Hebrews Lesson 175 October 1, 2009
NKJ Isaiah 40:31 But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.
Chapter 11 introduces us to the next section in the book of Hebrews. Section 5 focuses on - the main teaching is on the importance of confidence in God's Word and God's plan. That is really the import of the faith that is being talked about here - is a confidence and an orientation to our future destiny and the impact that it has on the way a believer lives during time. All of these examples that we see in chapter 11 focus on that. So chapter 11 gives us the teaching in relationship to the importance of doctrine, the importance of an ongoing walk by faith.
Then chapter 12 gives us our first exhortation, chapter 13 our second. So we'll get into the first verse here, a verse well known by many people - often thought of as a definition of faith, but really isn't a definition of faith itself, more of a description of its reality and significance in the life of the believer,
It begins by saying:
NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,
We'll have to stop and think about what that means a little bit.
the evidence of things not seen.
These two ideas are written in a way that they are parallel to one another and so they complement each other in bringing out a key idea related to the confidence, the certainty that doctrine has in the mind, the thinking of a believer. But first we have to understand this concept of faith.
So we ask a question - what is faith? Faith has various meanings in the Bible and we have to understand these in different contexts, different ideas. The main thing, the basic meaning of the word pistis in the Scripture for faith is just an understanding, that faith is understanding something and then accepting it to be true, understanding something and accepting it be true. That's a really basic definition. You can't believe something you don't understand. Now you may not understand whatever it is you're believing exhaustively or comprehensively. You may not come to fully understand all the nuances of what it is you're believing; but you can't believe something that you really don't understand. I've had people over the years listen to something that a pastor teaches.
They say, "Oh yeah. I believe that."
"Well, explain it to me."
…can't even come close.
How do you know that you believe it if you really don't understand what that statement meant? You can't believe something you don't understand. That's where you get into mysticism. So faith means it's thinking. It's not emotion. It is an intellectual process. You believe with your mind. You understand something; and then you decide whether or not it is true. Then you believe it to be true.
So we get into various verses on faith. I just want over about 5 or 6 verses on faith to begin with to just show some of the different ways that the Bible uses the word faith.
First of all Romans 10:17 is a very important passage. We don't need to look at the context because this represents a universal principle.
NKJ Romans 10:17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
So you have three parts here. You have faith, hearing and the Word of God. What that shows you is that faith is related to the Word of God. That is what we believe is something that comes from the Word of God. So it is related to something that is written or something that is stated.
Now this is going to get us into a discussion in a few minutes on something that some people really have a hard time understanding. I've sort of been surprised by some people, some pastors that I've talked to who got into this discussion. They don't really seem to understand this. That is that whatever happens when we believe something, we are ultimately, simply believing a proposition.
"Wait a minute!" you say. "I'm believing in the person of Jesus."
Have you ever met Him? Have you ever talked to Him? Did you meet Him on road somewhere? Did He come into your house? You've never met Jesus, not in that sense. You have only read what other people wrote about Jesus. The only way you know anything about Jesus is on the basis of certain historical accounts written in the Bible about Him. You are believing what they are telling you about Jesus. There is not a direct encounter with Jesus in that sense - not in the same sense that Peter was called by Jesus when he was coming in from a fishing trip one day, not in that same sense that the two disciples on the road to Emmaus recognized that this stranger they thought that they didn't recognize with them was actually Jesus. We've never had that kind of empirical encounter with Jesus Christ. We only know Him by virtue of the statements that are made in the Scripture. You believe those statements to be true.
Now that means as a result of that we enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ; but in a lot of cases when people talk about Christianity you'll hear folks say that, "Well, do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?" as if that's really important.
Judas had a personal relationship with Jesus. It didn't do him any good. See it's not about having a personal relationship with Jesus. It's about believing Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God who died on the cross as a substitute for us. So we'll get into parsing out some of that a little bit so you understand it a little more clearly. Don't think I've lost my mind.
So faith comes by hearing the Word of God. That's why you'll hear theologians (pastors) talk about the revelation of God as propositional truth. That is really an important statement. I remember hearing that before I went to seminary; and I really didn't understand that because I had no background in philosophy or logic at the time. And that's really a very important statement; and it means that a proposition in logic is any declarative sentence.
