Some say faith is merely blind optimism. but the heroes of the Christian faith. didn't just mentally agree with God. They responded to what he said. Today, on Turning Point, Dr.
David Jeremiah profiles these heroes who chose to exercise their faith by obeying God. If you need some encouragement in your faith walk, Listen as David introduces today's eye-opening message, the faith of commitment. And today we're going to look at a chapter that is filled with verbs. You know, I like verbs. They're action words.
Sometimes we get caught up in nouns and adjectives, but the Bible, if you look far enough and deep enough, you'll discover the Bible is a book of verbs. When you realize what happens in Hebrews 11, and we have the record of the great heroes of the past, The Bible tells us they believed, and then it says, and they did this, and the action words are everywhere. When God gives us a truth, He doesn't want us just to meditate on it, He wants us to obey it. And that's what we're going to talk about today as we discuss the faith of commitment in Hebrews chapter 11. And I'm excited to share this truth with you because.
You know, I think too many Christians look at the Bible as a book to know about, to be interested in, to learn about. They come to church and they're blessed by the sermon, but it never seems to dawn on some of them that what you're hearing is what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to Find out what the Bible says, find out what it means, and then when you discover what it means, do what it says. Because only in obedience can you Realize the joy in trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, says the old hymn. And that's what we're learning about today: the faith of commitment from Hebrews chapter 11 in the series Investing for Eternity.
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And now here is the faith of commitment. From Hebrews chapter 11. Stewardship Month has become one of my favorite times. But I must confess it's not always been that way. I used to expect this as one of the necessary evils of the church calendar.
and oftentimes would do everything I could to Shorten it down and not do it thoroughly until I began to realize. How important this was, and how God uses this in our lives. And not to do it is to. Keep from the people of God the blessing that God has in store for them. And I've heard so many testimonies of how God has blessed His people through their faithfulness in giving and how He has just overwhelmed them with His grace and His goodness.
I have come to believe that what we do during these days has long-lasting benefit for all of us. As we review our priorities, And as we are brought face to face with God's word concerning our responsibilities. We're really His managers here on earth. And sometimes I think this is like a managers' meeting that we have as we think about what we're doing to manage the things God has given us. But there's another reason why this has become special and why I look forward to it with such anticipation.
And this is a reason that has crystallized in my mind and in my heart more recently. I see these days as pivotal days. Because as an exercise that we go through We are exercising one of the things that, in many respects, is closer to the heart of God than anything else we do. We're asked to make a commitment. To determine by the grace of God.
What we will do. individually as we advance the cause of Christ. And men and women, that exercise of making a decision now by faith about the unknown future. is at the core of the Christian experience, and it always has been. Perhaps one of the reasons that we feel the presence of the Lord and we sense that His Holy Spirit is working has to do with this fact.
That when we make a commitment to God concerning the year that lies before us, we are doing something that is so very Christian and so very faith-related. That we see God in that exercise more clearly than in almost anything else that we do. You see, when we all came to Christ and received His forgiveness. We say that we made a commitment of faith. What we did was, we trusted a God that we had not and cannot see.
Because we read about him in a book that was written over a period of 1,400 years by men and women we have never met. And they consistently tell the story of a Savior who lived and died and was resurrected before any of us were born. And because the Holy Spirit takes that word of God and makes it real in our hearts. We believe and we make a commitment of our faith to Jesus Christ. But I suggest to you that that moment When we make that commitment, it is literally extended throughout the rest of our lives.
We believe that that commitment Takes us to heaven. But I don't know about you. I'm making faith commitments every day. And I'm learning that walking by faith is not where you start, it's a continual journey. And day after day, month after month, sometimes on an hourly basis, I'm discovering moment by moment what it means to trust God and to put my faith in Him and to commit myself to Him, to make a faith commitment.
We make the commitment at the beginning. We keep on making the commitment in our lives day by day. In some ways, it's like marriage. We stand before the altar of a church and we make a commitment to one another. to love, honor, and cherish for as long as we both shall live.
But the committing is not over when the postlute is played. Can I get a witness? My friend, that's where the commitment begins. And it's from then on, day by day, moment by moment, that we're committed to one another in good times and in bad times, in sickness and in health. It's the relationship that starts with the commitment, but the commitment continues throughout the relationship.
And there are some people that I know. They have a very difficult time making a financial commitment to a church or a religious organization. They have expressed it to me that they don't even believe that it's Christian to do that. In my estimation, when we make a commitment of ourselves to the Lord for the future financially, we're not doing anything all that new. We're just saying this is what we're doing.
This is how we continue to walk by faith and to live and to move among God's people to express our faith in Him and in the future. And I need to say to you that what we do at this point when we make our commitment. Is very much a part of the overall plan of God, whether it's a commitment of this kind or a commitment to serve or a commitment to use our talent. It's part of what God has planned, and it goes all the way back to the beginning. In the book of Hebrews, In the 11th chapter, there is what we often refer to as the Hall of Fame.
