Welcome to Turning Point. As Christians, we're supposed to live by faith. But what exactly is faith? The word has lost so much meaning it can be difficult to explain. Today, Dr.
David Jeremiah begins the series Ordinary People, Extraordinary Faith. With a look at Hebrews chapter 11 and its examples of what faith is all about. To introduce his eye-opening message, what is faith? Here's David. And thank you so much for joining us.
We are excited about this series because we're going to be going through the hall of faith. Um this is a place where The writer of Hebrews gives us A synopsis of some of the great followers of God, some of the great leaders, some of the people to whom we look up to and look back to. And uh we'll have fun talking about them as we take each day. Study one or two of these people that God has mentioned. During this month, we have a brand new resource we want to tell you about.
It's just off the press here at Turning Point at our publications department. It's called Where to Go in the Bible, and it has scripture reference guides for 89 topics. It's a small book that really helps you because the verses are printed out when you're looking for things that you Want to have answers to, you can go to this little book, and it's way more helpful than a concordance because it's Got more information in it, and the truth is spread out, and you don't have to go look for the reference because it's printed right out on the page. There's Categories like the Christian life, like direction, like family life, and then in these sections are all these verses that you know they're in the Bible, but sometimes you wonder where they are. And this will help you know where to go, and it will be with you all the time if you need it.
And it's a wonderful little resource. We want you to have it. It's yours for a gift of any size. When you send a gift to Turning Point, simply say, please send me the book, Where to Go in the Bible, and we'll send it to you right away. We want you to have this, and we want to tell you that we thank you for your gift and for your kindness in being an investor in the Ministry of Turning Point worldwide.
Today, as we open our Bibles to the 11th chapter of Hebrews, we're going to take a few moments and talk about the nature of faith. It's the foundational message for all that comes afterward. And if we're going to talk about heroes of faith, best we understand what faith really means.
So let's begin. Let's discuss that right now as we open our Bibles together. Open your Bibles to the bottom. to the 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 11.
Verses one through three and verse six.
Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for. the evidence of things not seen. for by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed. Word of God.
So that the things which are seen We're not made of things which are visible. But without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is. and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. There is an old story about a man who was.
Trying to fix his television antenna in the days when such things existed. And he was on a slanted slate roof. Trying desperately to get the antenna rotated in the right direction so that he would be able to watch the football game that was going to be on a bit later that afternoon. In his hurry, he lost his grip on the chimney and began to slide down the roof of his house. Finally, slipping over the edge of the roof, he caught himself by the ends of his fingers on the eaves trough.
And he was dangling there. three stories above the ground. In his desperation, he looked down and began to cry out: Can anybody down there help me? And there was no answer. Finally, in one last act of desperation, he looked up and yelled.
Can anyone up there help me? And out of the heavens came its deep, resonant voice. Believe and let go. After a moment of thought, the frightened man cried out, Is there anybody else up there who can help me? I love that story because it illustrates the fact that most people are willing to try anything except faith.
And if you hang around religious people very long, you discover that the word faith is bandied about quite often. We call our religion our faith. We talk of being saved by faith. One of the evidences of the spirit-filled life is faith. At the end of the 10th chapter of the book of Hebrews, we are told that the just shall live.
By faith. But what do we mean? when we talk about faith. Are we talking about some superstitious thing? Believing something in spite of the evidence or Believing three impossible things before breakfast.
Are we talking about everyday faith, trusting the pilot? Who Flies your airplane, or believing in the man who does your taxes, or Are we talking about mental assent faith? That kind of faith where you believe something or some system of facts, you accept them as true. And because you accept them as true, you say, I have faith. But the Bible says that even the demons believe in God.
and they tremble.
So that can't be the kind of faith we're talking about. Did you know that the devil and the demons have faith? They actually have faith. James 2:19 says, You believe there is one God? You do well.
Even the demons believe that and they tremble. It is quite evident that the word faith in our culture has fallen on hard times. The meaning of it in the post-Christian world has sort of. morphed into something Nobody knows for sure. what it means.