Remember back in this sixth or seventh grade when you learned that there were 4 different kinds of sentences.
- There were declarative sentences which described or told something about something. John went to the store. The car is red. These are declarative sentences.
- An imperative is to command - telling somebody to go to the store.
- Then you had interrogative sentences where you had a question.
- Then you had exclamatory sentences.
Those are your 4 basic kinds of sentences. Well, a declarative sentence is roughly a proposition. Jesus is God. It's either true or it's false. Jesus died on the cross for your sins. It's either true or it's false. God created the heavens and the earth in six days. It's either true or it's false.
A proposition is any statement that is either verified or falsified, not a question. A question (Who are you?), you can't prove that to be true or false. You can't take a command (Pray without ceasing.)- is that true or false? It's neither. It's a command. So a proposition is just a simple declarative sentence that can be proved to be truth or false. So you either believe it to be true or you believe it to be false but on some basis. There's got to be some reason to believe something is true or something is false. If there's a reason, that means that faith is rational and not irrational. So that means that it is the process of the mind. It's a process of intellectually apprehending or understandings something.
So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. We hear various statements made in the Word of God; and then we have an option to believe them or to reject them. That's one way of using faith. Faith is directed towards the Word of God.
Then Romans 14:23 we have a little different scenario. Now the context of Romans 14 talks about the weaker brother who has certain beliefs about what he can eat, what he shouldn't eat. Some things he could do; some things you shouldn't do that may not be necessarily true or accurate on the basis of Scripture. But it's been bred into him by his culture, background, friends or family, religious orientation - something like that. So he gets offended or upset when some Christian around him eats what he thinks they shouldn't eat or drinks what they shouldn't drink or does something he thinks they shouldn't do in the area of doubtful things or uncertain things.
So Paul states:
NKJ Romans 14:23 But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith;
Isn't that interesting? If you think it's wrong to eat pork and you haven't been taught differently. You haven't really come to understand grace yet – that there's no law. And, you eat pork and you're still not sure - you're condemned. That's sin. Why? Because your conscience is telling you that it's wrong and by eating it you're violating your conscience and you're setting a terrible precedent of ignoring your conscience. That's why it becomes wrong, and it sets that precedent. So later on when things really are wrong, you've already established a practice of self justification in choosing to violate your conscience. So it begins that process of desensitization and so that's why he says that - because he does eat from faith.
So, faith here is not the act of trusting as it is really talking about a body of truth, a body of doctrine. He hasn't been taught yet these principles related to dietary law; and so he's not making his decision from the position of strength, in other words a knowledge of doctrine.
Then Paul says:
for whatever is not from faith is sin.
Now if you look at that as just sort of an initial first blush analysis, you think that this sort of gives you a definition of faith. I thought that for awhile. I taught that for awhile, but that really doesn't fit the context. It's not really a good definition of faith because he's using faith here in this sense of that body of truth, that body of biblical teaching. So if it's not consistent with biblical teachings, then it's sin. That's what he's saying - not the act of trust, but the body of truth. If it's not based on the truth of Scripture, that body of teaching incorporated in the Scripture; then it's sin. You're violating scriptural teaching. So it's used for a general sense for what one believes.
Then we see another example of this same kind of usage in Romans 8:26. He says:
NKJ Romans 16:26 but now has been made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures has been made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith –
There with the article in front of faith, it has that same sense as a body of doctrine, a body of belief, a body of propositions – a doctrinal statement you might say, or a creed. Or, in older times they used to talk about a confession of faith. So you had various creeds that came out of various denominations. These were basically doctrinal statements that summarized the belief system of that denomination or that group. So obedience to the faith is obedience to a set group of propositions or belief statements.
This is used the same way in Galatians 1:23.
NKJ Galatians 1:23 But they were hearing only,
This is talking about the Jews (in Damascus or) in Jerusalem rather hearing about Paul's conversion.
"He who formerly persecuted us now preaches the faith which he once tried to destroy."
So see once again you have the use of the word "the faith" in terms of a set body of doctrine, a group of teachings that are related to a particular group.
Then Ephesians 4:5 uses it in the same kind of way.
