What Is Faith?
Hebrews 11:1-3
Take your Bibles if you will please and turn to Hebrews chapter 11, and we want to begin this most marvelous chapter with the consideration of the first three verses.
This chapter has been called the hall of fame, the chapter of the heroes of faith, the honor roll of the Old Testament saints, the Westminster Abbey of Scripture, the faith chapter and it goes on and on, all different kinds of names and titles have been given to this most wonderful chapter.
The 11th chapter of Hebrews deals with the excellency of faith, the excellency of faith. The subject then is faith. Now as always in the mind of the Spirit of God, Scripture fits into the context, and here it's no different. This 11th chapter fits most perfectly into the flow of the epistle to the Hebrews. In the first ten chapters of the Book of Hebrews the writer has been laboring to prove one major point, and that one major point is this, the New Testament or the new covenant in Jesus' blood is in every way superior to the old covenant. That is the theme of ten chapters, Christ is a better priest with a better sacrifice by which He sealed a better covenant. And the whole theme of the ten chapters is to prove Christ better than everything connected with the old covenant, and he's writing to Jews to prove to them that the new covenant is the best. lie says Christ is better than angels, prophets, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, He's better than everything and anything connected to the old covenant. And periodically through those ten chapters, four times already he has warned the Jews who know this to respond to the new covenant while their hearts are still sensitive. Because within the community of Hebrews to which he wrote there were some intellectually convinced Jews who knew this was true but never had received Christ. And so four times already he has warned them to come to Christ, not to turn around and go back to Judaism and thus become apostates, or those who fall away from the truth and are lost forever. He tells them, appropriate the new covenant, appropriate the new covenant. And the 10th chapter closes with a warning to appropriate the new covenant, to make the new covenant yours, to step away from Judaism and the temple and the priesthood and all that and come to the new covenant.
,Now this brings up this question, how? How do I come to the new covenant? What do I do? The Jew was so used to a works system, and this was a whole grace system, works weren't even involved, how then was he to come to the new covenant? I mean there weren't any sacrifices to make, there, there weren't any particular feasts to observe, there weren't any ritual washings to go through, there wasn't any ceremony, there was no circumcision, there wasn't any memorization of, of ethics, the law. How then does a man oriented to a works system come to the new covenant which is of grace? That's the question. And the first century Jews saw everything as a matter of works. And even after the writer has shown them this new covenant it would have been very easy for them to attempt to merit it or to earn it. Do you know there are people who do that today? Still working very hard to earn salvation under the new covenant? And they were ... this would have been their natural response. The only method the Jews knew was works. A simple study of the Gospels for example re ... realize ... makes us realize that the Judaism of the first century was not the supernatural system that had been given by God in the beginning, it was a system that had been twisted into a works system. They had added all kinds of legalistic things to the real system that God gave which was a faith system. They had come up with the Judaism of the first century which was a works, righteousness, self-glorification process. In fact if you want to know the truth, and here's a good definition of Judaism in the time of Christ and afterwards, it was nothing but a religious cult built on ethics. It, it had lost its concept of faith in God, it was a system of ethics, it was a religious cult of an ethical nature, it taught salvation by works.
Now such a works system is despised by God. God does not redeem men by works, He didn't do it in the Old Testament, "Abraham believed God- and it was counted to him for righteousness." Works was only a by-product. God has always redeemed men by faith, and nothing is more offensive to God than people trying to earn their way to heaven. When Jesus died on the cross the last words He said, tetelestai, it is (what?) finished, there's nothing to do. No man by his own self-imposed code of ethics ever pleases God. In Ephesians chapter 2, you remember the passage it's, it's obvious to us, "For by grace are you saved through faith; that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast." No man is ever redeemed by works, no matter how good you are. In Romans chapter 3, listen to this, verse 20, "Therefore, by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight." The only thing the law does for you it says is "give you the knowledge of sin. Righteousness comes apart from the law through Jesus Christ." Verses 21 and 22. Verse 27, "Where is boasting then? It is excluded." "A man is justified by faith," verse 28, "apart from the deeds of the law." God never justified a man on the basis of his works. Verse 2 of chapter 4 says, "If Abraham were justified by works, he hath something of which to glory, but not before God. For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness." Salvation has always been in God's economy by faith, not by works. Works always follow legitimate faith. James said, "Faith without works is (what?) dead." Works are a by-product of true faith. And so we find that God does not tolerate a self-imposed ethical system as a means to reaching Him.
