Faith in is that assurance or that substance in the present tense of things hoped for.
So literally, what we hope for by way of revealed promise has substance right now, and that substance is strong. I want you to know it's strong, and it's all about what is yet in the future. It's all about your future. Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.
Well, would it surprise you that the famous Sunday school song "Jesus Loves Me" has been strongly criticized over the years, and by people who identify as Christians? As the song says, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so," which has prompted this question from critics: In order to know that Jesus loves you, do you have to understand and believe the Bible? In other Does being a Christian mean having faith in whatever the Bible says? John MacArthur is going to help answer that question today as he continues his study titled "A Faith That Pleases God." And now here's John. I want you to turn in your Bible to Hebrews chapter 11, and as we look through this chapter, I want us to not get caught up in a lot of Difficult details.
I think this is a chapter that is is going to be foundational for us who need to understand the the foundations of our faith. I don't want to make this complicated. I don't want to make it difficult. I'm not going to try to take you into some kind of minute nuances of theology. What it presents to us is the power of faith, the power of faith, the excellency of faith.
So when we talk about faith, we're talking about trusting in what God has said. Faith is so strong; it is a gift of God. It is the gift of God that allows us to listen, trust the Scripture, and in trusting the Scripture, to trust the Gospel in the Scripture, and thus trust Christ as Savior. That's a package. I think we we need to understand that it wouldn't do any good.
To trust in Christ as your Savior, unless you could trust the Scripture for everything that Him being your Savior means, you understand that? You say, "Oh, I need to put my faith in Jesus as my Savior. What's that going to bring me? What's that going to deliver to me? It's going to deliver to you everything that the Bible promises it will deliver to you." And the scripture is reliable, and you believe it, and I believe it because we have been given the faith to believe it.
It is a gift from God. Oh, that you say doesn't does that mean that the scripture can't be proven to be true? No, the scripture can be proven to be true, which just strengthens our assurance, doesn't it? But we know this to be a reliable. Scripture and the promises of God are reliable, and so we put our trust in Christ because the things that come with trusting Christ can be trusted.
Faith in is that assurance or that substance in the present tense of things hoped for.
So, literally, what we hope for by way of revealed promise has substance right now, and that substance is strong. I want you to know it's strong. You you stood there along with me tonight, and you sang all those songs, right? You sang from the heart, and you loved everything you were singing, and you believed it, didn't you? And it's all about what is yet in the future.
It's all about your future, but it has substance now. It has weight now. It provides assurance now, so that you sing and you pray and you praise and you act and you live and you obey and you minister and you witness, because this hoped-for reality gives present weight to your life, substance. And frankly, this is against the grain of all the things that work in a fallen world, isn't not? First of all, it's against the grain of your own flesh.
Is that not true?
So now that you believe these things and you put your trust in Christ and are now living a life based upon promises for the future that you haven't seen, that have so much weight that they control your life, what do you do? You live your life as a Christian, battling against the flesh that is your natural expression. Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just say, "Forget it. I'm just going to go with whatever I feel." It would be a lot easier, right? It's the way you used to live, like the godless Gentiles live, in the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.
Let happen whatever happens. But you don't live that way. You restrain the flesh. You restrict the flesh. You limit the pleasures.
You fight against your fallenness. You resist sin. You run from it. You flee it. Why?
Because you understand that there is a future reward. And a future desire to come before the Lord and bring honor to His name by the life you've lived.
So you literally have brought substance into your life by the things that you hope for in the future. Why do you have this kind of hope that's so strong that it can change the way you live your life, and that you live your life against the grain of your own fallen flesh because you believe in the truth of God's revelation? Why do you believe that? Because God has given you the faith to believe in that revealed word, and everything you ever study in that word, and all the evidences that come around that word indicate that it, in fact, is true. You not only have such substance to this hope that you live against the grain of your flesh; you live against the grain of the world.
Everybody in the world is living a certain way, and what are you trying to do? You're trying to live in a completely opposite way. You know, you're like a, you're you're like a a person trying to fight your way through a massive crowd of millions of people who are all going one direction, and you're going the other way, and I mean you're getting trampled in the process. You may be trampled by your family. You may be trampled by the people at your school, at your work.
