What Is Faith? A

I go against the world, against my senses and against the present to lay all of my eggs in the basket of the future. But it's not a wistful longing, it's a certainty, isn't it? We're not standing around in fear and trepidation saying, I hope this thing pans out.

We know it will. That's faith. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. The Bible is clear, you cannot be saved except by grace through faith. Every person lives either believing what God says and staking his life on it, or trusting in and acting on his own understanding.

Those are really the only two options. The question is, what kind of faith drives your life? How can you be sure if you have the faith that saves?

What exactly do you have to believe? John MacArthur starts answering those questions today as he begins a study titled The Power of Faith. Well, John, this is a series that will reveal the kind of faith that honors and blesses God. And with that in mind, and as a brief starting point, we need to consider that there is a kind of faith that does not please God.

So talk about that for a moment. I think it's fair to say there are many different kinds of faith. There's a kind of a basic faith that you get in your car, you turn on an internal combustion engine and you don't expect to blow up, because you have learned that you can trust the engineering, so it's not going to take your life when it ignites. There's faith in the faucet, I call it.

You turn on the faucet, you drink whatever comes out, and you have no idea what's going on in the pipes. There is even a kind of religious faith that is more superstition than anything, where people say, Oh, I'm a person of faith. I'm very spiritual.

And it's as if they're talking about something that they possess, but they're not sure what it attaches to. Do you have faith? Faith in who? Faith in what?

So there's a lot of quote unquote, religious faith in the wrong thing, the wrong God, the wrong Christ, the wrong salvation. So when you're talking about the power of true faith, it has to be defined by its object. Faith is believing, but it is not just believing in believing or believing in religion or vaguely believing in God or believing in goodness or whatever.

It is believing in the God of the Bible and the gospel that the Bible proclaims. True faith grasps God, Christ, and the gospel. Yet there are so many people who have misguided and dangerous conceptions of faith. They think faith is some personal power that they possess and control and can use it to create some future for themselves. That is not at all true. That is not what the Bible calls faith.

That's really folly. So to see biblical faith defined and exemplified, we're going to go to the hall of fame of faith, Hebrews chapter 11 in this series titled The Power of Faith. Over the next three weeks, you're going to see the substance of faith, the faith of men like Abel, Enoch and Abraham, how to pursue a life of faith and a whole lot more. So stay here as we kick off the series with a lesson that is going to answer the basic question, what is faith? Thanks John. And friend, this study will help you understand the difference between what John just called faith in faith itself and genuine saving faith in Christ. It's important stuff. So let's get to the first message.

Here again is John MacArthur. Take your Bibles if you will please and turn to Hebrews chapter 11. And we want to begin this most marvelous chapter with a consideration of the first three verses. This chapter has been called the Hall of Fame, the chapter of the heroes of faith, the honor roll of the Old Testament saints, the Westminster Abbey of Scripture, the faith chapter and it goes on and on.

All different kinds of names and titles have been given to this most wonderful chapter. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews deals with the excellency of faith, the excellency of faith. The subject then is faith. Now to begin with, let's look at the nature of faith. Then we'll see the testimony of faith, then we'll see the first illustration of faith. The nature of faith is in verse 1. It says this, Now faith, here he's going to define it for them so they will understand what this means. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Now there are two aspects of faith there that are so closely wed that it's almost impossible to divide them.

Those phrases are almost identical. The substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Now that is not in the purest sense really a definition of faith. It is more a sharing of some of the characteristics of faith. It's more of just a view of what faith is like rather than an explicit theological definition. Now the word faith is a simple word in the Greek. The word means belief, trust, confidence, faith. And he says, now let's look at it.

This is really simple but oh, it's exciting. He says faith, first of all, is the substance of things hoped for. That's the first thing he says about the nature of faith. It is the substance of things hoped for. You say, but things hoped for don't have any substance.

They're just hoped for. But faith makes them real. Now watch that.

Watch that. The matters of belief are hoped for. What we believe in is what we hope for. And yet faith gives them a present substance. As this chapter shows, in Old Testament times there were many men and women who had nothing but the promises of God to rest on. God said there's coming a Messiah. There's coming one who will finally take away sin.

God said there's coming a day when Israel shall have its own kingdom, when Messiah shall reign, and when the land shall be restored to Israel. God said through Ezekiel that I will sprinkle clean water upon you, make you clean. I'll take away the stony heart of flesh. I'll put within you a heart of flesh. I'll give you my spirit. God said I'll gather you in the land.

You'll have peace and safety. God promised all of that and they never saw any of that. But they hoped for it and it is said that every Jewish mother longed to be the mother of Messiah. They hoped for that. They hoped for the restoration of Jerusalem when Jerusalem was sacked.