Now if you can't count on your works how are you going to reach God? It's simple, it's by faith, and that's exactly what he introduces in verse 38 of chapter 10. Having established the necessity and the superiority of the new covenant he says, here's how to get in on it. And what does he do, beautifully, he quotes from the Book of Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 4, so he quotes their own Testament. Verse 38, "Now the just shall live (what?) by faith." He establishes therefore the principle of apprehension of the new covenant, it is by believing it, simply believing it. Faith is the key not works. "The just shall live by faith;" but here comes the warning, "if any man draws back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. We are not of them that draw back unto perdition, but of them that (do what?) believe to the saving of the soul." Salvation is a matter of faith or belief, those two words mean the same thing. Salvation is always by faith, now we are aware of this.
Now if salvation is by faith it's important that they understand what faith is. Do you realize that they were so messed up in works that it was hard for them to even understand faith. And their first argument would have been, wait a minute why all of our forefathers used to operate on works, they did the sacrifices, they did the washings, they carried out the ceremonies, they observed the Sabbaticals, they, they went through all of the processes that were Judaism, they got it right down to the nitty-gritty of the law and they were obedient etc, etc. And so in chapter 11 he just lists all the heroes of the history of Israel and starts out everyone of them by saying this, "By faith." By faith so and so did this, by faith so and so did that, by faith ... and he goes right down the line, Abraham, Sarah, Noah, right on down, Moses, Joshua, Jacob, all of them lived by faith. And you see what he's saying to them is this, the only way to apprehend the new covenant is by faith, but don't get shocked about that, that's nothing new that's the way you apprehended God in the old covenant too. And so it's important then that he expand on this idea of faith because they're so locked into a works system that they can't see the legitimacy of faith or the definition of it either for that matter. And they certainly wouldn't relate it to the old covenant since they were so locked up in the concept that the old covenant was a matter of works, so he wants to expose them to the fact that God has always operated on the basis of faith.
Now to begin with let's look at the nature of faith, then we'll see the testimony of faith, then we'll see the first illustration of faith. The nature of faith is in verse 1, it says this, "Now faith," here he's going to define it for them so they will understand what this means, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Now there are two aspects of faith there that are so closely wed that it's almost impossible to divide them. Those phrases are almost identical. "The substance of things hoped for," and "the evidence of things not seen." Now that is not in the purest sense really a definition of faith, it is more a sharing of some of the characteristics of faith. It, it's more of just a view of what faith is like rather than an explicit theological definition. Now the word faith is a simple word in the Greek, the word means belief, trust, confidence, faith. And he says ... now let's look at it, this is really simply but, oh it's exciting, he says faith first of all is the substance of things hoped for. That's the first thing he says about the nature of faith. It is the substance of things hoped for. You say, but things hoped for don't have any substance. They're just hoped for. But faith makes them real, now watch that, watch that. The matters of belief are hoped for, what we believe in is what we hope for and yet faith gives them a present substance.
