I. Introduction
-- turn in Bibles to Hebrews 11:1
Now
faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
-- In December of 2016, a ride at
Knott's Berry Farm in California malfunctioned and 20 people -- including seven
children -- were stranded 148 feet in the air -- a local fire crew responded to
the emergency and tried to reach the stranded passengers by using a massive
ladder, but it was too short -- they could not reach them -- they quickly
realized they had no other choice -- they would have to lower each passenger
from 148 feet in the air, harnessed to a single rope.
-- Fire Captain Larry Kurtz spoke to
the people and told them what was going on -- he said, "It sounds scary,
but … we have very, very strong ropes that have 9,000 pounds of breaking
strength on them. -- you’ll be okay" -- He was building the faith of those
who were trapped -- He was giving them information that would dissipate their
fears if they would believe -- It was up to each person to believe what he said
and place their trust in the firefighter
-- now consider what this would feel
like to the kids who were on this ride -- Ray Comfort tells the story of one of
the youngsters on the ride, a boy named Luke -- He's seven years old—old enough
to feel terror as he looks at the ground 148 feet below -- he’s holding on to
the ride with a death grip, refusing to let go -- but the firefighter who was
working to free them looked Luke in his eyes, and with a steadying voice said,
"Trust me, Luke. I won't let you go. Your life is very precious to me, and
I will have you down before you know it."
-- Luke listened to him and thought
about the "very, very strong rope." -- He believed the firefighter's
reassuring words and trusted him completely -- he knows that this is his only
hope of getting to safety -- he put his hope and trust in the firefighter and
believed that everything he had been told was true -- and, so, in faith, Luke
lets the firefighter strap him into the harness and lower him to the ground
safely, just like all the other people who had been trapped on the ride1
-- this morning, I want to talk
about faith -- what it is -- and what it is not -- faith is such a common word,
but it is frequently misunderstood or misapplied -- when someone talks about
faith, their understanding of what faith means may not be the same as yours --
and it may not be what the Bible means when it uses the word
-- Voltaire once said, “If you would
converse with me, define your terms” -- we can be using the same word as
someone else, but have entirely different meanings -- I ran into this problem
when I first started dating Kim
-- one time, I told her I would be
over to pick her up at dinner -- but when I got there, she wasn’t at her
trailer -- it was locked up tight -- no one there -- so, I got a little ticked
-- the next day, when I saw Kim, I
learned the difference between someone being a little ticked and someone being
very angry, because Kim was angry -- she said I stood her up -- she had been
waiting for me to pick her up for dinner, and I never showed up
-- you see, growing up down here, I
had learned to use the term dinner to mean the midday meal -- lunch -- Kim used
the term for the evening meal -- we were using the same word, but each of us
had a different understanding of what it meant -- so, now I try to just use
lunch and supper instead of dinner so we don’t have that problem again
-- but this illustrates the problem
we have with the word faith -- when someone tells you they have faith, the way
they define the word may not be the way you define it -- and it may not be the
way the Bible defines it, either
-- that’s why Paul Tillich wrote “There
is hardly a word in the religious language, both theological and popular, which
is subject to more misunderstandings, distortions, and questionable definitions
than the word ‘faith’.”2
-- so, with that said, let’s talk
about what faith is and what faith isn’t -- and let’s make sure we are all on
the same page before we leave here today
II. Defining Faith
-- so, what is faith?
