. If you can recite the verse, that's even better. But at least to know where it is in the book. to go to find the Bible's clear and very specific definition of what faith is. Hebrews 11.1 reads this way, Faith is the concrete assurance of things hoped for and the conviction or proof of that which is unseen. Now in a minute we're going to come back to that verse and we're going to spend some time unpacking that verse because there's a lot in that passage of scripture, that verse that we need to unpack. But as we seek to define the term faith, sometimes it's helpful when we're defining something to also talk about what something is not and to talk about it in a negative before we talk about it in the positive. This verse talks about it in the positive. But as we move and live in this world around us today, there are a lot of really bad ideas about what faith is. So I think it's important for us to kind of keep the definition in front of us, in our minds, Go away from it for a second to talk about what it's not and then come back to it and really dig deeply into that word in terms of what the definition is. So to begin with, when we talk about what faith is not, faith is not blind. probably one of my biggest pet peeves. And one of the things that I tell my confirmation class is that as a pastor, when you become ordained as a pastor, God gives you the privilege of having lots of extra pet peeves. Everybody has a certain amount that they're allowed to have. Pastors are allowed to have Three times as many. That's just the way it works. One of the fringe benefits of being a pastor. Well, this is one of my pet peeves. People will say, faith is blind, or you just need to take a blind leap of faith out into the middle of nowhere with no sense of what's there, but knowing that God will hold you up. And beloved, that is not what the Bible teaches about faith. Faith is described as spiritual sight. Something that is different than human sight, but it is sight nonetheless. So in 1 Corinthians 5-7 when Paul says that we walk by faith and not by sight, that is not this sense that we're walking around by a supernatural power. We're blindfolding ourselves so that our eyes don't deceive us and kind of walking around like some kind of a Jedi Master or something along those lines. It's not blindness. In fact, when you go to the scriptures and it talks about blindness, when blindness is used in the conjunction or connection with spiritual things, it's always used in terms of unbelief and God's judgment upon an individual. So when we talk about this, we need to understand that as Christians, we walk around this world with our eyes wide open. Recognize, observing, looking at the evidence, but also recognizing God's hand governing things around us. Recognizing that He is at work. He is moving. Believing and recognizing that hand. Jesus will say in John 20, verse 29, Have you believed because you have seen Me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed. who did not need to actually see the resurrection of Christ, but have heard and know the character of God, and know the character of God's word and God's promise. And on the basis of that character, see, on the basis of that character, they believe. So we are ones that observe and look at the evidence. But in addition to that, we are committed to the word of God as it has been revealed to us. So the next time somebody says to you, well, faith is blind. Your answer to them should be hogwash. Faith is not blind. That's not part of the Bible. And if anybody ever comes up to you and says, well, you know, faith is just taking a blind leap. You should say, that's nonsense. By the way, that goes back to a Dutch philosopher, theologian by the name of Kierkegaard. not to the prophets, not to the apostles who have given us the Word of God. That's first. Second, the power of faith is not you, it is not in you, it does not come from you. The power of faith comes from the object of your faith that is God. Now I say that because in today's world, probably the biggest and fastest growing heretical movement is that what would be sometimes grouped together and called Word Faith or Word of Faith. is people that would be people like Joyce Meyer, people like Kenneth Copeland or Kenneth Hagen, Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen falls loosely into this category as well, as well as Joseph Prince and Paul and Jan Crouch, who are best known for the TBN Broadcasting Network. Folks, they are all around us, and they are essentially saying that if you have faith, When you positively confess something to be true, you confess something in faith, then you can attain whatever it is that you want, that you profess in that faith. Essentially, words are seen as having power. And because words have power, then when those words are expressed in faith, that power is discharged and God will use His power to serve our needs. and to bring it perhaps a little bit even closer to home. If you go to the website and look at the Statement of Faith on the website, and if you look at some of the sermon outlines that are also published publicly on the website, this is the view that is held at least by the leadership of Victory Church down the road. They are part of that. And folks, I'm going to use stronger language when it comes to that than just the word hogwash. Because this is evil in God's eyes. This is essentially not going to walking in faith, but appealing to something more like magic, using the power of the created. over the Creator. And when the Scriptures talk