You may be mistreated here and there. You're you're going into collision after collision after collision, and to just make it more complicated, you have a responsibility in the process of trying to work your way through this mass of humanity, going the opposite direction of grabbing them here and there and trying to turn them around, bring them to the knowledge of Christ, and get them on your side. What power this faith has! Wow, this faith is so powerful. It gives such substance to your life that you live against the grain of your own fallenness, and you live against the grain of the world of which you are a part.
There is a real sense in which you live against the grain of your own senses, your own senses. Because you can't do what your natural senses tell you to do. If left to your own natural senses, you'd be out of control in every aspect of your life, would you not? Because those senses are never satisfied. You never have enough of anything.
Because if you see something else, you want it, right? You want it. This is what it means to have substance in the present, based upon promises for the future. This is how we live our lives as Christians. This is what it means to live by faith.
Faith furnishes the heart with firm support. In the revealed promises of God, faith believes God. It believes God as revealed in Scripture, and that faith, Scripture says, is an anchor. Here we see it as an anchor laid out in the experience of believers. Real faith gives us a confident substance in the present, but I want to go beyond that.
It is not just the assurance or the substance, or you could even translate it the evidence, ilukos. But it is also the conviction. That's the word, evidence. It's the conviction, ilukos. Of things not seen.
This takes it a step further. It is the substance that becomes conviction. Maybe I should have picked that up a little bit earlier because it's conviction that can that basically defines how you live.
Okay, you can know something to be true, but until it becomes a conviction, you don't. Put it really into action, so we have substance that has led to conviction. What would make you live against the grain of your fallenness? What would make you live against the grain of the world? What would make you live against the grain of your own senses?
what would What would cause you to abandon everything for something you can't see, for promises that have never been fulfilled? What would cause you to live this kind of life? A conviction. A conviction, and implied in that conviction is a strong, strong commitment. For example, borrowing from the chapter, what would make you build a boat in a desert because you were told it was going to rain when it had never rained in the history of the world?
A conviction. Well, it would have to be more than just some kind of hope. Because you would have to spend 120 years building the boat, can you imagine building a boat as Noah did for 120 years in the desert and dealing with the mockery of his neighbors?
Some of you being mocked by your neighbors for a few days, perhaps is more than you can handle. What put his faith into action? There was such substance to what he had been told. He was so confident in the revelation of God to him that it became a conviction that he could literally live his life on. That's what puts faith into action.
He acted on it, and we're going to see that's really the story of the chapter: how all these people acted on faith because of revelation came action, because of substance came conviction.
Now we understand that in the human realm, and we talk about this a lot. You know, we understand that we all live by faith. We drink water, we eat in restaurants, we we go to the pharmacy and we drink whatever the pharmacist gives us. We are clueless what is in the bottle. We fly along the freeway at a furious pace, and we expect that when the arrow goes this way, there's an off ramp there and not a precipice.
We trust the sign. We trust the people who put the signs up.
Some parts of the world they don't, for good reason. We trust the surgeon. That's natural faith, but but that's faith in things seen, isn't it? Because we have we have evidence. We have past history.
All this has already been proven to be trustworthy. But when we're talking about eternity, we're talking about the unseen. When we talk about the future and heaven and all that is there for us in the promises of God, we're talking about something that no one has experienced. There isn't one person on the planet today that you can go to and say you've been to heaven and back. Tell me about it.
Not one. But there are lots of folks who've been to the doctor and been to the pharmacy. This is a supernatural gift. This is another kind of faith altogether. Altogether, this is the way we live.
We live on the promise given to us in the Scripture because we believe the Scripture is reliable. We believe it's reliable because the evidence tells us it's reliable, and because the Spirit of God has planted in us a faith to believe in its trustworthiness.
So that's the nature of faith. A word about the the testimony of faith. Verse two, and here the writer sort of introduces us to what is going to be the emphasis of the chapter. For by it the men of old gained approval. Literally, some translations.
I think the King James says the elders, meaning the Old Testament saints, and this is where he sort of tips his approach here. He's going to help these Jews who maybe are struggling a little bit with this idea of salvation by faith, because they've come out of a work system by pointing to the fact that this is in fact how the saints of old gained approval. The approval means praise, approbation. Why would we identify them as heroes of the faith? Why did the Jews identify them as heroes of the faith?