As this chapter shows in Old Testament times there were many men and women who had nothing of the promises of God ... nothing but the promises of God to rest on. God said, there's coming a Messiah, there's coming one who will finally take away sin. God said, there's coming a day when Israel shall have its own kingdom, when Messiah shall reign, and when the land shall be restored to Israel. God said through Ezekiel ah, "That I will sprinkle clean water upon you and make you clean. I'll take away the stony heart of flesh. I'll put within you a heart of flesh. I'll give you my spirit." God said, "I'll gather you in the land, you'll have peace and safety." God promised all of that and they never saw any of that. But they hoped for it, and it is said that every Jewish mother longed to be the mother of Messiah. They hoped for that. They hoped for the restoration of Jerusalem when Jerusalem was sacked. And now they're hoping for greater freedom and liberty in Israel when Israel is being bombarded by all of the outside pressure of the Arab world, they're still living in hope. Now that is what faith is, faith is living in a hope that is so real it gives substance to the hope in the present tense. The promises that came to the Old Testament people were so real that even though they never saw them they based their life on them, sight unseen. All of the Old Testament promises related to the future, but those people acted as if they were in the present tense. They simply took God at His word and lived on the basis of that. They were people of faith and faith gave substance to what was yet in the future.
Now we say then that faith is not sort of a wistful, longing, hoping that something's going to come to pass in a nebulous tomorrow, faith is an absolute utter certainty. And it's an interesting thing because you see it defies everything that is normal. For example, Christian hope, that, that which we hope for is belief in God against the world. If we follow the world's standards, the world's things, which are readily visible to us we can get some measure of comfort, some measure of prosperity. If we follow the standards of the unseen God, a God we've never seen, a God whose audible voice we've never heard, a Christ whose face we've never seen, a Christ whose form we've never touched, but if we follow Him we may have pain, we may have loss, we may have discomfort, we may have unpopularity, we may get persecuted and we may lose our lives, but we do it anyway because that for which we hope is given substance in the present tense because of the intensity of our faith. It is faith you see that says it's better to suffer with God now, knowing what shall be than to prosper with the world now. Faith then is faith against the system, against the world. In chapter 11 verse 6 er, verse 26 I mean, it says, that Moses, "Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt." You see Moses even then took a stand on Messianic hope, and forsook all the treasures of Egypt to be persecuted for a Messiah that wasn't going to come for several thousand years. Now that's a very unusual kind of hope. You say, well Moses was sure - wistfully longing, wasn't he? No, his hope was certain because you see he had such a positive hope in the future that it gave him an, an absolute substance in the presence ... in the present, he really believed and so there was a sense in which he actually understood in the present tense the reality of Messiah.
In the Book of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are ah, confronted with the choice of obeying Nebuchadnezzar. Now he's alive, and he's powerful and he's tangible. Or they could obey God who is invisible and whom they've never seen. Now if they don't obey the king they get thrown in the fire. Now the empiricist ... the empiricist says, ah it's no contest, I buy what I see, I'll bow down to the king and forget the fire. The man of God who has faith says, I'll obey God though I can't see Him and take the fire. So you see it's faith against the system, it's believing in God against the world, against what is tangible, against what is obvious. Take it a step further it's, it's, it's rejecting our senses for the sake of our hope. The average man says, take what you want, take what you can taste and touch and smell, grab whatever you can grab that meets the need of your senses. And the Bible says, don't believe your senses, believe God, who can only be touched by faith.
Long ago Epicurus who was responsible for the group of people known as the Epicureans said that the chief end of life is pleasure, that man only exists for pleasure. But he didn't mean what many people think, many people have ah, made him into a hedonist which he really was not. But he insisted that men take the long view. He said what we need to do is find out the thing which is most pleasant ultimately, not most pleasant momentarily because the one that is pleasant momentarily may bring the most pain ultimately. So Epicurus was right, he said, live for ultimate pleasure. Now the Christian is not a masochist quite the contrary, he's living for ultimate pleasure. I would rather suffer a little bit in this world and be glorified forever in the next, right? Plus it's not really such tough suffering anyway because it's in the presence of the Lord who's never apart from me. And that again is in 11:25, characteristic of Moses, "Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." You see this kind of hope in the future that gives pr ... practical substance in the presence mean ... present means, I go against the world, against my senses and against the present to lay all of my eggs in the basket of the future. But it's not a wistful longing, it's a certainty isn't it? We're not standing around in fear and trepidation saying, I hope this thing pans out. We know it will. That's faith.
