Faith & The Example of Creation

Hebrews 11 | Vintage Faith | 11:1-3 | Pastor Duane Smets

This an exegetical sermon of Hebrews 11:1-1 which addresses the place of chapter 11 in the book of Hebrews, the importance of Christian heritage and tradition, what is not biblical faith and what is, and how God creating the world out of nothing is an essential and foundational point of the Christian worldview. Special attention is given to the gospel in how the same word and power of God which spoke the world into being is the one which speaks new life into believers. This sermon was originally preached on Sepetember 11th, 2011 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.

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The Resolved Church
Pastor Duane Smets
September 11th, 2011

Vintage Faith | A Sermon Series From Hebrews 11
Faith & The Example of Creation | 1:1-3

I. Hebrews & Hebrews 11 (v1)
II. Those Who Have Gone Before (v2)
III. What Is And Isn’t Faith (v1,3)
IV. Creation Ex Nihilo (v3)

Introduction

This morning we embark on new sermon series here at The Resolved Church which will take us through this fall until Christmas time. What we’re going to be doing is working through Hebrews 11, just one chapter of the Bible.

It’s a phenomenal chapter that has been much loved and appreciated by Christians throughout the years because of its chronicling of real people and real life situations and how they walked with God and held onto his promises by faith. Sixteen different people, thirteen specific stories, whose lives, though most of them lived like over 3,000 years ago…still speak with amazing power, truth and clarity.

We’re calling this series, “Vintage Faith.” The dictionary says vintage means “something of high quality, especially something from the past, like wine of high quality or a characteristic of the best period of a person’s work.” It’s our prayer that through our study of this amazing chapter over the next couple months that God will use it to help us develop the high quality kind of faith these people had that we read about here in Hebrews 11.

Today is sort of an introduction to the chapter, so we’re just looking at the first three verses which set the tone for the entire thing. So let me go ahead and read these verses and pray over ‘em and we’ll jump in. Hebrews 11. If you’re new to the Bible and you’re not using some digital form of it, the book of Hebrews is actually just two pages after Titus, the last book of the Bible we worked through at The Resolved. It’s a pretty easy book to find because it’s one of the bigger books in the New Testament.

Okay, here we go, Hebrews 11:1-3 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.” Let’s pray.

I. Hebrews & Hebrews 11 (v1)

Alright, so the first thing I want to do this morning is tell you a little bit about the book of Hebrews and how chapter 11 fits within it. Context is very important when you’re reading the Bible, what comes before and what comes after the things you read. It’s the number one way you can better understand what the Bible is saying.

It’s become so common to do what I call roulette reading, where you just opening to a page and read a random few lines and then try and make sense of out. You just can’t because you looking at words and sentences that fit with things which come before and after and so much of the time if you don’t look at those things you can easily take that single sentence or verse and come up with a meaning that has nothing to do with what’s actually being said.

For example, say you just randomly open up the Bible and say you end up on Matthew 27:5 “Judas went and hanged himself.” That doesn’t sound so good. So you roulette again and this time end up with Luke 10:37 with Jesus saying, “You go and do likewise.” No good. That’s a bad way to read the Bible.

So the book of Hebrews. The book as a whole is just beautiful, panoramic and poetic account of God’s work in the world from the start at creation, throughout the whole history of God’s people and into the age of the church unto a excited anticipation of the future. It starts at heaven, moves to earth and then ends looking to heaven again. And throughout the whole thing, in the entire book…Jesus, his person and his work on the cross is unpacked with amazing detail in how it relates to everything.

There’s not another book in the Bible that specifically walks you through all of the Bible in showing how everything in it and everything in this world points to Jesus and is all about him. It’s just incredible. If you’ve never read through the whole book, you ought to just sit down and read through the entire book of Hebrews. It would probably only take you about 30-45 minutes. I did it about a month ago and it is just breathtaking.

Okay, here’s what’s up with chapter 11, how it fits in and why we wanted to take this season and preach and teach through it. If you look at the first verse, how does it start out? It says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for…etc.” Notice that word, “now.” That’s a transition word. In fact, many people have noted that the book of Hebrews actually kind of reads like a sermon and may very well be a recorded sermon manuscript.

What the word “now” is doing here is setting off a digression, sort of a long side note. The reason is because the author has just said something huge about faith in chapter 10 but he realizes the word “faith” can easily be misread and misunderstood and really mislived. Chapter 11 really is the author’s way of saying, “now let me tell you what faith is and how it ought to work itself out in your life.”