Why did they look at Abel as nobler than Cain? Why did they look at at Enoch as noble? Why did they look at? Abraham as noble. Why did they look at Sarah as noble?
Why did they look at the others—Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and all the rest? Because. Of their faith, and that's what he's going to show throughout this chapter. This is not a new concept. The great heroes of the faith, the saints of old, lived by faith.
Abel believed God regarding sacrifice, acted on faith that what God said was true, and what God expected was the path of blessing. He did what God told him because God told him this is what to do, and I'll bless you. And he did it, and was, of course, received and approved. Enoch believed God so much so that he didn't die. God was so pleased with him that one day he took a walk and walked right into the presence of God and skipped the dying part.
Noah believed God, and because of it, God granted to him righteousness, and God vindicated him, brought about what God had promised, but spared him and his family. Abraham and Sarah believed God for a child, and God fulfilled the promise. We'll learn about Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and everybody else, all who believed God and were approved by all who knew them. The record of the Old Testament stands as testimony to their faith. They trusted in what they couldn't see.
They lived their lives based upon promises God made to them, and certainly God approved of that, and they were rightfully honored by the people of the past. And even remained the heroes of the faith. God's word made their hope real, and based upon what God had told them, they lived obediently by faith, and are rightly honored as heroes. In Acts chapter seven, in verse fifty-four. Says when they heard this, they were cut to the quick.
This is the preaching of Stephen. They began gnashing their teeth at him. Being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven, saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. That's the first glimpse of heaven by a saint. And he said, "I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." I'm glad he saw that, aren't you?
I'm glad he recorded that in his sermon, and I'm glad the Spirit of God let Luke put it down in holy scripture, because that's eyewitness evidence of who is standing and waiting for us when it's our time to enter into heaven. But this is new. This is a whole new experience. They cried out with a loud voice. The people did covered their ears, rushed at him with one impulse.
When they had driven him out of the city, began stoning him. And the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul, later known as Paul. Went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." And falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." Having said this, he fell asleep. Every one of the saints of old, who lived in hope, perhaps would love to have had that last moment experience, and maybe some of them did. It's not recorded, but I'm so glad for the testimony of Stephen that what he anticipated to be true was in fact true.
Heaven was reality. The glory of God was there, and Jesus was waiting for the faithful to come into His presence. Every one of us, every saint of old who has ever lived by faith, would find great comfort in the testimony of Stephen.
So, the nature of faith—it is confident trust in the future promised by God in Scripture. The testimony of faith—it has always been the testimony of the saints. Old Testament and beyond. It was by faith that the men of old gained approval, not only from God, but they became the heroes of the faith because of their faith, believing in what they had not yet seen or experienced. And then there is finally an illustration of faith, the first one that he gives.
And he gathers us all into the illustration in verse three. By faith, we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.
Now, this is a wonderful little illustration. We could spend an awful lot of time on this. And by the way, the whole creation conference on the weekend really will draw from the reality of this verse. But understand this. The point being made here is something that is critical to us.
We live in faith that looks forward to what God has promised.
Okay, this illustration takes us back and gives us a foundation for faith looking forward. By faith, we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God.
So that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. That looks back at creation. Creation is things seen in the universe made out of things unseen. That's creation. Creation is ex nihilo.
God made the whole universe out of what? Nothing. What is seen? Was not made out of anything that was visible.
So, out of the invisible came the visible. Out of nothing came everything. We understand that by faith. Say, why? Why do we understand it by faith?
Because we weren't there, right? You say, well, I can't live by faith. I can't. I can't conduct my life by faith.
Well, try this on. The world exists. The universe exists. By faith, we understand that God created it by His word.
Now, where do we place our faith in the revelation of God, written in Genesis chapter one and two, which tells us that God created the universe by His word? Right. Let there be. Light and there was light. He spoke everything into existence, and the record is in Genesis one.
So we have an opportunity to place our faith in something in the past as a foundation to place our faith in something in the future. We can look at the effect, which is the universe. We understand that it exists. Anybody with half a brain has to understand that it had to have been created out of nothing. There, there had to be a starting point.