And now they're hoping for greater freedom and liberty in Israel when Israel is being bombarded by all of the outside pressure of the Arab world. They're still living in hope. Now that is what faith is. Faith is living in a hope that is so real it gives substance to the hope in the present tense. The promises that came to the Old Testament people were so real that even though they never saw them, they based their life on them, sight unseen. All the Old Testament promises related to the future.

But those people acted as if they were in the present tense. They simply took God at his word and lived on the basis of that. They were people of faith and faith gave substance to what was yet in the future. Now we say then that faith is not sort of a wistful longing, hoping that something's going to come to pass in a nebulous tomorrow. Faith is an absolute utter certainty.

And it's an interesting thing because you see it defies everything that is normal. For example, Christian hope, that which we hope for, is belief in God against the world. If we follow the world's standards, the world's things, which are readily visible to us, we can get some measure of comfort, some measure of prosperity. If we follow the standards of the unseen God, a God we've never seen, a God whose audible voice we've never heard, a Christ whose face we've never seen, a Christ whose form we've never touched. But if we follow Him, we may have pain, we may have loss, we may have discomfort, we may have unpopularity, we may get persecuted and we may lose our lives, but we do it anyway because that for which we hope is given substance in the present tense because of the intensity of our faith. It is faith, you see, that says it's better to suffer with God now, knowing what shall be, than to prosper with the world now.

Faith then is faith against the system, against the world. In chapter 11 verse 6, verse 26 I mean, it says that Moses is steaming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. You see, Moses even then took a stand on messianic hope and forsook all the treasures of Egypt to be persecuted for a Messiah that wasn't going to come for several thousand years. He really believed and so there was a sense in which he actually understood in the present tense the reality of Messiah. In the book of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are confronted with the choice of obeying Nebuchadnezzar.

Now he's alive and he's powerful and he's tangible. Or they could obey God who's invisible and whom they've never seen. Now if they don't obey the king, they get thrown in the fire.

Now the empiricist says it's no contest. I buy what I see. I'll bow down to the king and forget the fire. The man of God who has faith says I'll obey God though I can't see him and take the fire. So you see, it's faith against the system. It's believing in God against the world, against what is tangible, against what is obvious.

Take it a step further. It's rejecting our senses for the sake of our hope. The average man says take what you want, take what you can taste and touch and smell.

Grab whatever you can grab that meets the need of your senses. And the Bible says don't believe your senses. Believe God who can only be touched by faith. Long ago, Epicurus who was responsible for the group of people known as the Epicureans said that the chief end of life is pleasure, that man only exists for pleasure. But he didn't mean what many people think. Many people have made him into a hedonist, which he really was not. But he insisted that men take the long view. He said what we need to do is find out the thing which is most pleasant ultimately, not most pleasant momentarily because the one that is pleasant momentarily may bring the most pain ultimately.

So Epicurus was right. He said live for ultimate pleasure. Now the Christian is not a masochist.

Quite the contrary. He's living for ultimate pleasure. I would rather suffer a little bit in this world and be glorified forever in the next, right? Plus it's not really such tough suffering anyway because it's in the presence of the Lord who is never apart from me.

And that again is in 11.25 characteristic of Moses, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. You see, this kind of hope in the future that gives practical substance in the present means I go against the world, against my senses and against the present to lay all of my eggs in the basket of the future. But it's not a wistful longing, it's a certainty, isn't it? We're not standing around in fear and trepidation saying, I hope this thing pans out.

We know it will. That's faith. Now you all have enjoyed things by faith. You've had...you've had future things that you're hoping for that you enjoy in the present. Have you ever just enjoyed your vacation sometime in January when it wasn't until August? Have you ever done that? See yourself laying on that thing in the middle of the pool, soaking in that sun where you see yourself up on that river in Colorado when you're throwing out that fly rod and you catch that 12-foot trout? You seen that? You've all done it.

We've all done it. When I was a little kid, Christmas was more fun by faith than it was in actuality. We've all done...we've all taken...I took a trip to Israel by faith long before I ever went there. I used to walk those hills all the time I was studying the Bible. Did you know that?

And I had never been there. Some of you anticipating a baby in your family? Have you by faith already enjoyed that baby? Has the thing hoped for become a present substance? Sure.

Of course. Some of you are planning on moving into a new home. You're not quite there yet, but by faith you see everything arranged the way you want it.

You see people coming in the door and saying, oh hello, what a lovely place you have. You know, where's the food? You know, right? And by faith you're already enjoying in a present substance what is a future reality, you understand? Now that's exactly what the writer of Hebrews is saying. Faith is simply making a present substance out of a future reality.