So look just for a second with me at what he said about faith in chapter 10. The first half of chapter 10 talks about Jesus sacrifice on the cross and how it provides for forgiveness of sin. The second half of chapter 10 mainly talks about some problems people were having.

In verse 22 some were calling themselves Christians, confessing it, but not really living it out.

In verse 25 some had been a part of the church, but had started slacking off getting in a habit of missing the worship service all the time.

In verses 32 & 33 some had come upon some hard times, some suffering and because of it we’re beginning to give up God.

In verses 34 some had started making their lives all about seeking jobs and money and positions and possessions in this world instead of reaching out to and serving others.

The whole thing climaxes in this crescendo at the end of chapter 10 in verses 37-39, which basically say NO! Don’t do those things. Jesus is better, living life for him is more pleasure and he is coming, he will come…so don’t give up. Actually let me read those verses for you.

Chapter 10, verses 37-39, “Yet a little while and The Coming One (that’s Jesus!) will come and will not delay; but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.”

So you get it? Hebrews 10 brings up some issues about how people who said they had faith were not living like they actually did! So it says, “live by faith” find “pleasure” in that because Jesus is coming and if you don’t you’re going to destroy your soul.

“Now” insert chapter 11…an unpacking of what faith actually is and what it ought to look like in life. You see, if you don’t get that…chapter 10 and how it ends, you completely miss out on that the faith which is described in chapter 11 is the justifying or righteous-ifying faith which looks to and has pleasure in Jesus and his coming. That’s the kind of faith chapter 11 is talking about.

In fact chapter 11 is basically sandwiched in between these two great statements about faith in Jesus. Chapter 10 ends with Jesus coming. Chapter 12 starts with encouragement to look to Jesus who it says is “currently seated at the right hand of the throne of God (12:2).”

So many have missed that and because of that when they have come to Hebrews 11 they’ve just looked at the individuals it talks about as moral examples and failed to see that the whole point Hebrews is trying to make is to have the kind of faith which puts faith in Christ. We’ll get into that more later on. For now just get these bits, because they’re the reason we wanted to do this chapter.

We’re seeing a number of people become Christians in our church, new believers. It’s exciting. People really getting the gospel for the first time. And what we want to see is the transition to living it out. Not just confessing Christ but living for him.

We want to see the love and commitment to this church grow. We want to see us as Christians grow in our depth and maturity so that we’re able to handle it when things don’t go great, when suffering strikes. We want to us increasingly become a people who are serving others and reaching out to them, seeking the city that is to come rather than building our own personal little kingdoms.

Plus, on top of it, the Bible really is new for many of you and by going through this chapter we get to survey some of the great stories from some of the foundational figures of the Bible. We want their faith, the vintage faith. So join in with us. If you’re not yet regular, make a commitment in yourself for the next three months that you’re going to be here each week and study through this chapter with us. If you are regular already my challenge for you is come each week and look at these characters and work to figure out how you can go deeper in your faith and become like these people. Start working now on the kind of legacy you will leave with your life.

Some of you are Christians but there’s just not a lot of depth to you yet. Have God form that in you. Some of you are not yet Christians and you need to hear this stuff and see what God has done in people’s lives of the past because he wants to do it in you…and he will if you have him.

II. Those Who Have Gone Before (v2)

Alright, that’s a lot of set up for this series. Let’s move on to our second main point in our outline for today, “Those Who Have Gone Before.” I’ve already said a bunch about the characters in this chapter and we don’t even get into a character today…so I’m not really going to saying anything else about that. But what I do want us to look at is this principle we pick up on here in verse 2. Look at it. Verse 2 says, “For by it (faith) the people of old received their commendation.”

Throughout the book of Hebrews there is a repeated theme which comes up of looking to those who have gone before and it refers to them in several different ways. Here we have “people of old.” Not old people, “people of old.” Some translations have elders, some have ancients, and some have men of old.

In Hebrews 13:7 we have one of my favorite verses. It says, “Consider your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” You could almost put that at the top of our chapter to title and introduce it.

Two things on this, what looking to those who have gone before does for us. One, it points us to something bigger than ourselves. Being a Christian is not just his personal spiritual thing. In being a Christian you are entering into a long line of those who have walked down the same path you are traveling on. You are entering into a family of believers that goes back a long long way.