There had to be a time when there was nothing. That time then ended. When God created the universe, by faith we understand how that happened. Our faith is in the revelation of Scripture. By faith, you understand that it happened.
Anybody, any really, any person who doesn't just hate God and hate Christianity, has to say, "Somebody did this." I mean, you say that when you look at a watch, don't you? Why not a universe? I mean, how obvious! But the person who just understands that it happened doesn't know how. Only the person who puts his faith in the Scripture understands how.
By the Word of God.
So, by faith, we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God. Why? Because that's what the Scripture says. And that's a reality, isn't it? Scripture says.
Now, follow the thought. Scripture says God created it. We live in it, and we can see the evidences of His creation.
So, the fact that we can look back and see that God described His creation. Told us how he made it, and has left his imprint on it, and we are now living in that creation. Gives us the opportunity to have a foundation for believing in the future. What God said in Genesis brought about the universe, and we now live in it and experience it and know its reality. And we can trust that the same God who spoke this into existence by His word has said that He has spoken another world into existence, which awaits us, and that we will one day experience that world.
We experience this world, which God spoke into existence. We will experience the world which He has spoken into existence in the glory. Of the supernatural realm, we can trust him for that, as he is the source of that. In the same way, he is the source of this. It's not really a stretch.
There's really no other way to explain the universe than to say that God created it. No other way. And here we live in a world created by the Word of God. Described in detail in Genesis one and two, all true science confirms the creative hand of God in the complexity of this universe.
So we live now in a universe created by the Word of God. We see His imprint on it, and that is the foundation by which we trust that God will, in the future, have waiting for us another universe. In the glory of His presence, also promised by His creative power.
Well, there's more that could be said about verse three, but maybe that's enough to get us there. We all live by faith. All of us who are believers. We trust God. We trust God as Creator of this world, and we trust Him as the Creator of the world to come, for those who know Him and love Him.
Father, we thank you that as we think about beginning to look at the concept of faith, the essence of faith, the power of faith. It all really begins with you, and that we don't need to wander and grasp and hope for some illustration that your word can be trusted. Rather, we have the revelation of Scripture, a revelation that is true, trustworthy, tested for centuries and centuries and centuries. We have the great evidence of your power revealed in this temporal, physical creation. As evidence of your power to create that eternal spiritual creation in the glory of the heaven that is to come, grant us, Lord, ever ever growing faith, ever strengthened faith, and may we not doubt, but grow strong in faith, giving glory to you.
We pray, Amen. God is the sovereign Creator, and because of that, He is worthy of your unwavering faith. Important lesson from John MacArthur today on grace to you in his study titled "A Faith That Pleases God." Well, friend, one takeaway from this series so far is this: to have genuine faith in God, you need to know who He is, and that starts with. Studying His Word. To help with that, I want to remind you about the MacArthur New Testament Commentary series, particularly the volume on Hebrews, the basis for John's current study.
This commentary gives an in-depth explanation of every verse in Hebrews, helping you get all you can from that amazing book.
So, order the Hebrews volume or any of John's commentaries when you contact us today. The Hebrews volume costs nineteen dollars, and shipping is free. Same price for each of the thirty-three volumes in the MacArthur New Testament Commentary series, and you get a discounted rate for ordering the complete set. To order, call eight hundred fifty-five Grace or visit gty.org. Also, at our website, you'll find several ways to take in John MacArthur's verse-by-verse teaching.
You can listen to radio broadcasts you might have missed. You can search John's entire sermon archive by specific verses, or by books of the Bible, or by topic. There are more than thirty-six hundred sermons available to you, all free to download in MP3 and transcript format. And if you're not sure what to listen to first, a great option. Is what we call Grace Stream.
That's a continuous broadcast of John's teaching through the New Testament. Starts in Matthew chapter one, verse one, goes all the way through the end of the book of Revelation, and then it starts all over again. You'll find Grace Stream and so much more at gty.org.
Now for the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Be back tomorrow as John MacArthur highlights how the faith of Abel and the hostility of Cain can help you evaluate your own faith. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time on Grace to You.
