Faith Hebrews 11:1-16 8th Aug 2004
1. Faith… that’s the theme of this chapter.
What is it? The answer is not just in the next couple of sentences. The answer to the question comes in the examples of lives that were lived, lives of faith… Abel, Enoch, Noah and Abraham.. on through the rest of what the writer to the Hebrews later calls a “Cloud of witnesses” the live of many people. The answer to the question What is faith is not something that can be simply put into words.. the answer to the question what is faith is one that has to be lived
Here is one dictionary definition…
OHP
firm belief, esp. without logical proof.
Blind faith we sometimes call it. People do often exercise this sort of faith… when someone buys a lottery ticket. All rational argument would point to the fact that the person who hands over their one pound coin has very little chance of winning the thousands of pounds prize… but still people believe it could just be possible.
Or what about those who will still automatically touch wood… What is going on here… some blind unreasonable belief that if they don’t “touch wood” then something terrible might happen?
Christian belief is not a matter of blind faith.
The ALPHA course has much to say about why we should have confidence in the truth of what the Bible says, why our belief is reasonable.
God gave us minds and he intends us to use them. That is just as true in this area of faith as in every other area. (Don’t every be afraid of asking questions, honestly, humbly… God is concerned that we know the truth. In fact that’s a promise Jesus made to us.. the Holy Spirit will teach us and lead us into truth. Never be afraid of wanting to ask, wanting to know the truth.)
2. Last Wednesday we were looking at how we can learn to recognise the way in which God guides us. And here in tonight’s passage we have Noah given as an example of what it means to have faith.
Doesn’t his faith seem just a little bit illogical, irrational, about as sensible as going out and blowing all your life savings on a van load of lottery tickets.
Noah: Just going out dear to get a bit of wood.
Mrs. Noah: Have you got a little project in mind?
Mr. Noah: Yes I’m going to build a boat
Mrs Noah: But we are living several hundred miles away from the coast - dear. What are you going to do, transport it to the sea on the back of your donkeys?
Mr. Noah: No… it’ll be a little bit too long for that… about 450 feet long actually - 75 feet wide and forty five feet high.
Mrs Noah: And who gave you this idea?
Mr. Noah: I’ll tell you later… I must get started.
What is this faith that Noah had?
Did a though come into his head… build an ark. What’s an ark?
A great big boat for animals.
And so he just went and did it.
If it happened like that… I think that would be blind faith.
3. But the bible does tell us a few things about Noah…. and they are things that help us to understand the meaning of this word faith…
Genesis 6:8ff
He found favour in the eyes of the Lord,
…he was a righteous man,
…blameless among the people of his time,
and he walked with God.
Noah lived in a close relationship with God… the proof of that was in his life.. he walked with God… so when God spoke and asked him to do something out of the ordinary… it was the voice of a friend he knew and trusted.
In faith… in confidence and trust that God wouldn’t let him down… he built the ark.
In fact that brings us to another definition of the word faith in my dictionary…
OHP
ii …complete trust or confidence.
That’s getting close to what the bible says about faith.
Let’s look at another dictionary definition.
4. OHP
iii a) belief in religious doctrines.
b) things believed or to be believed.
I sometimes describe myself as a minister of the Christian Faith… speak about the good news of the Christian faith… And there I am using the word faith to describe a body of truth, a series of statements that contain the truth about who we are,
the truth about our human condition
truth about who Jesus is, and about what he has done for us.
We often use the word faith in this way.
We link this word FAITH to the word BELIEF…
so that by it we mean our assent to a certain set of statements, for example statements about God or Jesus.
Now that is part of what the bible means by faith.
Certainly it is important that we know and understand the truth about God. However that is not all that the bible means by Faith.
If you ask people “Do you believe there is a God?” Many will say yes.
“Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God?”
Many will still say yes.
5. Many people may have this sort of faith…
this sort of belief.
But… it is not enough to believe in the sense of giving intellectual assent to a statement of the truth.
Don’t take my word for it… that’s what the brother of Jesus said…
You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that… James 2:19
The demons believe in God
the devil believes in God…
the problem is he is not willing to love him
and he is not willing to be obedient to him
- and that is often our problem as well.
People say they “believe” in God…
they just don’t want anything to do with him!
They may not want to know the truth about God… because knowing the truth about God and his love for us means facing up to the truth about ourselves and our failure to live as his children.
The Bible describes the sort of faith that is simply an intellectual agreement to the idea that there is a God…
Faith by itself, unless accompanied by action is- dead. (James 2:17)
As the body without the spirit is dead,
so faith without deeds is dead. (James 2:26)
So this sort of faith cannot be what the bible writer is taking about in Hebrews.
Yet he obviously thinks faith is very important… in this chapter he uses the word 27 times.
6. Here is another suggestion from the dictionary…
OHP
Faith, an attitude of the entire self, including both will and intellect…
That’s not a bad definition… it describes what we do as well as what we think.
Here is one suggestion for how the writer of Hebrews may have wanted to define faith…
OHP
Faith is a humble response to God that is seen in the lives of those who love him.
Love because the sort of Faith the bible speaks about begins when we know that we are loved by God and when we begin to love him in return.
and humble because the sort of faith the bible speaks about is not one that allows anyone to say..
I know it all, God has spoken to me. Humility and respect for God, a desire to do his will not our own will is one of the hallmarks of those who show faith in him.
For Abraham that loving response to God meant making a journey. In obedience to God's word he left the comfort of the city of Haran and travelled to the West, heading towards the land that God had promised to give to his descendants.
That must have been difficult.
It was the journey of a lifetime. In fact it was a journey that took him a lifetime - and as God went with him, the relationship between God and Abraham grew stronger. Abraham learned to recognise his guidance. He learned through his failures as well as his successes. Perhaps especially in those times when he night have felt that he had failed, Abraham learned that no matter what happened… God would never let him down.
And he is still the same to all those who in faith, love and humility respond to him.