Faith. For there in that chapter are listed some of the great heroes of the past who walked with God. and memorialized their names because of their great accomplishments. But one of the things that is often misunderstood about Hebrews chapter 11 is that. It is not the story of some great men and women who stepped up to the line and did good things for God.
But rather, it is the listing of some very ordinary common men and women. Who couldn't step up to the line by themselves and do anything for God, but who trusted God and God through them wrought wonders.
Sometimes when I've read that chapter in the past, I've thought, well, I could never be listed in that chapter, but when I say that and when I think that, I don't understand that chapter. But that chapter isn't about God's great men and women, it's about God's ordinary men and women who were great because God infused them with His faith and with His strength. And in this chapter, we learn a lot about what it means to make a commitment of faith. I think it's important that periodically we go back to the beginning and ask ourselves questions about the things we believe.
So, I want to take just a moment in this message and do a little explaining about the faith of commitment. And I think the best thing I can do to help us all get off on the right foot is to tell you what it is not. While that is not good grammar, I hope it will be good theology. Let me tell you what. The commitment of faith is not.
It is not blind optimism. I hear that a lot today among preachers. faith preachers sometimes. Faith is blind optimism. It's sort of like this, it'll work out.
It's going to be all right. But the faith of the Word of God is far more than blind optimism. Secondly, sometimes I hear people say, well, faith is like a leap in the dark. You leap out into the dark. And they express it this way: that faith is believing in spite of the evidence.
I hear people say that. That is about as opposite from believing faith as anything could be. Faith is not believing in spite of the evidence. Faith is believing because of the evidence. Such an attitude is more like superstition than it is faith.
And then there are some people, and I don't know how to express this except to say it this way: there are some people that believe that faith is the object of itself. You ask them what they're trusting in, and they're saying, Well, I'm just trusting.
Well, what do you mean you're trusting?
Well, I just have faith.
Well, I'm just trusting. I don't know where it's going to lead me, but I'm just trusting. And after you talk to them for a little while, you discover that they have faith in faith.
Now, my friends, That's circular reasoning, and that's not going to get you very far, except back where you started. They think that if they just have a whole bunch of faith, That somehow that'll get them down the road. I remember when I used to go door to door. Knocking on doors and sharing my faith back when I was a pastor in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and you could do that. And I started that church, and every day I was out knocking on doors.
And one of the things I'd run into all the time is people would say, Well, I have faith. And I read this someplace in a book, and I started using this illustration, and it went like this. Let me ask you this question: Suppose you were fishing. In the cold part of the United States where they fish through the ice. Would you rather have A little tiny bit of faith in two feet of ice.
or a whole bunch of faith in two inches of ice. And you would not believe how many people would select the latter as opposed to the former. And they would say they wanted to have a whole bunch of faith in two inches of ice because they thought that sounded more spiritual. And I always made a note never to go fishing with those folks.
Now the problem with that reasoning is this. Your faith is only as good as the object in which it is placed. And so you can go around saying, Oh, I got a bunch of faith. But the question isn't: how much faith do you have? In whom have you placed your faith?
That's the question.
So, faith is not blind optimism, it's not a leap in the dark, and it's not. Faith in itself.
Well then what is faith? What is the faith commitment that we talk about? The commitment of faith. is first of all Initiated by a revelation from God. Do you know that faith starts from God?
and comes here and then goes back. It doesn't start with us. We do not have anything that we can do. To initiate faith, faith starts from God. And here's the bottom line, men and women: God has spoken.
That's it. God has spoken.
So, somebody says, Well, I have faith.
Well, who's your faith in? Your faith is in God.
Well, what is the content of your faith? The content of your faith is what God has said. And here in the book of Hebrews, My friend, it's everywhere. These men and women of faith who went out to do great exploits for God went out to do great exploits for God because God told them to do something. How many of you know Romans 10:17, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God?
So you read through the book of Hebrews and the 11th chapter, and every place where men and women exercised faith, it was in response to something God told them to do. You go back and read the stories in the Old Testament that are referenced here. When you see the relationship between revelation and faith, I'm going to tell you something, it doesn't make any sense if it's not that way. Can you imagine old Noah building a boat in his front yard if God hadn't told him to do it? I mean, everybody in the world thought he was crazy.
People walk by, they're saying, Noah, why are you building this boat? By the way, what is a boat? And it's going to rain. What's rain? They've never seen rain before.
And the only answer that Noah ever could give them was: God told me to do it. And I believed him, and I'm doing it. It says in chapter 11 and verse 7. By faith, Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear and prepared an ark. That's how it happened.