NKJ Ephesians 4:5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism;
So all this is to show #1 that faith is related to the Word of God; and it's also used to summarize the body of doctrine that comes across in the Word of God. So it's not just the idea of simply believing or trusting. It also has to do with what is believed, what is trusted – that body of doctrine that informs a Christian as to who he is and what is destiny is.
Now having said all that, let's look at some basic points on faith. First of all we saw from Romans 10:17 that faith is a response to what is taught in the Bible - clear statements that are articulated in the Scripture.
NKJ John 20:31 but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.
"Jesus died on the cross as a substitute for your sins."
So it is related to the belief that Jesus is God, belief in the trinity, belief in various other doctrines. Faith is related to what is taught in the Bible.
Second, faith is an act of trust. That's basically what faith means. It means to trust in something or someone or it refers to a belief that something is true. So belief is an act of trust in something or someone or belief that something is true. Now when you are trusting in someone- I use that phrase because that's what you find in the Gospel of John, the verb pisteuo to believe plus the preposition eis plus the third person pronoun, him - believe in Him.
But how do we know who He is? We know who He is by the statements of Scripture, not by what you see but only on the evidence of what an eyewitness has said. So we're trusting in belief that something is true -that statements in Scripture are true. Those statements in the Scripture point us to a person that that's true; but we don't go directly to the person. We only believe in the person indirectly through those statements in Scripture. So it is an act of trust, an act of trust.
Now I remember when I was a kid in Sunday school (This is not unique to any one group of Christians.), but you often hear this that trust is believing that this chair will hold me. Now do I believe that chair will hold me? If I don't sit in that chair, do I still believe it will hold me? Yeah. But you know that such a common illustration people use in Sunday school. Trust means that you believe that chair will hold you, so you sit in it. But see, whether I sit in it or not, I still fully believe that chair will hold me up. Sitting in it is not necessary. That really starts to subtly introduce a second act of works into belief. You see that? I can believe it's true and there's not a shred of doubt in my mind that the chair will hold me. That doesn't mean I have to sit in it to prove it. Okay.
So faith is just the act of trust - belief that something is true.
Third, faith is an act of the intellect. It's not an act of the heart.
Some people say, "Well, they had a head belief and not a heart belief. It was just all intellectual."
Now there is a sense in which people may believe that the Bible teaches that Jesus is God and that the Bible teaches that if you believe in Him you'll have eternal life. Let me rephrase that. The New Testament teaches that Jesus is God and the New Testament teaches that if you believe in Jesus you'll go to heaven.
Michael Medved who is a news pundit (has a radio talk show) is Jewish. He's a very conservative Jew; and he does not believe that Jesus is the Messiah. But he believes that the New Testament teaches that Jesus is the Messiah and that the New Testament teaches that if you believe in Jesus alone you'll have eternal life. He's even corrected people who call in and express Christianity in terms of works or doing good.
He'll say, "No, no. That's not what Christianity teaches. The New Testament teaches there are no works involved."
Now he doesn't believe that; but he believes that's what the New Testament teaches. See there's a difference there. That's subtle. So a person can believe that the Bible teaches something but not believe what the Bible teaches. Okay. There's a difference. So some people get, you know, they hear the gospel all their life and they think; but they've never really made a personal - I believe Jesus is the Messiah.
I remember having a kid growing up at Camp Peniel, had been a camper of mine for several years.
One year at a spring camp he came up to me and he said, "Robby, I just really understood the gospel and I trusted Christ."
I said, "You've been a worker every summer. You've been coming to camp for years; and you're actively involved in youth group."
You know it just blew everybody away. His parents were saved; his brother was saved. Three months later he was killed in an automobile accident. It was really clear that he had – he was saved. He came to a point where he understood the gospel that it was about him believing that Jesus died for him.
So faith is it's an act of the intellect. It's understanding that this proposition is personal, that Jesus died for you and if you believe in Him and you will have eternal life. It's an act of the mind because we understand something and we believe. We don't believe with our emotions. Belief is not an emotion. Belief is not an act of some organ other than our brain. Our heart just pumps blood. We don't have a heart belief. But you'll hear people make that distinction that so and so just has an intellectual - they're so afraid that somebody is going to get too intellectual or too academic. So they want to introduce emotion to it. But, faith is not an emotion; it's not a feeling. And, faith does not mean commitment. You look it up in the dictionary. It doesn't mean commitment. You don't commit your life to Jesus. That's not what believing in Jesus means. It means believing and accepting that certain things are true about Jesus; and that it relates to you personally.