about magic, when the Scriptures talk about that kind of thing, they use the word blasphemy to speak about it. It's something that God considers to be an abomination before Him. It is something that is evil. It's something that comes from the very pits of hell, and it's something that is harmful for your souls. do not fall down or follow that road. It is something that will tempt you to put faith in something that has no power whatsoever, and that is words. They don't have any power other than to communicate ideas. There's power in God, and the power of faith comes from the object of our faith, that is God Himself. And that leads us to the third thing. Christians are not the only ones with faith. But Christians are the only ones who have saving faith. Unless you're a total skeptic or a curmudgeon, you have to have some sense of faith in your neighbors, in your friends, in your family, in your ability to do X, Y, or Z. Whatever that X, Y, or Z happens to be. The point is, though, that the faith is in the power of the one who is the object of the faith. So if you take your car to a mechanic, you have faith in the ability of the mechanic to repair your car. Now, no matter how hard you believe, no matter how many good words you might use, no matter how much you might desire, how strong your faith in that mechanic may be, if the mechanic is not able to do the job, then guess what? Your car is not going to be fixed. Faith's got to be an object of that. But we all have faith because we take our cars to mechanics, we go to the doctor, we ask people to do services for us. We buy food at the store. We go to our restaurant and buy food that we have not seen. We don't know what those people are doing behind the closed doors in the kitchen of the restaurant. But we have faith that they're not doing something horrible to our food. because we go out to eat at times. We've got to have a little bit of faith, but saving faith is something different, because the object of saving faith is Jesus Christ, who can and will save His people. So, fourthly then, True faith is not something that will make you happy, it is not something that will make you healthy, it is not something that will make you comfortable in any worldly sense of the term. It's not meant for that. True faith is a tool that God uses to apply His justification to you for your sins. True faith's purpose is to make you holy. And oftentimes if you live and walk and work out your life in faith, guess what? Your life isn't going to be comfortable because you're going to be living in a way that is counter to the way the rest of the world lives and wants you to live. You're going to be living in a way that will oftentimes draw attention in a persecution type of sense one way or the other. We've set those things on the table here. So let's return to the text. The faith is the concrete assurance of things that are hoped for. And let me stop right there and begin to unpackage that a little bit. First of all, the word assurance, as it is used in the Greek, refers to something that is an underlying guarantee, an absolute commitment that whoever is honoring the faith will follow through on that which is being promised. So here's what you need to understand about this first half of the verse. If we have faith, saving faith in Jesus Christ. That faith is meant to be a kind of surety. It's meant to be an assurance to us that God will fulfill his promise of salvation in our lives. By the way, that's why we also say that saving faith must come from God above and from God alone. Because it is God that is the one offering salvation. And thus, as He is the one offering salvation, He is the only one who can give us assurance of that salvation. That it is genuinely something that He is giving us. It's what faith is meant to do. It's meant to be something that gives us the confidence to know that what is there will be true. I mean, think about kids when they're learning to swim. Imagine the scene in the summertime at the swimming pool, and the little kid is standing on the edge of the pool. And dad is in there going, come on, jump to me, trust me, trust me, trust me. Jump to me, I'll catch you. Now, it doesn't do any good, really, for the person that's kind of standing by on the edge of the side of the pool. Say, yeah, go ahead and jump to your dad. He's going to catch you. Well, that happens. People do that. But the only one that really that has any meaning behind that is the guy that's actually going to be doing the catching. That's the dad. That's the most important voice. Most important that God is saying, look, you need to understand that all these promises are true in Christ Jesus. So I'm giving you this faith so that you can believe these things to be true in Christ Jesus and that you can hold to that. And because I've given you faith. That's a sign that I'm going to bring about what I'm promising in your life. And by the way, what is that that He is promising? That's those things that are hoped for. That's that idea of salvation. And the notion of hope in the Greek is not a pie in the sky kind of thing. We use the word hope in a lot of ways when we use it in English that really mean nothing. We might walk outside. We might have walked outside this morning and say, I sure hope it warms up soon. Now, your hope that it's going to warm up soon has absolutely no effect on whether it's going to warm up soon. I mean, it's still April. We're Western Pennsylvania. Mother's Day hasn't hit yet. You know, we could still be getting snow next week. You know, our hope