That’s big. We live in such a fragmented society. Where we’re often detached and unconnected and ungrounded to anything. There’s nothing or no one that hold us. In Christianity you become enveloped in a rich history of treasured stories, traditions, characters and events which become very dear to you and in a way begin to define and shape who you are.

There is an old book called Pilgrims Progress, written by a man named John Bunyan in the 1600s. In it there is a man who become a Christian and when he does he sets off on a journey to travel to the Celestial City whose builder and maker is God. In a very Lord of the Rings -esque way he goes through all kinds of adventures and trials on his way there.

In the beginning of the book as he is leaving he attempt to bring some of his neighbors along. One says the Celestial City is fantasy and returns to his house. Another asks how he knows the way to get there. In response the new Christian man says it is “an endless kingdom to be inhabited” where “everlasting life is given” and where “there shall be no more crying, nor sorrow” and that the way there is one traveled by “thousands and ten thousands who have gone before” and that they got there by “walking in the sight of God.” That’s what we’re looking at here!

The tens of thousands who have gone before is who and what we belong to in the Christian faith. The other thing I love about this theme of those who have gone before is something I try to talk a lot about here and that is teachability…learning from the older and wiser.

It seems to me that far too often we are quick to think we know the answers to things and know what we ought to do and how we ought to be instead of asking questions and looking to those who have gone before. It seems to me that far too often we think the people of old or the older people don’t really know anything and there is nothing to learn from them.

I believe it is quite the opposite. The people of old, those who have lived longer and who have walked in the faith for thirty and forty years are treasures among us with a wealth of wisdom. They ought to be the ones we immediately go to for advice and or even when we don’t need advice just going to them to have them talk to us and to teach us and help shape our character.

I think every Christian ought to have at least one Christian in their life that they can talk to who has been a Christian for at least 30 or more years. Someone you can go to and just listen and learn from because they’ve more than earned the right to speak and they know far more than you could ever read in a book.

Do you have someone like that? Are you teachable? Do you see yourself as part of this long tradition that is much bigger than yourself?

Alright, we’ve got a fair amount left to cover so I’m going to move on to our next point, “What Is And Isn’t Faith.”

III. What Is And Isn’t Faith (v1,3)

Faith is perhaps one of the most slippery, misused, misunderstood and confused things out there. Consider this sampling of quotes on faith.

Wordsworth, “Faith is passionate intuition.”

Ghandi, “Faith is a state to grow into.”

Henry Beecher, “Faith is spiritualized imagination.”

Nietzsche, “Faith is not wanting to know what is true.”

James Dewey, “Faith is not worrying.”

Michaelangelo, “Faith in oneself is the best and safest course.”

Buddha, “Faith is nourishment on life’s journey.”

Paula Abdul, “Keep the faith, always trust your gut instinct.”

Michael Jackson, “All you need is a little self-esteem…so keep the faith…get your dreams off the ground…keep the faith…you can be a winner…keep the faith.”

O-ka-ay??? What is faith again? It’s this word that gets thrown around all the time but I’ve got no idea what people mean when they use it. Bible commentator George Guthrie says you can group the misconceptions about faith into one of four camps.

First and perhaps the biggest one is thinking faith is getting God or the universe to be good to me. If I believe it, if I have faith then it whatever it is I want will happen. I just gotta have faith. It’s a widespread prosperity conception of faith. So say I buy a lottery ticket, if I just have enough faith…then I could win. In this sense your desire is your faith.

The second biggest one is the idea that faith is this blind leap into the dark. When you have no reason to believe something could be true but you believe it anyway, then many will say that’s when you’re having faith. You jump into the unknown and the jump is the faith.

The third one is this idea that faith is just being spiritual. People will say you just have to have faith in yourself. Or I have a very spiritual faith. In this sense faith is just this nebulous religious feeling.

Then fourth there’s putting faith in some religious leader or one of the “faiths.” In this one you’re accepting someone’s creed or teaching you align yourself with and call your own.

There are just all kinds of ideas out there about faith and a lot of them sort of maybe sound good. Like if you just put the word “faith” into a sentence then it sounds all wise or something. Like if I make up some sentence like…”Beauty and bounty are heart of faith.” Oh, that just sounds good, right. But what the heck does that mean, just because the word faith is in there doesn’t make it good or true!

Here in Hebrews 11 we are given one of the most helpful discourses on faith. It’s not necessarily meant to be a full on definition of faith but it comes pretty close.