Also the fourth point, biblical faith is not faith in faith. It's not faith in itself. Faith is not a power. That's mysticism. That's also what you get in what's called the Word of Faith Movement that is a heretical movement that came out of the Pentecostal movement starting in the post-World War II period. That's very popular in a lot of the so called nondenominational churches. Back in the 60's, nondenominational and independent meant that you were not affiliated with a denomination. That got co-opted by a certain segment, initially by a certain segment of Pentecostal charismatic churches because they were getting kicked out of the Assemblies of God and they're being kicked out of the Pentecostal denominations because they were buying into the Word of Faith Movement which was declared heresy in the early 50's by the Assemblies of God. So these people got kicked out. So they started churches that taught this Word of Faith gospel, prosperity gospel. All of that was kind of mixed in and the name-it-and claim-it was part of the whole Word of Faith thing that faith was a power. That's why they started becoming independent churches because they were heretical, rightly seen as heretical by the major charismatic and Pentecostal denominations.
So faith is not faith in itself. We do not believe that faith per se has power - you just have to believe. Believe what? It's not just belief that has power. It's what is believed. It is the object of faith. So it is what is believed that is important, not the act of simply believing (not the act of faith.) That's what I mean by that.
So if you someone believes that Jesus died on the cross for their sins and their sins are fully paid for and the other person believes that if they believe that Jesus died for their sins and between what Christ did on the cross and baptism they're saved. Those are two different objects of faith. One of those people is saved and one of them isn't because of what they believe. One person it's faith plus works – it's Christ plus works; the other one it's Christ alone. So what is believed is what is important, not just simply believing.
From that we recognize that faith is something anyone can do whether you're a two year old infant, two year old child to a 95 year old senior. You can believe. You believe all kinds of things; you believe all kinds of contradictory things. We all do. We believe whatever we want to believe. We believe things about life that we wish it were a certain way. But we believe all of these things - sometimes with the evidence, sometimes without evidence. Sometimes it's just wishful thinking, but we believe all kinds of things. Faith is something anyone can do.
The act of faith in Jesus is only distinguished from all the other acts of faith by the object of faith, by what it is that we're believing in. We're believing in Jesus alone saves by virtue of His work on the cross.
So faith is something anyone can do. Saving face is saving not because it is a separate kind of faith, but because the faith is in the correct object - that is the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ alone.
Some people will say in Lordship salvation which is contradictory to grace will say there are some people who believe Jesus died for them; but it's not really saving faith. You can believe in Jesus and not be saved. Then they'll use a passage like John 2 where after Jesus performed many signs in the temple. He was confronted by the Pharisees.
He said, "If you tear down this temple I will raise it again in three days and perform many other signs."
It says there were many who believed in His name, pisteuo eis which is the same phraseology all the way through John as the condition for salvation - believe in Him. There are many believed in Him.
The next sentence says:
NKJ John 2:24 But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men,
So somebody will say, "See if were saved, if they really believed in Jesus, if they were really Christians, He would have trusted them."
Just because somebody is saved, you are going to trust them? Think that's going to make them a better cardiologist or a better dentist or a better car mechanic just because they're saved? No, they can be an out of fellowship, carnal, lazy worker who is trying to get patients on the fact that he's a Christian. There are people who do that. But that doesn't make them any better or any worse than anybody else.
So Jesus didn't trust Himself to those Jews because He knew they had a political agenda. They wanted to make Him the Messiah. They weren't educated enough beyond their salvation for Him to trust them. They still had the same old political agenda which wasn't His agenda so He wasn't going to entrust Himself to them. It didn't have anything to do with their justification stance.
Sixth point is that faith refers to a set of beliefs or a body of doctrine - what a person believes. So it's not just talking about faith in terms of what we would call phase one justification, what a person needs to believe in order to have eternal life. But faith also refers to that entire body of doctrine related to the spiritual life of the believer after salvation. So we have to distinguish in passages - is this talking about the kind of faith that's necessary to be justified before God or is this talking about faith in terms of how a justified believer lives now that he is saved? So we have to look at it this way. Point 6 focuses on the fact that faith often refers to that body of beliefs that is unique and distinct to Christianity.