Now you all have enjoyed things by faith. Well sure, you, you've had, you've had future things that you're hoping for that you enjoy in the present. Have you ever just enjoyed your vacation sometime in January when it wasn't until August, have you ever done that? You see yourself laying on that thing in the middle of the pool, soaking in that sun, or you see yourself up on that river in Colorado and you're throwing out that fly rod and you catch that 12 foot trout, do you see that? Do ya? You've all done it, we've all done that. When I was a little kid Christmas was more fun by faith than it was in actuality. We've all done ... we've all taken ... I took a trip to Israel by faith, long before I ever went there. I used to walk those hills all the time I was studying the Bible, did you know that? And I had never been there. Some of you anticipating a baby in your family? Have, have you by faith already enjoyed that baby? Has the thing hoped for become a present substance? Sure, of course. Some of you are ah, planning on moving into a new home, you're not quite there yet but in ... by faith you see everything arranged the way you want it, you see people coming in the door and saying, oh hello, what a lovely place you have, hum, you know, where's the food? You know ... and, right? Ha, ha. And by faith you're already enjoying in a present substance what is a future reality, do you understand? Now that's exactly what the writer of Hebrews is saying, faith is simply making a present substance out of a future reality. Do you know something? I've never been to heaven but I can't tell you how many hours I've spent walking the golden streets. I've been up and down that place, by faith. I've peeked through every possible prism in the walls of heaven. I've, I've spotted out all of those jewels that stud the city of heaven. I've gone by the gate of pearl and, and all the different ... there's many gates made out a pearl a piece, I've checked them all out. I've even sat on a cloud and played my harp, by faith. And I've flown all over the universe, by faith. You see that's a future reality but it has present substance by faith, do you understand? I believe it so strongly it's real to me. Remember Pavlov's dogs? When they... when he rang the bell they all began to salivate, because for a long time they'd rang ... they'd ring the bell and feed them immediately. And then all of a sudden they'd ring the bell and without feeding them they'd begin to salivate, by faith. The food's coming guys. You see faith is that ability to take what is in the future and give it present substance. And that's why the Bible says that we are seated in the heavenlies. I have already been in the kingdom too, and I've seen Jesus on the throne in Jerusalem, David's throne, and I've served Him there and I've served Him in heaven by faith. That's faith, it takes a future reality and gives it present substance. That's a gorgeous kind of commodity too, and boy there are some days when you couldn't live without it, right? That's faith. Faith then gives present substance to future hope.
Now the word substance is an interesting word, hupostasis, it ah, only appears two other times in Hebrews. Once it is used in chapter 1 verse 3 to speak of Christ as the very essence of the Father, the express image, substance or essence. Another time in chapter 3 verse 14 it speaks of a guarantee of assurance or a title deed. And, and that's exactly what substance is, it's, it's essence and it's assurance, that's how the word is used. Faith then provides the firm ground on which I stand waiting for the assurance of the fulfillment of the essence of God's promise. Faith believes God, banks on it, it's assurance that that which is promised has essence, content, reality. Romans 8:24, "For we are saved by hope." Watch, we're saved by hope, we, we know our salvation now only because we believe it to be true in the future, that is in terms of our glor ... the glorification end of salvation, going to be with the Lord. But what hope? "But hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man seeth, why doth lie yet hope for? But if we hope (that) for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it." If you really believe that the future that God's promised is for real then you'll patiently wait for it, you don't get upset, you don't get rattled, you don't get worried, you just wait for it, that's faith in a future reality, and it gives to it a present substance. Look at verse 13 of the same chapter, chapter 11, it talks about the time of Abraham and Sarah, it says this, "These all died in faith, not having received the promises but having seen them (what?) afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." You say, but they never saw heaven. Ohh, they saw heaven with the eye of faith, and they grabbed it and they embraced it, and said, hey we don't even belong here we're, we're just pilgrims we're going to a city whose Builder and Maker is God. That's faith, giving present reality, something to, to hold onto right now that is really in the future. The substance of things hoped for. So faith gives us a future object and a security, an assurance that holds us fast.