Evangelist Ronald Dunn has said, some words are like drapes. that have faded from long exposure to the sun. Frequent use has drained the color from their meaning until they are no longer recognizable, and such words need from time to time to be re-examined to ensure that their use is consistent with their meaning. And faith is a word that is dangerously close to fading. Paul Tillich suggested that the word faith itself must be healed before it can be used to.
To heal p. People.
So what is faith? If I had a Select a passage of scripture and say: if you go to that passage, you will learn about faith. That's the passage we're going to look at. Verse 1 begins with the description of faith. It says: Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
This description of faith is incredibly accurate. By the way, the word faith appears 32 times in the book of Hebrews, 24 of them here in the 11th chapter of the book. Where we have the best definition of faith found in the Bible. We learn, first of all, that faith is the realization of things hoped for. The word translated by the word substance is translated best by the word assurance or realization.
Literally, the writer is saying, now faith is the realization of things hoped for. Faith says that what God has promised will happen, and it's so certain that it's almost as if it has already happened. Faith treats things that are hoped for as a reality. The future is made real for men of faith and women of faith.
So then faith is not ambiguous, it is not unsure. It is a concrete conviction. It is the present-day confidence of a future reality. Faith is the solid, unshakable confidence in God, which is built upon the assurance that He is faithful to His promises. For the unbeliever Seeing is believing.
For the believer Believing is seeing. Faith enables the believer. to treat the future as present and the invisible as visible.
Now I've told you theologically what faith is. But some of you still have a blank look on your face.
So let me tell you practically what faith is. Faith is like a sixth sense. That God gives to us. It's His gift. Faith is a gift from God.
It enables us to take a firm hold upon the unseen world and bring it into the realm of our experience. Did you know that all of your senses do just that? There are five senses, as you know. There is seeing and hearing. and tasting and smelling and touching.
Those are the five senses. With the possible exception of touching, all of the first four senses work just like. faith. Let me explain. Out there in the unseen world is what we call light.
Light is there. But the only way you can see it is through The sense of your eyes, which God has given you. He has given you an instrument that enables you to see the unseen light. Without your eyes, light does not exist. Out there in the unseen world are sound waves.
Those waves are there whether you hear them or not, but God has given you two ears, instruments.
So that you can hear those sound waves, and your ears bring those sound waves into your experience, and they become part of you. Out there in the unseen world. are aromas That are Just there. Whether you sense them or smell them or not, they are there, but God has given you your nose.
So that through this nose, this instrument, you can Bring those aromas into your experience and they become a part of your being. Out there in the unseen world are these scrumptious, unbelievable tastes. God has given you this incredible instrument called taste that brings those beautiful sensations into your being and they become a part of you. Are you getting the picture here? All of these things are unseen things.
But God gives you something to take that which is unseen and make it a part of reality in your life. And that's what faith does for you in the spiritual realm. Out in the spiritual realm are the promises of God. Out in the spiritual realm is the reality of God. Out in the spiritual realm is the history of Jesus Christ and his death upon the cross.
And God has given to you, and He gives to you at a moment of your conversion, He gives you the gift of faith that enables you to take that which you cannot see. And it becomes a part. of who you are. Faith is the realization of faith. The actuality.
of things hoped for. But the second statement's even stronger. Faith is the reality of things not seen, Hebrews 11:1, the evidence of things not seen. the conviction of things that aren't seen. But faith gives you the ability to accept them and believe them and acknowledge that they are true.
And 1 Peter 1, 8 and 9 is the classic text. Listen. whom having not seen, You love. Though now you do not see him, yet believing you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith. the salvation of your souls.
You say I know God. But you can't see God. I know Jesus, but he's not here anymore physically. I believe in the Holy Spirit, but He lives within you. How do you know and see and believe all these things?
You know and you see and believe because God has given you the instrument of faith as His gift. And by faith, You see the unseen God. You know the unknown Jesus, and you sense the reality. of the unseen spirit. Faith is not Lacking in reality.