So point 7, faith can either refer to phase 1 belief in Jesus as our substitute or it can refer to the phase 2 trust in the promise, the power, the provision and the procedures of Scripture that we follow in order to grow spiritually. Now that's important because when we get into Hebrews 11 here and we talk about by faith Abel, by faith Abraham, by faith Moses, by faith - are we talking about phase one justification faith or are we talking about some aspect of phase 2 spiritual life faith? It's very clear they're already justified. We're talking about phase 2 spiritual life sanctification faith.
So that is going to impact us because as we have studied so many times breaking it down in terms of the problem solving devices that really incorporates, encapsulates the basic struggle of the believer's life because we're all involved in a war.
From the instant you trust in Christ as Savior, you didn't know it; but you got drafted into the Lord's army and you're in a massive spiritual warfare and Satan's drawn a big target on your butt. No matter what you do until the day you die, that's the way it is. So you have two options – are you going to be a well-trained, well-prepared, mentally focused Christian soldier in spiritual warfare or are you going to be a lazy non-competent, just hoping somehow people don't see that you're hiding down in the trench somewhere. Okay, so the kind of faith that you need in order to be successful in spiritual combat is faith that is informed by the body of truth of Scripture, living on that basis.
So this is what we see under point 8, the faith in Hebrews 11:1f is more that phase 1; but refers to that collection of phase 2 beliefs that motivate and propel us forward in our spiritual growth and enable us to surmount the obstacles, the problems, the challenges that we face in life that when we're down, when we're discouraged, when we're tired and when we're weary; what enables us to get up and keep going? It's because we understand what the end goal is. We understand what the end result is. As long as we keep focused on the end result and where God is taking us and what the plan is; then we can handle whatever gets thrown at us between now and phase 3 and our promotion because we know it's designed by God to prepare us for our future with Him.
Okay, that takes us through a kind of an introductory orientation then to faith and to understand the basics in the discussion and debate today about what faith is all about.
Now one other thing we've ought to understand (just to bring it into our awareness) is that historically coming out of the Reformation period faith (especially in Reformed circles)… Now you know what I mean by Reformed circles. This is the branch of Protestant Christianity that traces its heritage back to the French and Swiss Reformation period. The French-Swiss Reformation was influenced by John Calvin out of Geneva and the German-Swiss by Ulrich Zwingli out of Zurich and Bollinger out of Basel – these areas. So that's Presbyterians, Congregationalists, many Anglicans (historical not present). These all came out of that Dutch Reform – the Huguenots, the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. All of these various groups were influenced by Calvinism all the way down to dispensationalism…Dallas Seminary because Dallas Seminary's heritage - Louis Sperry Chafer an ordained Southern Presbyterian evangelist. You had Scofield was a Congregational pastor (First congregational Church of Dallas which is now Schofield Memorial Church.) John Nelson Darby though he was Plymouth Brethren, he still had a lot of reformed doctrine in his thinking.
So in this stream of thought, faith was often defined as having 3 things. This is in the Latin, notitia, assensusandfiducia. Now I'm not smart enough to figure this out. Gordon Clark wrote a wonderful book (At least the first part of it's wonderful.) called What is Saving Faith. He never clearly defined what the content was by the end of the book; but he did a great job in the first half of the book of defining what faith was and what faith wasn't. He pointed out that there is a hidden redundancy in this definition. First of all you have understanding, notitia. We have to understand something about what we believe. Now when you're three years old you can only understand something about sin and Jesus and His death on the cross to a certain level; but that's enough at the level of a 3 year old. When you're twenty years old you can understand the meaning of those things at a different level. But you have to understand something about what it is that you are believing.
Now assensus means to assent to something as true, to agree that it's true. Now this is a lot of evangelicals stumble because at this point what they want to say that well, it's just intellectual. Well if it's not just intellectual with what else do you believe? Just think about it a minute. Do you believe with something else other than your mind? No! Okay, assent means to agree that something is true - not to agree that the Bible says it's true, but to agree that it is true. That goes back to the distinction I was making earlier - not simply to believe that the Bible says God created everything, but to believe to agree that – "Yes that is true." That's what agreement means.