-- a lot of people will tell you
that faith is synonymous with believing -- that faith is just believing in God
or believing in Jesus -- on other words, if you know that there is a God and
believe that this is true, that is faith
-- but the Bible says otherwise --
in James 2:19, we read, “you believe there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and
shudder.” -- so, James tells us that the demons believe in God, but certainly
they do not have faith in Him
-- faith is more than just knowledge
-- faith is more than the acceptance of proven facts -- faith is more than just
believing in something based on knowledge and facts alone
-- this is something that the
Pharisees and the teachers of the Law struggled with in the gospel accounts --
the Pharisees knew their Bibles -- they had studied the Scriptures -- they
could recite entire books from the Torah -- they knew the commentaries -- they
knew the interpretations -- they knew all about
the scriptures -- but they were only filled with head knowledge
-- in John 5:39, Jesus told them, “You
diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess
eternal life.” -- in other words, they were putting their faith in words -- in
knowledge -- they assumed that by believing the Scriptures to be true, they
were saved -- but Jesus went on to tell them in verse 40, “These are the
Scriptures that testify about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me to have life”
-- faith is more than just believing
a fact with your head -- it’s more than the certainty that something is true --
to believe means that you do more than just know -- you know and you act on
your knowledge -- you put your trust in it -- as Jesus told the Pharisees, you
have learned about Me in the Scriptures, but you must believe and come to Me to
have life -- knowledge is not enough
-- faith is the next step after
knowledge -- that’s why the dictionary definition of faith includes the word, “trust”
-- it says that faith is complete trust or confidence in something or someone
-- faith is moving facts from your
head to your heart and putting your life in the hands of the One in which we
believe
-- that’s why the demons don’t have
faith -- they know God is real -- they have seen God -- they have seen Jesus --
they witnessed the cross and the resurrection -- but they are not trusting in
Jesus for salvation -- they only have head knowledge -- they only believe in
the facts -- they don’t have faith
-- if I was to ask the question,
“what is faith?” in a Bible study, someone in there will always respond with
Hebrews 11:1 -- read that with me again
Now
faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
-- but that’s not really the
definition of faith -- it is more an illustration of what faith looks like in
the life of a believer
-- to understand what true Biblical
faith is we have to look back just a little in this book to the verses right
before this -- remember that the chapters and the verses in your Bible were
added later -- and sometimes these divisions can lead us to read out of context
and miss the big picture of what is being said
-- if you go back to the verses
immediately before Chapter 11, you will see that the writer of Hebrews is
trying to encourage his readers in the face of the persecution that the church
is experiencing -- this persecution had caused many to doubt and to turn back
and deny their salvation, leaving the rest to question their very salvation
-- I’m not going to read this whole
passage to you this morning for the sake of time -- but I would encourage you
to go home and do so -- but I wanted to skim through Hebrews 10:19-39 quickly
and point out a couple of key words in there that help us define faith
-- the first of these is confidence
-- the feeling that we can trust or rely on someone or something -- in verse
19, we read, “since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by
the blood of Jesus” -- and in verse 35, he says, “so do not throw
away your confidence” -- so, faith includes confidence -- trust in what
Jesus has done
-- the next key word we see is hope
-- a feeling of expectation or a desire for a certain thing to happen -- it is
a belief in a future promise -- the writer says in verse 23, “let us hold
unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised it is faithful”
-- the next key word is perseverance
-- staying the course -- keeping on, keeping on -- in verse 36 it says, “you
need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive
what He has promised”
-- and, the final key word is in
verse 39 -- believe -- “but we are not of those who shrink back and are
destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved”
-- and then we come to Hebrews 11:1
-- the verse that everyone quotes as the definition of faith
-- the writer begins this verse with
the word, “now” -- which means, based on what I have just told
you in Hebrews 10:19-39 -- going back to verse 39, “we are those who believe
and are saved -- we have faith because faith is being sure of what we hope for
and certain of what we do not see”
-- what he is saying is that when we
stand firm in confidence and trust in Jesus Christ -- having assurance
and hope in the promises that we have in Him -- eternal life -- the
forgiveness of sins -- our salvation -- persevering and continuing to believe
and be certain of what we do not see -- that is faith
-- knowing God -- trusting God --
believing in God and His promises -- and acting in confidence and assurance and
certainty on those beliefs -- that is true biblical faith -- that is the faith
of salvation
-- as Charles Finney put it, “faith
consist[s] not in an intellectual conviction that the things affirmed in the
Bible about Christ are true, but in the heart’s trust in the person of Christ”
III. Faith over Fear
-- before we close and leave this
topic of faith, I wanted to quickly address a phrase that you have probably
been seeing a lot of recently -- “Faith Over Fear”
-- even though the phrase came out a
few years ago and we started seeing it on t-shirts and bumper stickers and
Facebook posts, it has taken on a new life in light of the coronavirus pandemic
-- and going back to Voltaire, I
think it’s important for us to understand what is meant when we say we have
“Faith over Fear”
-- to say that we have faith over
fear means that we are putting our confidence and trust in the person of Jesus
Christ -- in the promises we have in Him through His death and resurrection
-- it means that we are not going to
be led by fear, but we will step out and live our lives based on our heart’s
trust in the person of Christ
-- now, some have taken this phrase
during this pandemic and put forth a false interpretation of what faith over
fear means -- as Raven Jenkins pointed out in an article called, “What it Really
Means to Have ‘Faith Over Fear’,” “There are a number of religious leaders
claiming that following the rules and regulations is a sign of ‘a lack of
faith’. -- That somehow you don’t actually believe that God is going to deliver
us from the crisis and that you’re letting the media, government, etc.