You know something? I've never been to heaven, but I can't tell you how many hours I spent walking the golden streets. I've been up and down that place by faith. I've peeked through every possible prism in the walls of heaven. I've spotted out all of those jewels that stud the city of heaven. I've gone by the gate of pearl and all the different...there's many gates made out of a pearl of peace.

I've checked them all out. You see, that's a future reality, but it has present substance by faith, you understand? I believe it so strongly it's real to me. Remember Pavlov's dogs? When he rang the bell, they all began to salivate because for a long time they'd ring the bell and feed him immediately. And then all of a sudden they'd ring the bell and without feeding them they'd begin to salivate by faith.

The food's coming, guys. You see, faith is that ability to take what is in the future and give it present substance. And that's why the Bible says that we are seated in the heavenlies. I have already been in the kingdom too, and I've seen Jesus on the throne in Jerusalem, David's throne. And I've served Him there and I've served Him in heaven by faith. That's faith. It takes a future reality and gives it present substance. That's a gorgeous kind of commodity too.

And boy, there are some days when you couldn't live without it, right? That's faith. Faith then gives present substance to future hope.

Now the word substance is an interesting word, hupostasis. It only appears two other times in Hebrews. Once it is used in chapter 1 verse 3 to speak of Christ as the very essence of the Father, the express image, substance or essence. Another time in chapter 3 verse 14 it speaks of a guarantee of assurance or a title deed. And that's exactly what substance is. It's essence and it's assurance.

That's how the word is used. Faith then provides the firm ground on which I stand waiting for the assurance of the fulfillment of the essence of God's promise. Faith believes God, banks on it. It's assurance that that which is promised has essence, content, reality. Romans 8, 24, for we are saved by hope.

Watch. We're saved by hope. We know our salvation now only because we believe it to be true in the future.

That is, in terms of the glorification end of salvation, going to be with the Lord. But hope that is seen is not hope, for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. If you really believe that the future that God's promised is for real, then you'll patiently wait for it. You don't get upset. You don't get rattled. You don't get worried.

You just wait for it. That's faith in a future reality, and it gives to it a present substance. Look at verse 13 of the same chapter, chapter 11. It talks about the time of Abraham and Sarah. It says this, these all died in faith, not having received the promises but having seen them...what?...far off and were persuaded of them and embraced them. And they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. You say, but they never saw heaven. Oh, they saw heaven with the eye of faith.

And they grabbed it and they embraced it and said, hey, we don't even belong here. We're just pilgrims. We're going to a city whose builder and maker is God. That's faith, giving present reality, something to hold on to right now that is really in the future, the substance of things hoped for. So faith gives us a future object and a security, an assurance that holds us fast. Secondly, he says, that faith is the evidence of things not seen. As I say, this is very closely akin to the first statement, but let me see if I can maybe give a little different twist of meaning.

The word evidence is alenkos which means conviction, would be the best word, I think. Faith is the conviction that the unseen exists. That's what he's saying. Now this takes a little bit further step in my mind than the first phrase because this implies action. This is banking your life on your hope. Faith is living on the basis of things not seen. You know, when Thomas saw our Lord, he said to him, Thomas, you have seen and you have believed.

Blessed is he that has not seen, what? Yet believed. That's true faith. Faith then in the first phrase of verse 1 actualizes a future truth. In the second phrase, it commits a life to it. It is the conviction of things not seen.

Let me show you the two sides of...if I can illustrate this. Noah, for example, believed God. God said, Noah, it's going to rain. Which didn't mean one thing to Noah because rain didn't exist. That would be like God saying to you, it's going to gleep. You'd say, run that by me again.

It wouldn't make a bit of sense because it didn't have any meaning. Noah, it's going to rain, water dropping out of the sky. Now Noah believed that. It had substance in his brain. That thing for which God had made promise became a reality because he believed it.

That's the first step. And I imagine he sat around a lot just thinking in his mind, water out of heaven. I wonder how that will work. I imagine he gave substance to the future thing. He gave it a present reality just by thinking about what rain would be like. It was the substance of things hoped for in his mind. But it didn't stop there. He built a boat.

Now that's the conviction that takes it a step further. You see, it was one thing to dream about what that rain might be like. It was something else to establish his life on it and for the better part of 120 years build a ship in the desert.

Well everybody said, Noah has gone bananas. He's over there building a ship in the middle of the desert. And then he says it's okay because it will float. Water will fall out of heaven and make it float. Now you see, it's one thing to visualize a future reality and give it present substance.

It's something else for 120 years to build a boat in the desert. And faith is to begin with to believe it and then to bank your life on it. And boy, I know if I know anything about human nature that there were a lot of times during that better part of 120 years that he said to himself, Noah, Noah, what are you doing? But he not only believed it, he acted on it.