I like to use the illustration. You know I'm not real good with numbers and I have never liked to balance a checkbook. When I would sit down and balance a checkbook and I would get the bank statement out and I would write down all the checks and add everything up. You know you cross reference your numbers so that when everything is said you've reconciled your checkbook. The number that the bank says is in the account equals the sum of what you worked through all the calculations. Now the way I do math, when those two numbers agree, then I quit. I rest. I put down the pencil.
I don't say, "Oh well. You know I must've made a mistake. These numbers agree."
I've thought that a few times because it's so rare that they do. But when they do agree, you rest. You don't keep working. You say, "This is true and I'm relying upon this to be true." That is what agree or assent to something being true actually means. To add trust to that is a redundancy because to agree that something is true means that you are saying it is true.
"I believe it's true."
So Gordon Clark in his work on What is Saving Faith? did a tremendous job. That was published the late 70's just as a lot of the battle over the free grace movement…Some of Zane Hodges works were just beginning to come out. When many of us read Gordon Clark's book, it was like somebody parted the skies and we could see straight to the throne of God. It was just such a blinding flash of the obvious that faith means to agree that something is true. But, the something that you're agreeing is true has to be in the statement that Scripture makes that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that He died on the cross for your sins. You have to believe that. So when you do, you rest. You quit working. You just rely upon Jesus as the one who He saves. So that is on how we should understand faith. Once you add another element of trust then it really did open the door historically to subtly bringing in sort of backdoor works and the whole perseverance concept of Lordship salvation into the equation.
So let's go back to our verse and look at how it begins.
NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is
Something…
NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance
…or the evidence,
NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for
There are various ways to translate this. It's an interesting word and here we go up on the screen, a word you will think sounds familiar. It's a Greek word hupostasis where we get our English word – we talk about the hypostatic union. The hypostatic union refers to the union of two essences or two substances in the one person of Jesus Christ, 100% deity, 100% humanity united together in one person. So it's the union of two substances or two essences. So that's the idea of hupostasis. So it has a wide range of meanings though. It can mean a substantial nature.
Now if you haven't had philosophy and you haven't studied Aristotle, you may not catch all the nuances of the word substance when it comes to Greek thought. In Aristotle's thought you had two things. You had substance, and you had attributes. Attributes were things like color and size and temperature and height and width. All of those things are really the attributes. So you look at one of these chairs and its attributes are that it's about three feet high and about twenty inches from front to back and about 20 to 24 inches wide. It has four legs and metal. All those things have to do with attributes. But you can't the substance. All you can see are attributes. The substance is this thing that's somewhere in there that makes it a chair. It's almost invisible and then these attributes are packed on it and that's what makes it visible. So that idea of substantial nature really refers to the essence of the thing.
And guess what we ran into this same word back at the beginning of Hebrews 1:1 talking about Jesus being the hupostasis of the Father. He has the essential deity of the Father. So is refers to substantial nature, substance, essence or actual being.
Then the second meaning is that it refers to confidence, conviction or steadfastness. That's the idea in the way in which it is used here in 11:1. So faith is confidence. It's not just substance. That's the idea for the foundation of something. That's sort of this imperceptible thing that lies behind the attributes. But faith is the confidence, the conviction, the steadfastness of something. The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology states that one of the meanings is confidence, expectation - see that brings in the idea of hope that we'll see here in the next word. Confident trust in what is hoped for; another meaning is the idea of a pledge or security, a guarantee, an assurance. One writer thinks that it ought to be translated that faith is the guarantee of what is hoped for and I'm not sure that's right nuance there. It has more the idea that faith is that which reflects the absolute certainty within a believer's soul, his core convictions, and certainty of absolute reality that what God has promised will be fulfilled. In other words the promise of God becomes more real to the believer than any experience or anything else. God's Word is absolute truth. There's this settled certain conviction that goes to the core of your being, the foundation of your person. That would express the idea that faith is a confidence. Faith is the confidence of things hoped for.
Now just before we move on from…finish confidence, let's think about how we know some things. We know some things are true because we can reason to them and we believe our reasoning is valid. Think of Descartes' statement, "I think therefore I am."; solid reasoning. Because I'm thinking, that means there's something going on there inside my head of some sort. There is self consciousness there and if there's self consciousness that means I must exist for me to have this self-awareness of thought. So we know that's true. But not everything we think can be true. We can be self deceived. There can be other problems. That was one of the things Descartes thought through – "maybe I'm just deceived in all this. But no, because I'm thinking whether it's right or wrong just the very act of thought means I exist." But we're believing ultimately behind the act of reason, we're believing that I can have I have faith in my rational capabilities to come to some measure of truth.