Secondly he says that faith is "the evidence of things not seen." Now as I say this is very closely akin to the first statement but let me see if I can maybe give it a little different twist of meaning. The word evidence is elencnos..which ah, elenchos which means ah, conviction, would be the best word I think. Faith is the conviction that the unseen exists. That's what he's saying. Now this takes a little bit further step in my mind than the first phrase, because this implies action. This is banking your life on your hope. Faith is living on the basis of things not seen. You know when Thomas touched our Lord or saw our Lord, He said to him, "Thomas, you have seen, and you have believed; blessed is he that hath not seen, (what?) yet believed." That's true faith. Faith then in the first phrase of verse 1 actualizes a future truth, in the second phrase it commits a life to it. It is the conviction of things not seen.
Let me show you the two sides of ... if I can illustrate this. Noah for example believed God. God said, Noah, it's going to rain. Which didn't mean one thing to Noah because rain didn't exist. That would be like God saying to you it's going to gleep. You'd say ah, run that by me again. It wouldn't make a bit of sense because it didn't have any meaning. Noah, it's going to rain, water dropping out of the sky. Now Noah believed that, it had substance in his brain. That thing for which God had made promise became a reality because he believed it. That's the first step. And I imagine that he sat around a lot just thinking in his mind, water out of heaven, hum, hum, hum, hum, I wonder how that'll work? I imagine he gave substance to the future thing, he gave it a present reality just by thinking about what rain would be like. It was the substance of things hoped for in his mind. But he didn't stop there, he built a boat. Now that's the conviction that takes it a step further. You see it was one thing to dream about what that rain might be like, it was something else to establish his life on it and for the better part of a hundred and twenty years build a ship in the desert. While everybody said, Mo ... Mo ... ah, Noah has gone bananas, he's over there building a ship in the middle of the desert, and then he says it's okay because it'll float, water will fall out of heaven and make it float. Now you see it's one thing to visualize a future reality and give it present substance, it's something else for a hundred and twenty years to build a boat in the desert. And faith is to begin with to believe it and then to bank your life on it. And boy I know, if I know anything about human nature that there were a lot of times during that better part of a hundred and twenty years that he said to himself, Noah, Noah, what are you doing? But he not only believed it he acted on it. And that's what we're going to see all through the 11th chapter, to believe and then to act, to believe something and to move out on it.
Now we believe a lot of things. And I trust that we believe God to the point where weld bank our life on it. But you know to the unbelieving world, to be able to bank your life on some invisible, spiritual future thing looks like the most preposterous thing imaginable. And people are always saying, oh you Christians, pie in the sky and the sweet by and by and all this, you know. You guys are out there believing all that stuff you can't even verify. That's right, and we go around saying, this world is not my home I'm just a passing through my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. And they say, you ... you don't even have your feet on the ground, what kind of a weird thing is that? What a way to live life. And the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 2:6, "And he has raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." And he says in chapter 1 verse 3, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies." And we're just moving around in another domain, you see, by faith and the world thinks that something's wrong with our heads. And we worship Him who is invisible, and we bank our lives on it. Now that's faith. But you see that's ... watch this, that's faith with spiritual content or that's faith placed in an unseen thing, that really has no visible verification. Now the natural man cannot comprehend that kind of spiritual faith. We see Him who is invisible but the unsaved man does not because he has no organ of perception.
There is a sense in which all men, as I've told you many times live by a natural kind of faith, for example they drink water coming o