And that's what we're going to see all through the 11th chapter. To believe and then to act. To believe something and to move out on it. Now we believe a lot of things. And I trust that we believe God to the point where we bank our life on it. But you know, to the unbelieving world, to be able to bank your life on some invisible spiritual future thing looks like the most preposterous thing imaginable. And people are always saying, oh, you Christians, pie in the sky and the sweet buy and buy and all this, you know. You guys are out there believing all that stuff, you can't even verify.

And that's right. And we go around saying, this world is not my home, I'm just passing through, my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. They say, you don't even have your feet on the ground.

What kind of a weird thing is that? What a way to live life. The Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 2, 6, and He has raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And he says in chapter 1 verse 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies. And we're just moving around in another domain, you see, by faith. And the world thinks that something's wrong with our heads. And we worship Him who is invisible.

And we bank our lives on it. Now that's faith. But you see, that's...watch this...that's faith with spiritual content. Or that's faith placed in an unseen thing that really has no visible verification. Now the natural man cannot comprehend that kind of spiritual faith.

We see him who is invisible but the unsaved man does not because he has no organ of perception. There is a sense in which all men, as I've told you many times, live by a natural kind of faith. For example, they drink water coming out of the pipes in their house without knowing anything about what's in it. You say, well, that is faith, isn't it?

Well, sure it is. There's no way to know what's in that pipe. You say, oh, but I don't do that. I have a home handy-dandy chemistry kit. And every drop of water goes right into my chemistry kit for analysis before I ever drink it.

That's okay. You put your faith in your handy-dandy chemistry kit. Everybody lives on the principle of natural faith.

You eat food that comes in cans that has labels that you actually believe in. Money is totally a faith principle. You know that all that paper isn't worth anywhere near what it's supposed to be, and especially today. But you know, in 1929, the people who survived the economic crash known as the Depression knew that it wasn't a loss of cash that brought the Depression. It was a loss of faith in cash.

People stopped believing in money. It's only a faith commodity. A scientist goes into a laboratory and he exercises natural faith.

It says on the little thing, you can mix this with this and it won't blow up. And so he does it. That's faith. You go to the doctor and the doctor says, you've got a problem. We must slice you open, foot across, and we must take out your whatever-whatever and fix this and bend this around and do it. You say, okay, doctor, you don't even know what he's talking about.

And you go in there and somebody says, well, see you in a few hours, and they stick that little...and you're out and there's a whole bunch of people in there just opening you up and just playing around in there and doing anything they want to do. And you're laying on that little table oblivious. My friend, that's faith. Everybody operates on a principle of natural faith.

We drive places and we actually believe the signs. But you see, even though men have natural faith, they don't have the ability to perceive God because that's a spiritual kind of faith. And that's a supernatural gift from God, that kind of faith. By grace are you saved through faith and faith is not of yourselves, it is a gift of what?

Of God. Spiritual faith is a gift of God. Natural faith comes with being born.

In fact, spiritual faith, according to Romans 10 17, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by a speech about Jesus Christ. That's a gift from God. If a man hears with a willing heart, prepared by the Holy Spirit, God grants him the faith to respond.

That's a gift from God. In 1 Corinthians 1, it says in verse 21, for after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. It's the preaching of the cross that brings faith when it reaches a fertile soil in the heart of a man. And so faith in a natural sense is one thing, faith in a spiritual sense is something else. So to begin with then he tells us the nature of faith. It is to be able to actualize something in the future and then to be able to bank your life on it. The unbelieving man has this in a physical sense, but he has no capacity for it in the spiritual sense.

We who know Jesus Christ do. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, with his study here on Grace to You titled The Power of Faith. Keep in mind you can download this entire sermon series, an ideal resource to help you examine your own faith or to help someone you've witnessed to understand what living for Christ is all about. All ten messages are free from our website, gty.org. To download The Power of Faith, visit our website today. The web address again, gty.org. You can download the audio of those lessons and you can also read the transcripts free of charge.

Dive into this compelling study when you visit gty.org. And if you're looking for more resources on the nature of saving faith or any other topic, keep in mind that there are thousands of free Bible study tools right there at our website that are designed to meet your spiritual needs. You'll find audio messages and blog articles on issues like God's design for the family and the life of Christ and what to look for in a church. You can follow along with the MacArthur Daily Bible's reading plan. It takes you through the whole Bible in a year. You can also read three different daily devotionals and you can download any and all of John's 3600 sermons, both in MP3 and transcript format. You will find all of that and more online at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day. Be back tomorrow as John answers the question, how much of the Bible do you need to know to be saved? John will continue his study called The Power of Faith with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace To You.