Faith is more real than your seeing and your hearing and your smelling and you're tasting and you're touching. Faith is far more real. Than any of the senses God has given you. Faith is not just the sixth sense. It's the supreme sense.
People of faith. Like Katie Davis. Are prepared to live out their life. Believe in God. Their lives reflect a commitment that's unbelievable to people who don't know Jesus.
They are so sure of the promises and so sure of the blessings. That they behave as those promises had already been realized. When Katie Davis was 18 years old, she went to be a teacher of kindergarten children in Uganda against her parents' will. They wanted her to go to college, and she said, I'm going to take a year off and go serve Jesus in Uganda. And while she was there, God spoke to her.
and told her, I want you to stay here. She adopted Ugandan children. She's now their mother. She raises, did you know this? 70%.
$1,000 a month to keep those children and that orphanage going. Her faith has become so real to her. That when she comes home and sees all the things that are used to prop us up in our faith, it's a step backwards. She's come to understand that she has no resource but God. But God has become so real to her that coming back here is a very uncomfortable experience for her.
Because back here, there's so many other things to depend on. In Uganda, there's no one but God, but God is so real to her. It's incredible. That's what faith is. Faith is the ability God gives us to take the unseen and make those things real, make those things seen in our lives.
And faith does this in spite of all the obstacles. If you read Hebrews 11, which is the hall of fame of faith, Every single one of the 27 or so people whose names are written in the 11th chapter of Hebrews all have one thing in common. They surmounted obstacles that were unbelievable. Think of Sarah, who bore a child after the age of childbearing. Over the age of 90, she had a baby.
I would say that was a pretty un Usual experience. Let's hope so, right?
Now How does faith work?
Well, let me explain to you. Let me just do a little post-mortem on faith, a little autopsy on it, if I will. I hope your faith is not dead, but let me just do this faith thing. How does it work? First?
Faith begins with perception. It's impossible to have saving faith unless your mind embraces the content of truth. You don't just get faith by putting your Bible under your pillow at night. You don't get faith in some emotional experience. Faith starts with truth.
When any new fact enters your mind, watch this. it proceeds to make itself at home. It has to introduce itself to the other things that live in your mind. And that new entry into the denizens of your mind. Begins to interact with what already lives there.
And that faith becomes understandable because learning is simply taking what you don't know and relating it to what you do know and bringing it into the realm of what you know. You can't learn if you don't have something to compare it to.
So, God allows you to hear truth, and that truth comes into your mind, and that truth begins to interact with what you already know. Do you know what that's called? That's called thinking. And believe it or not, Christians think. You become a Christian first of all by thinking, by hearing some truth, by understanding.
That's why you preach the gospel, why you preach the word of God. And the word of God then gets into the mind of a person and it begins to interact with what's already there and that thinking process is called perception. But perception cannot be faith. Just knowing something isn't faith. You have to add to that The second piece of the action, which is persuasion.
The first has to do with your mind, the second has to do with your emotion. You become emotionally attached to that truth. You begin to think about it. It begins to play upon your heart. You begin to turn it over in your mind.
It becomes a part of your emotional makeup. And it's all based upon The truth of what has enters your thinking process. Over the years When I First, I started in ministry. I used to be involved in teaching the evangelism course in our church. And I taught it for many years and we had it.
an incredible evangelism program. We based upon evangelism explosion, which was James Kennedy's outline of presenting the gospel. When you go out every week, as I did, in fact, for a period of time in my life, I had appointments every single night of the week, and some on Saturday, all I did was go and talk to people about Jesus Christ. That's how that church grew in Fort Wayne before I came here.
Sooner or later, if you do that enough, you're going to find that people ask questions, and there are a lot of the questions that become very similar. And one of the questions people asked was about faith. You would say to them, Do you have faith? Oh, yes, faith. I believe.
I really believe. What do you have faith in?
Well, I just have faith in faith. And that's really true. They believe that faith itself was the object. To have some cerebral thought process they called faith. That was faith.
So I read the story someplace and I used to ask him this question. If you were to go ice fishing, would you rather have A tiny little bit of faith on four feet of ice. Or would you rather have a whole bunch of faith on two inches of ice. Everybody went. Hmm.