Verse 1, “Faith is the assurance of things hope for, the conviction of things not seen.” Two big words here, assurance and conviction.

The word “assurance” here is the word “hypostasis” in Greek, sometimes translated substance. It would be used to talk about the foundation of a building, like cement or the support for human life, like blood or air. It’s actually where we get the word hypothesis from, the basis for an argument and evidence. So with assurance we learn that faith is far more than just a blind hope or leap, it’s much more sure, hence the second word “conviction” which normally comes with proof or evidence so that you become convinced or convicted that something is so.

Notice where at the end of verse 1 it says “of things not seen.” That’s really helpful. Because how are things seen? Through the eyes right? We normally see things with our eyes, so we can sense them and then know they are real and that the objects actually exist. What verse 1 points out here is that faith, like the organ of the eye, is what enables us to know about things that are real and actually exist which are not viewable by the human eye. There are things unseeable that faith enables us to become convinced and sure they actually exist.

Then there’s one other thing said here in this verse, that faith not only enables conviction of unseeable things but also the assurance of things “hoped for.” Hope points forward to the future. So faith enables one to know something promised in the future will actually happen. Dudes have said it different ways. One guy said explaining this, “Faith celebrates the now reality of future blessings.” Another said, “Faith binds believers securely to the reality they do not see.” One more, “Faith directs us to the far off we do not yet enjoy.” All of those are good.

So let’s simplify. Faith is a convinced sureness. And faith is directed toward either the unseen or the future. Guthrie summarizes it well, he writes, “Faith is not a static emotion…but living and active, not a state of immovable dogmatism but a vital certainty…with it the believer…lays hold of those realities in which hope is fixed and though unseen are already his in Christ.” You starting to get the feel for biblical faith?

It’s not just a way to get good come your way. It’s not a blind leap. It’s not just being spiritual. It’s not just affirming some belief system or person. It’s much bigger and more alive and concrete than that. Well, our text helps us by giving us an illustration or example. And it’s a good one.

So let’s look at our last point for today, “Creation Ex Nihilo.” Ex nihilo is Latin for “out of nothing” and creation ex nihilo is the Christian doctrine which addresses how God made the universe.

IV. Creation Ex Nihilo (v3)

So creation ex nihilo…this is verse 3. “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.” First let’s look at how this illustrates what we just learned about faith and then we’ll talk about how important this doctrine is.

Now, it’s common knowledge…seemingly that if you believe there is a God then one of the things which immediately goes along with that is that he is the author of life, the one who created the world. But from there a lot of ideas are out there about how that may have happened. Even back to the time when the book of Genesis came on the scene.

Other cosmogonies of religions and religious beliefs and stories at the time were that there was already matter in the universe, some primordial soup as it gets called and then God took that and created the world and everything out of using that. Genesis comes on the scene and the very first book and words of the Bible are, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” And how did he create it? The next line in Genesis, “The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep.” Meaning, he created it out of nothing.

Then Genesis goes on to describe how God created everything by simply commanding into being with his voice. He says, “Let there be light” and then there is light. He says, “Let there sky and waters” and then there is. He says, “Let there be earth and plants” and immediately it is so. He says, “Let there be animals and there are animals.” Then he says, “Let there be man” and then there is man.

And not only do we read of this in Genesis but it gets celebrated throughout the Bible. Some have tried to say, “Oh Genesis is just being poetic and metaphorical there.” Oh no. Listen to Psalm 33:6,9. “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host…For he spoke and it came to be; he commanded and it stood firm.” The universal view of the Bible is that when there was nothing God spoke everything into existence with his word!

Now how does faith play into this? John Calvin is good on this. He says people who are not Christians they may think there is a God and maybe even that he is the creator but their thought of him is a “mere shadow of an uncertain deity, not the knowledge of the true God but a transient opinion.”

That’s good because what he draws out is there is no personal recognition of God. It’s sort of just an acknowledgment by default because any honest person has to admit it is more ridiculous to believe everything, all this stuff that has such order and design and complexity and how it all works together…that it just came about by chance…that’s far more ridiculous to believe than that it came from God. So you can just sort of tacitly admit it and say, “yeah sure, there’s probably a God who made everything.” But it’s a whole other thing to say he spoke the word into existence with his word.