Other things we know because we experienced them. We believe our senses tell us the truth and we can actually interpret the data. We can tell the difference between hot and cold unless of course you put your hand on dry ice for about thirty seconds and then you put it on something hot. It's not going to necessarily feel hot. So you have these various things that can confuse your senses. But behind that it's not just that we have experienced something, but we believe that our interpretation is correct. So faith lies behind that.
When somebody tells us - I don't go outside; and you come running in and say, "You know, it is raining out there." Or you come running in and say there's a tornado out there. Okay, let's get down. I don't have to run to the front door and look out there to see the tornado. I am believing that you are honest and trustworthy and what you say is reliable. So I am believing the authority of your pronouncement.
That is comparable to what we do in the Christian life. We have the eyewitness account of God and we're believing that eyewitness account. We have the eyewitness account of the disciples. We're believing their eyewitness account - that is true. And so we believe that. And so we have absolute confidence in that. Faith then is the confidence of our hope - of what is hoped for literally, not the things hoped for but what is hoped for. What is hoped for casts us forward. That confident expectation – it looks to a future destiny. As I often say, it's not a sort of wishful optimism that I hope we get a cool front that actually cool things down the next few days (probably won't, but it's wishful optimism) to I hope that I will get to heaven. Well, that's a certainty. I have a confident expectation. Now hope is a major theme that we have seen all the way through Hebrews. Hebrews 3:6 says:
NKJ Hebrews 3:6 but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence
Different word for confidence.
and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end.
In other words, if we live without giving up our future expectation.
NKJ Hebrews 6:11 And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end,
NKJ Hebrews 6:18 that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.
All these are talking about this confident expectation of our future destiny.
NKJ Hebrews 7:19 for the law made nothing perfect; on the other hand, there is the bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God.
NKJ Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.
So hope is a key theme throughout this epistle that we need to focus on that eternal destiny and the certainty of it. So faith in the believer is a confidence, a certainty in what is hoped for. We are certain of what our destiny is. So that is going to impact how we live today because we know where God is taking us. We know what the future holds. We know what the plan is. We live today in light of eternity.
Now the second half of this says that faith is the evidence of things not seen, the evidence of things not seen.
NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Now that brings in this word elegchos. Sometimes this word is used of conviction. To convict a criminal in court means to present what? Enough evidence. Now there's that word evidence again. We just ran into that in relationship to substance. Faith is the evidence or the substance of things hoped for. Some translations will put it that way that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. That's how elegchos is translated here, as the act of presenting evidence that something is true.
So faith is a certain conviction that something is true. We agree that it's true and now we're saying again in a different way. It is the evidence of something that is true, the evidence of something that is true. It is not the truth itself; it is the evidence that something is true.
Now what is evidence? Think about that. What is evidence? Look it up in a dictionary. Evidence is a sign or an indication of something else. So if you walk into an apartment somewhere and you see about two gallons of blood on the floor. There's evidence that somebody's dead. You don't see the body, but you see the evidence. That can only mean that someone has died; someone has exsanguinated and they are no longer alive. So it's a sign or an indication of something else. So you have a believer who has to settled conviction in God, that what the Scripture says is true. That is evidence of something else. It's evidence of something that is not seen, something that is yet future, something that is invisible. So faith is the conviction, the evidence of something that is unseen.
Now another thing that we can say about the evidence is that it's something that bears witness to something else so that if you go to a crime scene and your DNA is at the crime scene then that means you were there. It doesn't mean you've killed them. It might, but you see your DNA is there, your fingerprints are there. That's evidence that you were there. It witnesses to something.
Look at the next verse to see where we're coming from.
NKJ Hebrews 11:2 For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.
..the New King James says.
The verb there is martureo where we get out English word martyr which relates to giving a testimony or being a witness to something. So you see how these words all are connecting together. We have faith is the evidence. It bears witness to something in another way of saying it. It bears witness to something. So what the writer is saying here is that a person's beliefs, the body of beliefs that informs a person's present decisions because the future is as certain of them as if it was already in the past. So that's what he's talking about is this body of belief that a person has that determins their present decisions because as far as they're concerned the future destiny with God is more real to them than it would be if it was already past.