influence you.”
-- it’s like what we saw with the
pastor of the church in Tampa who refused to stop face-to-face worship services
when the state of Florida issued shut-down orders earlier this year -- he said
that the state was trying to take away their constitutional rights to gather
for worship and that they believed and trusted in God in faith during this
pandemic -- but that was a misinterpretation of what the Bible means by faith
-- “Faith over Fear does not mean
that you blatantly disregard common-sense practices: washing your hands,
coughing into your elbow/sleeve, avoiding excessive physical contact with
others, etc. -- It does not mean that you blatantly ignore regulations that are
supposed to keep your congregation safe in order to “prove God”. -- People like
this tend to be more about their own pride, rather than the glory of God.”
-- that would be like me telling you
today that we were going to go up on the roof after the service and that each
of us would step off the roof, trusting in faith that God was going to keep us
safe -- or that I had a box of rattlesnakes up here and I was going to pass
them out, and your faith needed to be stronger than your fear -- that if you
have faith, you won’t get bitten and die
-- now, based on what we looked at
in Hebrews and the definition of faith we see in the Bible, do you believe
that? -- do you believe that God will protect us from all harm if we climb up
on the roof and step off?
-- faith is trusting in the person
of Jesus Christ with the assurance and certainty that the promises we have in
Him will come true, right? -- being sure of what we hope for and certain of
what we do not see
-- where in the Bible is the promise
that God will keep us from harm if we step off a church steeple? -- where in
the Bible is the promise that God will keep us from getting sick or dying? --
it’s not there
-- our faith is in Jesus Christ and the
promises of God that we have in the Bible -- in salvation -- in eternity -- in
eternal life with Him -- those are what is promised to us -- not complete
immunity in the midst of a pandemic or protection when we do stupid stuff --
that’s not faith -- that’s an illusion of faith -- that is a prideful testing
of God and His grace
-- so, faith over fear is something
we can proclaim -- for we trust in God and His promises -- we know the risks --
we know that God is with us -- and we know that our future and our eternity is
secure based on His promises -- we can be led by faith instead of fear -- but
that doesn’t mean that we won’t get sick or hurt or die, for faith and the
promises of God are beyond this mortal plane -- faith looks to the eternity to
come
-- I’ve gone on long enough -- let
me bring this to a close by sharing with you the story of John Paton, who was
translating the Bible for a South Seas island tribe -- Paton discovered that
the natives had no word for trust or faith -- and, so he was having a hard time
getting them to understand the concept.
-- One day a native who had been
working hard came into the missionary’s house, flopped himself into a large
comfortable chair and said, "It’s good to rest my whole weight on this
chair."
-- This became a revelation to
Paton. "That’s it," he said. "I’ll translate faith as ’resting
one’s whole weight on God.’"
-- When we believe in God the way
the Bible tells us to, we are indeed resting our whole weight on Him -- we are
trusting in Him and His promises with more than just facts, but by putting our
whole life and our eternity in His hands
-- we are those who believe and are
saved when we are sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see --
when we believe in God with all our heart and our soul and our strength and our
being and give ourselves completely over to Him
-- let us leave here now -- putting
our faith over fear -- trusting in God for our salvation -- and knowing Him as
our Lord and our Savior
-- for it is in faith that we gather
and close in prayer
1
Modified from Ray Comfort, The Final Curtain (New Leaf Press, 2018), pg.
199-200
2
Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper & Row, 1957) as cited in
the sermon, Faith, by Tony Grant --
https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/faith-tony-grant-sermon-on-faith-general-84494?ref=SermonSerps
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