But how could you know that? Here’s the only way. God would have had to tell us. And that’s exactly what the Bible claims it is. Genesis is the record of what God told Moses. And likewise the Psalms and Hebrews all belong to this book which repeatedly, throughout it says was breathed out by God’s spirit so that the words the human men wrote were ordered by God.

If faith is convinced sureness of the unseen or of the future, the only way it would ever come to us is from the most sure being who exists. God. Who knows the future? Only God, because he’s all-knowing. How can I know there are realities unseeable with my eyes? Only if God has said so. Faith says when it comes down to it God is and God can be trusted. Faith is the response to what God has said. Not in your subjective feelings but what he has said and recorded in his book, his word, the Bible. Some of you just follow your feelings far too much.

The claim of Hebrews 11 is that the visible world was created by something invisible, the word of God. And the only way you can believe that is take God at his word and believe it gives you understanding. If you don’t believe his word, then you do not have faith and do not really understand the universe and its creator.

What we will see throughout our study of this chapter is consistent examples of men and women who believed what God told them. His promises. His Word. The whole thrust of the chapter is wrenching us and trying to get us to come to a point where will believe in trust and have faith in His Word.

Now, why is this so important? There’s a hundred things I could say. Some technical, about epistemology. Some practical, about the benefits of it. Some Scriptural about why and how you can trust His Word. But more than anything perhaps the best thing I could tell you is that without it you are lost.

The reason Creation Ex Nihilo is such a foundational thing is because it provides the core reality and worldview we need for everything. If there is not a constant, a living being who created and upholds everything there there can be no rhyme or reason for anything. Everything is simply meaningless and I cannot have any kind of certainty that when I walk out of this room I will not walk out into a grass field in China or into a black hole.

Without God creating the world with the power of his word there is no reference point. It’d be like taking chain off a chandelier, it cannot hang, it will come crashing down. You cannot draw a circle with a compass without a having a single central point you draw from. And it’s the same with God. He is the anchor point of everything.

Whether they acknowledge it or not, every single scientist every time he performs an experiment of any kind borrows from a theistic worldview because he is presupposing and relying on consistency and coherence. Without a God who speaks and upholds with the power of his word you can’t do that, there can be no reasons for anything.

But here’s the deal. My fear in diving deep into all this stuff is you’ll just hear academics and science and theological and philosophical reasoning. Because here’s the deeper thing. The commendation we really need, is like the people of old. God. We need God. Without him we are lost. We need God. And not just an awareness that he’s the creator and not even an understanding that he did it with his word, as great and awesome a thing that is. Bigger than that we need God himself. We need to hear the voice of God speak life into us and make us live.

Conclusion

You see as we conclude here this morning this is where I want to end. Because here is the truth…if each one of us were really honest with ourselves…do we have assurance, assurance of the things we hope for? No, my guess is at best they are a little more than wishes or dreams. Do we have conviction? Perhaps, at times. But there’s probably an equal amount of doubt, fears and uncertainties. Do we have faith, in God the creator? Maybe but at best it’s probably a distant idea of God being back there way back in the background. The truth is we all lack these things.

But here is what God has done for us. Listen to the first words of the book of Hebrews. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Heb 1:1-3).”

This my friends is the good news of the gospel. Because of Jesus we are not left to welling up faith, assurance, conviction, and hope in ourselves. No, through Jesus God has spoken to us and speaks life into our very being. This is what happens. The same word which created the world comes to us and says, “Jesus died on the cross and rose again for your sin…now live!” The son of God who spoke the world into existence speaks life into us!

When we latch hold of the truth of Christ, that where we have failed he has succeeded…that where we deserved death he died for us…that though he was dead he rose again and is coming again…when we latch hold of those truths faith illuminates our heart and the world with a bright and brilliant light and we live!

Some of you have had a really jacked up conception of faith. Today God is calling you to respond to his word, to quit trusting in and trying to put faith in yourself and instead to put your faith in the person and work of his son.

Some of you have yet to really comes to grasps with the fact that through Jesus we get connected to the creator of the universe. For some of you it’s just been darkness inside and you need the light of Christ to shine on you.

Some of you have simply been shallow in your faith and God is calling you to a deeper, more committed walk with him this morning.

Some of you have been dry for a while and you’re biggest need today is to pour your heart out in worship in adoration, thanks and love.

We’re going to respond to God’s word today and receive the Lord’s supper as we do each week. His body and his blood on shed on the cross for our sin. As you come, wherever you are at today with God you come and allow him to minister to you and speak life into you.

Let’s pray.