just simply expresses in a desire when we word it that way. We might say, I hope I win the lottery. Yeah, what are the chances of that happening? Getting struck by lightning? If you're driving too fast, you might say, I hope I don't get a speeding ticket. Well folks, it has no effect on whether the police officer who happens to pull you over because you've been driving too fast is going to give you a ticket or a warning or otherwise. The original language, the idea of hope, communicates a confident expectation, a real and a genuine anticipation and those things that are hoped in will come to pass. You don't necessarily know when they're going to come to pass, but you have this confidence that they will come to pass, and that God not only is able to do these things, and He's able to do them in the life of His people, but in a particular context of faith, He's able to do them in your life, individually, personally, and that He will indeed do that for you. So your faith is God's surety to you, upon which you hope in those promises. Which leads us to the second part of that verse. Faith is the concrete assurance of things hoped for, that's what we've just looked at, and the conviction, or we could say proof, of that which is not seen. We can't see God. We can see the effects of God, we can see the works of God, but we cannot see God. But the faith that God gives us, gives us the conviction that He is real, gives us the recognition that His works, His providence, His governance in our lives is something that is going on, and we can recognize His hand. That faith gives us the absolute proof that He is able to do those things that He is wanting or promising that He will do. I think what's interesting about this word as it is used here in the New Testament is when you go back to the Old Testament, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which is kind of that earliest Hebrew commentary on how they understood that language. When that word is used, it is always, except for like one or two instances, used on the basis of reproving somebody. But why is somebody reproved? Somebody is reproved because there is evidence that they have been doing something wrong. The writer of Hebrews is taking it and using it not in a negative sense of reproof, but in a positive sense of encouragement. To say there is evidence that God is able to do these things. That you don't have to have convictions that are built on something that is empty or blind. But that you're building your conviction on proof. Why do you think, by the way, that the Scriptures spend so much time focusing on the historical record of God and His hand in the lives of His people? It's giving you that proof, that evidence from history of God's faithful hand, despite the unfaithfulness of the people throughout the ages and the generations. But as you look at the world around us, look at the design in creation. Look at the intricacy of a bumblebee and all that a bumblebee or a honeybee is able to do. Or a butterfly. And look at the detail in their wings or the wonderful thing that happens within a chrysalis where that little goofy looking thing turns into something that is absolutely beautiful. That's God's evidence of design. The fact that we can reason and use logic to communicate with one another and that I can speak something and that you can understand what it is that I'm speaking. That's evidence of God's design. That's evidence of God's hand in creation. But don't think just too when we're talking about history of ancient history and biblical history. The very fact that we have history that takes us from the Bible even to today. is meant by God to show us His hand of governance in the lives of His people, preserving His people, preserving His church through all sorts of persecution, through trials, through the ages, and causing His word to go out to all of the earth. Most of us don't think of opening up a history book as part of the process of our piety, our growing in sanctification, our growing in grace. But guess what? It's meant to be so long as when you open up the history book, you're looking at it correctly in faith, recognizing God's hand at work in the life of the world, even those pagan nations, because he's governing over those nations as well. Go after your history books, read some history, and recognize what God is doing, because that is something that is designed by God to build up you in your confidence of faith that He is working. That leads us to verse 2 in our passage. goes on to say, for in this, speaking about that faith, the elders who were witnessed to is how it literally is rendered in the Greek. Now this is awkward in English and so if you kind of were perhaps reading a little bit different translation than the ESV that I happen to prefer, you might get a variety in there of trying to, how to communicate this idea from the Greek into English. Personally, as I was reading this, I thought the American Standard Version of 1901, which is kind of an Americanized version of the King James back in, well, the early 20th century. It works it this way. For therein the elders had witnessed born to them. Essentially, what this verse is conveying, the idea that this verse is conveying, is that God witnesses to you, to his people, by faith. God witnessed to the elders, the ancient ones, those who have gone before us by faith. The way He worked then is the way He still works today. That God is the same today as He is tomorrow, as He was yesterday, and thus so too is His plan of salvation. It is the same, and by