Faith

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a new ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God is Government called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ's teaching of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today's focused discussion will be on faith. We will answer what is faith and what role it has in your daily walk with Christ. Why is faith so important? Because it is the very foundation of the Church, our gospel of salvation, that we must believe on to receive that salvation. In 1 Corinthians 15, verse 1-4, we find the only gospel of the Church provided by the Apostle Paul to the Church at Corinth. Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand, by which also ye are saved. If ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. Belief requires faith, since we were not in history to witness Christ Himself. What we find is that faith was not only in the New Testament Church, but was in the Old Testament Scriptures as well. The Old Testament tells us stories of our historical saints that we are to use as examples. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is known by many names. It is called the Hall of Fame. It is called the Heroes of Faith. It is called the Honor Role of the Saints. It is called the Faith Chapter, and it has even been called the Westminster Abbey of Scripture, because it has so many of the testimonies of those who have been basically immortalized in stained glass. Now the just shall live by faith, but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, for by it the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. We have at the end of chapter 10 a very familiar statement. That first is laid out in Scripture, back in the prophet Habakkuk, chapter 2, verse 4. It is repeated again by Paul in Romans and in Galatians, and here it appears again in the book of Hebrews. And we understand that the just shall live by faith. Salvation is by faith and faith alone. That is at the very heart of all of our understanding of the gospel. The writer of Hebrews has basically demonstrated to us that Jesus is better than everything connected to the Old Covenant. He is better than angels, he is better than prophets, he is better than Moses, he is better than Aaron. He is better than Joshua. He is a better priest than any previous priest, and he is a better sacrifice than any previous sacrifice, and he is the one who seals a better covenant. The message of the first ten chapters is: put your faith in Jesus Christ. Move on from the symbolism of the old covenant to the new covenant in Christ. At periodic times through this epistle, at least four times already, by the time you get chapter ten, there is a warning, and that warning is given to the readers of this epistle. And the warning is this come all the way to Christ. Come all the way to Christ. Don't neglect the salvation, chapter 2. Enter into the rest that is available to you. Having heard all there is to hear about Christ, don't walk away. Don't turn away, chapter 6, or it's impossible for you to be renewed again to repentance. And here we find it again in chapter 10, verse 38. Don't come close to Christ and then shrink back. We are not of those who shrink back to destruction. What's going on here is the apostle who wrote this, or the writer who is associated with the apostles, some of the apostles, is basically saying to Jewish people, that's why it's called Hebrews, you have heard about Christ. You have somehow connected yourself to the Church of Jesus Christ. You're around, you're interested, you're close. Come all the way to Christ. Don't go back, don't fall away, don't neglect the salvation that has been offered to you. If you go back to chapter 10, verse 29, how much severe punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, and again the Lord will judge his people. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. This epistle is written to a group of believers, but within that group of believers there were Jews who had come to participate in some external way, in the fellowship, but had not come all the way to Christ. Now what do we mean by faith? And that is the reason for chapter 11, because we have immediately in chapter 11, verse 1, now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. You will notice that it's nothing to do with works, effort, or ceremony, or sacrament. What you have here is a definition of faith, just a simple, basic definition of faith. And then after that definition in the opening couple of verses, you have literally one illustration after another, after another after another, after another, after another, of people who lived and received salvation by faith, and all of them are Old Testament people. And this is to say to these Jewish believers, come all the way to faith. Come all the way to faith as Abel did, as Enoch did, as Noah did, as Abraham did, as Sarah did. Come all the way to faith as Isaac did, as Jacob did, as Joseph did, as Moses did. Come all the way to faith, as Rahab, Gideon, Baruch, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel the prophets, on and on. They're all models of salvation by faith. Now, I want to show you three things in these opening three verses. I want to talk about the nature of faith, the testimony of faith, and the illustration of faith. Let's look at the nature of faith. Verse 1. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Now this is not a comprehensive, fully orbed theological definition of faith, but it is essentially a declaration. Rather than a definition, it's a declaration. And it defines faith in two ways. Faith, the Greek word pistos, which is all over the New Testament, means belief, trust, faith. Faith can be defined in these two ways. It is the assurance of things hoped for, and it is the conviction of things not seen. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Faith takes something hoped for but not realized, and gives it substance. We have faith, but our faith has substance. Faith gives them present substance, present reality. And as this chapter will show, in Old Testament times there were many men, and as we will see, many women, who had nothing but promises. Nothing but promises. In fact, all of them had nothing but promises. Look at the end of chapter 11, verse 39. All these having gained approval by God through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us, they would not be made perfect. We know what was promised was realized in the coming of Christ. They believed in a promise that had not been realized. All the Old Testament promises related to the future. All of them, men and women, had nothing but promises to rest their hope on. They had no visible evidence that the promises would be fulfilled. In fact, if you look at the history of Israel, it looked consistently very, very bleak. Yet the promises were real to them. Those people lived in promises they never ever saw. Moses was willing to give up what he had in his hand of Egyptian wealth for Christ, Christ who was merely a messianic hope. But the hope was so powerful, the promise was so secure and sure, that it had substance, that it had weight, and he was glad to let go of what he had in his hand, for what would come in the future only by way of promise. In other words, like Moses, all the rest of these people in chapter 11 were people of faith. And faith was trust in God's promise for the future, as yet unrealized, but having so much weight and so much substance that you bank your life on it. They took God at his word. And herein lies the foundation of all true and genuine saving faith. You must believe the revelation of God. When we talk about faith, we're not talking about some abstraction. We're not talking about, well, you know, I just kind of have faith it'll all work out. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the kind of bankable, life-transforming confidence in something that has been promised to you that is as yet not realized. And by the way, while we do have the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies in the Messiah, and we have the full record in the New Testament, all the promises of our future salvation are as yet unrealized for us as well. They lived in promise of the coming Messiah and the kingdom he would bring. We live in the promise of the coming Messiah and the kingdom he will bring as well. We live by faith even as they did, though the things that they looked to see and never saw concerning the first coming of Christ, we have seen in the record of the New Testament. Faith is not some kind of wistful longing. If our faith is anchored to the Word of God to such a degree that we would be willing, like Moses, to suffer the loss of everything we have in this world to hold on to the promises in Christ. Jesus put it this way If any man come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. In the book of Daniel, you have the young man Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego confronted with a choice, and their choice was to obey Nebuchadnezzar, whom they could see, and to worship the king whom they could see, or obey God whom they could not see, and to trust God by walking into a fiery furnace. Without any hesitation, they chose to believe in God, even though the king was real, and the king was visible, and God was invisible, and God was only apprehended by faith. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of faith. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way.