The vast majority of people said They would rather have a whole bunch of faith on two inches of ice. And besides making a note never to go ice fishing with those people. I tried to help them understand that it is not. How much faith you have, it's what is the object of your faith, how worthy is the object of your faith. That's the whole issue.
You can have tons of faith, but if the object of your faith is not worthy of your faith, your faith is inconsequential. It's not about how much faith you have, it's about how much Jesus you know.
So if you're trying to build your faith, don't sit around trying to womp it up. Get in the Bible and learn about Jesus, and the more you learn about Him, the thicker your ice will become. And it won't take much to believe in him if you know who he is, because his record is so clear and so clean. you get emotionally involved with him. First of all, There's perception, then there's persuasion, but finally there has to be a performance, you say.
Do you believe that you have to do a work in order to be saved? Absolutely not. But You have to respond to faith. You have to let your will get involved. Saving faith is the whole of my being, embracing the whole of who Christ is: my mind, my emotion, my will.
And here's where some people get lost when faith is involved. I read a story about a philosopher and a scientist and a simple man, none of whom could swim. They were trapped in a cave with sheer cliff faces. They split up, but the tide kept coming in, and rescuers lowered a rope with a safety harness. And the philosopher said, Ah This looks like a rope.
But I might be mistaken. It could be wishful thinking. It could be an illusion.
So he didn't attach himself and he drowned. The scientist said, ah. This is an 11 millimeter polyester rope with braking strain of 28,000 kilograms. It conforms to the MR1081 standard. And then proceeded to give an exhaustive and entirely correct analysis of the rope's physical and chemical properties.
But he didn't attach himself and he drowned. The simple man said, I'm not sure if this is a rope or a python tail, but it's my only hope, and I'm grabbing on with all my heart, and it's going to save me. And he was saved. Real faith doesn't bypass the mind, doesn't bypass the emotion. But neither does it bypass the will.
Real faith says I will. Real faith says, I do. Real faith says, I believe it, I accept it. I receive it. And if you haven't come all the way through the process, you don't have real faith.
Then we have the demonstration of faith in this passage. And verse 2 says, For by faith the elders obtained a good report. Do you know who the elders were? Those are all the people who believed God. listed in the chapter.
Here the Bible tells us that by faith Verse 2, we commend ourselves to our Creator. By faith, the elders obtained a good report. You want to have a good report with God? You have to have faith. Hebrews 11, 5 says that Enoch's testimony placed the testimony.
pleased God because he walked with God. We're going to learn in a few moments that you can't please God apart from faith. Faith is the one thing that gets God's attention. that pleases God. And then in verse three, we're told that by faith we comprehend creation.
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. What an incredible text.
So faith. You will meditate it upon upon it all your life. I know I have. Every time you turn around you learn something new about it or you see another example of it. And certainly the hall of faith in Hebrews eleven is a great standard for us.
The Bible tells us that these witnesses were given to us that we might not be discouraged, that we might go forward. And as you read their stories, you internalize them, and frankly, you think, if God did that for him or for her, he can do it for me. I hope that's what happens to you as you follow us during this new series. Don't forget, Turning Point has a magazine that we're very proud of because we know it's very helpful to people. It's a companion for folks during the week with devotions for every day, Monday through Friday, and one set of devotions for the weekend.
It's full of articles and information. It's beautifully designed, and it comes to your home once a month if you ask for it. Please let us know you'd like to receive this magazine and we'll send it to you when the next issue comes out. Thank you so very much for being a part of today and what we have been doing as we study the Bible together. I'm David Jeremiah.
See you next time. For more information on Dr. Jeremiah's series, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Faith, visit our website where we also offer two free ways to help you stay connected, our monthly Turning Points magazine and our daily email devotional. Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org slash radio or call us at 800-947-1993.
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Get all the details when you visit our website, davidjeremiah.org/slash radio. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue the series Ordinary People, Extraordinary Faith, on Turning Point.