faith, and has always been by faith, that God has worked in the lives of His people, has witnessed to them, has shown Himself to be faithful to them. And then verse three, and by faith then, we understand that the ages were put into order by the word of God, so that from that which is not visible, that's God, that which is visible comes to be, would be a literal reading of that. Now there's a lot more here that it really applies to today than you might think. But in terms of Heidelberg Catechism, I think in terms of our purposes with that, I think it's important to note up front that this idea of the understanding that the ages were put into order, were put into a meaningful structure. is something that is meant to remind us that faith includes a body of facts and ideas that one must affirm. Which is, by the way, why the next step for Heidelberg Catechism is to talk about the Apostles' Creed. In particular, though, this verse also affirms the creation of God of all things that are. To use theological language, to say that God's creation ex nihilo, from nothing. It's how the Bible begins. It's how the Apostles' Creed begins. That God is the One and the Creator. If we're going to call ourselves Christians, one of the first things that we affirm is that God created everything that there is. That prior to God doing that, creating, nothing but God existed. Simply He existed. And so we move on. But I want to apply this verse in another way to our culture today. Because I think it's very relevant. You see, there's an ongoing debate in our society and our culture as to the question of finding meaning for one's life. How do I find meaning in my life? How do I find meaning or do I not find meaning for my life? Is meaning given to me or do I establish, do I set my own meaning for life? Does everyone get the opportunity to say, this will be the meaning, this is going to be the purpose behind my life? The world of philosophy, this is a very old question. It's a question that goes back even to Aristotle and to his old teacher Plato. But in the question of history, I would argue this goes back all the way to the very beginning, to that of Adam and Eve. In today's world, the dominant view that we seem to believe, and our children are taught, is that we individually determine meaning for our own lives. A fancy term for this is existentialism. Now maybe if you've heard this term you may kind of associate this term as it was popularized by a French philosopher by the name of Jean-Paul Sartre. But it's just him that popularized it in the atheistic world. It's a question that really goes back much further than that. It was St. Thomas Aquinas that actually popularized the idea within Christian circles and discussions. But the phrase, when kids are wrestling with, you know, what do I want to be when I grow up, that gets back to this. And when kids say, what do I want to be, we always or not always, but we tend to say to them, you can be anything that you want to be. Is that really very true? I mean, we say it. We don't want to crush their little hopes and egos. But if little Bobby says, well, when I grow up, I want to be a duck. You say, no, little Bobby, it doesn't work that way. That's not how things are supposed to happen at work. Or if a little girl, little Sally, says, I want to be a fish when I grow up. I say, you might like to swim or scuba dive, but you're not going to become a fish. And I know that's an extreme example, but it's meant to illustrate a point. When a child comes and has absolutely no aptitude for math, You know, like higher math. But says, when I grow up, I want to be a physicist. How do we respond to that? We typically just pat him on his back, say, work hard and you'll get there. Is that really a faithful response? Is there not virtue in coming along somebody and saying, truthfully, I love you, I affirm you, but as I look at your life, I don't see that gift developing in your life. Many of you heard that I spent a season of my life, it was a very short season of my life, being an apprentice at a Toyota dealership to be a mechanic. That lasted, what, four months, something like that. First of all, I make a very lousy auto mechanic. My team leader took me to the side one day and said, you know, you're a nice guy, but you need to quit this job and find something that you're going to be good at because you're never going to be good at this. Wasn't the best and easiest thing to listen to, but I'm grateful for that wisdom. You know, there used to be a time and an age where somebody felt a leading towards the ministry. Before a seminary would even begin to talk to them about training them for the ministry, the seminary would talk to the elders of the church and say, is this person, what are his gifts? Do you see God calling him in his gifts to the ministry of Jesus Christ? And if the elders said no, then the seminary would not train them. Isn't it interesting how things have changed? Isn't it interesting how, and we can talk about money and seminaries being in business, and I get all of that. But isn't it interesting how we have taken God's good gift of those who are in church leadership, who are given to us, biblically they're called a gift, who are given to us to help us discern where God is leading us. Isn't it interesting how we've taken them and kind of relegated them to being almost irrelevant over here in terms of questions like that. You're wondering where to go to college. You're wondering what job to pursue. It should be the elders that you talk to first. I mean, your parents