So God's Word becomes more sure and certain to us than anything in our experience and so we can face persecution. You can face the loss of your job. You can face the loss (the death) of loved ones. You can face any situation in life because your relationship to God is more real to you by virtue of your understanding and knowledge and belief in Scripture than anything else.
So this is the point in this first verse. It states a very strong principle of faith that these victorious believers had is the substance of things hoped for. It tells you about what they're looking for and it is the evidence of things not seen. So we'll learn something from them.
Then in verse 2 we have:
NKJ Hebrews 11:2 For by it
Which is faith because we have a feminine demonstrative pronoun here that refers back to the feminine of pistis in the first verse.
the elders obtained a good testimony.
That's really a bad translation. It is really poor because it indicates that the elders received somebody else's testimony. I mean it's just very confusing. Actually in the Greek text it's very similar. It says, "In this the elders ( hoi presbuteroi)."
Then you have one verb from the aorist passive of the verb martureo. Martureo means to confirm or to attest to something. It has to do with evidence again. Didn't we just talk about that? To confirm or attest something on the basis of personal knowledge or belief, to bear witness to something or to be a witness. What is awkward in translating this is martureo means to give a testimony, to be a witness, to witness. Those are all active voice senses of the verb. But when you have it in the passive form that means the subject (the elders) receive the action of the verb. That's just an awkward thing to express. So we have to come to an understanding of the basic meaning of the word.
The basic idea there as I just took that dictionary definition straight out of Bauer Art Gingrich means to confirm or attest to something. So the elders meaning our spiritual ancestors were attested, were confirmed. They were evidenced you might say, although that doesn't make a lot of sense in the English, but you get the drift. They were evidenced by faith. In other words their faith is what was seen.
What wasn't seen which is what's missing from this verse is the core convictions of their soul, the certainty of what God promised them. That's what's not seen. And that faith is the witness to that. The faith is the evidence of that and the faith is the means by which they give evidence of their certain conviction of God's plan and purpose for their life and the promise.
So as I put it down at the bottom, the elders are our spiritual ancestors, the Old Testament heroes. The future hope, the certainty of their future hope was attested or confirmed by their faith. But it doesn't say the "certainty of their hope" within the text. But it's supplied or implied by the context with the previous verse.
So that brings us to verse 3. Now verse 3 is the first in a series of doctrinal beliefs or persons in the Old Testament running through the chronology of the Old Testament to talk about the importance of what we believe, the body of belief. The first thing is creation. How about that! Creation and this whole argument with creation and evolution isn't just some distraction that some people want to think it is. Creation isn't just something… "Well, that's what those Old Testament believers believed because they didn't have modern science."
What this is saying at the very foundation starting point of that body of beliefs that is going to inform your thinking about your future destiny is understanding the past. If you don't have a good understanding of God's creative actions in Genesis 1 with a literal Genesis; then how can you have a literal revelation, a literal future? If you can't believe what God said about the past, how can you believe what God said about the future? In other words if you don't have a good protology, you can't have a good eschatology. If you don't have a good beginning; you're not going to have a good end. The two go together. If you screw up Genesis, you're going to screw up Revelation. If you screw up Revelation, you'll screw up Genesis. So we have a starting point there.
In verse 3 we read:
NKJ Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
The verb there is noeo from the noun nous meaning the mind. So faith again (as I pointed out already) is an act of thinking, an act of intellection – not emotion, not feeling. Noeo means to grasp or comprehend something on the basis of careful thought. So by faith we come to understand. Faith is knowledge.
It's not like Bertram Russell says that faith is an irrational belief in something. It contradicts itself. Faith is rational. Faith is understanding something on the basis of careful thought. It means to perceive, to apprehend, to understand, to gain an insight into something, to think something over with care, to consider it. That's the idea of understanding. So faith is based on thought. That's why we analyze Scripture so we can come to a better understanding of what we believe.
We'll stop there and we'll come back pick up verse 3 next time dealing with the object of our understanding that the worlds were framed by the Word of God. So, we'll start with that.
Illustrations