too, but the elders should be people that are on the top of your list to go speak to. Should I do this? Should I do that? That's God's design for us as a church. Not that they're dictators, but that God has called them to be wise counsel in overseeing your life, in living out your life in a way that will best honor God. But you know, the crazy thing is that we take this even further in our society today. Is that enough that we might tell little Bobby who has no aptitude in advanced math, yeah, go ahead and be a physicist. Or little Winn who might like to be an, think that they might like to be an auto mechanic and say, yeah, go ahead and be an auto mechanic. That's bad enough. But in today's world, if somebody comes up and says, you know, my definition of myself, my purpose for myself is something that conflicts with my birth gender, the response is to say, well, yeah, we've got surgery that can fix that. That's sad that we've gone that far in this world. You ask the question, what's next? And that's kind of one of those questions that you need to ask because people are talking about the what's next. And one of the things that people are talking about the what's next is not simply gender reassignment surgery, but they're asking the question about, well, maybe if I don't think I'm human, maybe I think I'm something different than being human. Could there be surgery that does that to me as well? See how far down the road we go when we take God's Word and we set it entirely to the side. You see, from a biblical perspective, from a Christian perspective, we don't give ourselves meaning. God gives us meaning. God gives us meaning and then He creates us. We don't even exist before He's given us meaning. And that means we don't look to ourselves for meaning. We must look to God for meaning in our lives. The idea of a Christian existentialist, I would argue, is irrational. It is totally irrational because the two things contradict one another. Where do you find meaning? In self or in God? The Bible says you find it in God. As a Christian, you must find it there. So faith. Our faith has ramifications. not only in what we believe, but how we believe what we believe. Because this little verse, verse 3 in Hebrews 11, really takes the idea of existentialism and throws it out the window as far as one can throw. So we move, and we begin to wrap ourselves up this morning. And so we've kind of defined faith, biblically, as being God's surety, God's assurance to us, that these things are true, that we can hope in the promises that He gives, and there is basis for that hope. Let me give you a couple, very briefly, words of application as we close up this morning. First of all, saving faith not only comes from God, but saving faith, because it comes from God, comes from a righteous God, comes along with repentance for sin. It's impossible to have genuine savings faith and not be repentant. In fact, it's impossible to be repentant without saving grace, too. Eternally repentant. Both of them go hand in hand. They're like, some theologians call them twin sisters. They belong together. Secondly, since saving faith comes from God, and since the power of faith lies in the object of faith, that is Jesus Christ, then salvation, who is saved, who isn't saved, is in the hands of God and not man. God uses our efforts in evangelism, but God does not rely upon our efforts in evangelism. Thirdly, saving faith presupposes that you need something, that there is something that you are needy of, and that it's not possible for you to gain on your own. The nice thing is that's a great leveling field, because we are all needy in that way. If we weren't needy, then Jesus' sacrifice was meaningless. We didn't need it. Fourth, saving faith includes And I think this is important. An intellectual assent, that we believe these things to be true in our minds. But it also includes an emotional and a spiritual assent, that not only do we believe, but we commit, we embrace these things for our being. And it also includes an act of the will. We must act upon this. There is no faith if you're not acting upon that faith. And fifth, True saving faith needs to be cultivated. I'm going to close with chapter 2 of 2 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 5. Paul writes, examine yourselves to see whether you are in faith. Test yourselves. For do you not realize this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless indeed you are to fail to meet the test. The test is something that we often shy away from. The test is oftentimes something that we fear and we kind of try and flee from. Say, I don't want to be tested in my faith. Darn it, that's unpleasant, that's uncomfortable. And God says, that's exactly my point. Because when you're tested that way, you rely on me. And when you rely on me, then you're given confidence in the faith that you have. So don't fear the test. Recognize it is what it is, and pursue God's strength in the midst of that test. So we close, and as we mentioned before, faith has a certain content of information that's connected to it. And our Heidelberg Catechism goes on to say that content is summarized, not exhausted, but is summarized. in a creed, in articles of a creed. We call it Apostles' Creed. And so I ask you to recite together with me the words of this creed. So what are these articles? I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into the grave. The third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and stood at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.