And by faith Abraham was called to go out. Where he didn't even know where he was going. It says in the Word of God: by faith he went out not knowing where he was going.
Somebody said, Abraham, where are you going? I don't know.
Well, why are you going then? Because God told me to. I encourage you sometimes to take the 11th chapter and go through every verse and see how many times either referenced or it's so evident in the context that you can't miss it. For instance, You remember when they marched around the walls of Jericho? I mean, have you ever heard of a military strategy like that in your life?
Here are these people marching around the wall. Joshua's leading them. They're going to tear down the walls of Jericho, they're going to fall inward. And the people are throwing stones at him. I visualize this in my mind and hollering mean-spirited things at him over the wall.
What are you doing? We're marching. What for? We're going to conquer you. Right.
Somebody said, Why are you doing this? Because God told us to do it, and we're responding to God, you see. Faith is a matter of revelation. It's not just having a spirit of warmth and Back part of your head, it's not just a feeling, faith is doing. In response to what God has said.
Secondly, the faith of commitment is ignited by our response to that revelation. Faith is not just mental assent to what has been revealed. How many of you know the Bible says the devil believes and he trembles? The devil believes, he believes there's a God, he knows there's a God. But just knowing that doesn't Make him a candidate for heaven, that's for certain.
Faith is not just mental assent to something that's been written or something God has said, but faith goes beyond that. Faith is responding to what God said. Faith is obedience to what God has said. It is simply saying, I am going to do what God has told me to do, and then doing it. And if you go through the 11th chapter of Hebrews, you'll notice that there's so many action words there.
Faith isn't something you think. Faith is something you do. It says Abel offered unto God. Noah prepared an ark. Abraham offered up Isaac.
Moses left Egypt. And then, if you have a chance, read verses 32 through 36. It is just loaded with verbs, with action verbs. of things people did by faith. See, we've got this idea that faith is an attitude, but faith is an attitude that results in an action.
Faith is obedience to God. And if we're practicing true Bible faith, it will be a total response on our part.
Someone has written that, first of all, it begins with perception. The mind perceives it. And then it moves to persuasion and the emotions embrace it. And then it goes from perception to persuasion to performance, and the will undertakes to do it.
So that's how it works. I'm reading the word of God, and God says, This is my command to you, and my mind captures it. And then my heart begins to understand it, and then my will takes over, and I move forward to do it. The faith of commitment is ignited by a response to Revelation. But notice, if you read the 11th chapter carefully, you'll discover.
That the faith of commitment is intensified by the resistance that it faces. Every place you turn, there's a problem. with what these people did by faith. For instance, think about old Abraham. The Bible says he went out, and God told him to go to this certain place, not knowing where he was going.
And when he finally got there, do you know what happened? They had a famine. What do you think old Abraham thought about that? God told me to come down here, and I trusted Him, and now here I am, and there's a famine. And you know, he got in a lot of trouble because he had a moment where he didn't trust God to take care of him in the famine.
And he went down there and he got involved with Hagar, and we've been paying the price for that ever since, as you know. What about Noah? God says, Noah, build an ark. I don't think Noah knew it was going to take 120 years, and he was going to have to preach every day to the ridicule of the people, but he kept preaching and he kept pounding. God kept blessing.
Sometimes we think, well, if I do what God tells me to do, then it's going to be sweet dreams from then on. My friend, If you do what God tells you to do, how many of you know that sometimes there's resistance?
Some of you have made a commitment this month, you're going to start tithing. And God's going to bless you. I promise you. He's promised that. We're going to look at those promises in a moment.
But he'll probably test you in the process too. to see whether or not you really truly believe. What he's told you. But let me tell you something, whenever he tests you, it always strengthens you. When you go through the test and you come out on the other side and your faith is intact and you're still doing what God called you to do, you know in your heart.
That this is from God, and He's going to continue to help you. It's intensified. By the resistant. And then, number four, the faith of commitment is inspired by the reward it anticipates. Throughout the book of Hebrews, we learn about the reward.
Hebrews 11:6 says it this way: 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. How many of you know that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him? God always rewards those.
And you read in Hebrews 11:10 about Abraham, who looked for a city whose builder and maker was God. You look through this whole chapter, and what you see, these people are abiding in faith now because of what they anticipate God is going to do in the future. They trust God for the future, and they believe that God is faithful. And that's what we do. We do what God tells us.
We may not always see the reward immediately, but we know that God doesn't lie and that He always rewards those who follow Him. And He rewards us sometimes in a marvelous way here, and He rewards us always and completely when we stand before Him someday. He's a rewarder.
So, faith works. Let me tell you why. Let me just go through some of these verses. Faith works according to Hebrews 11 because faith believes that God is. Notice.
Hebrews 11:6, without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he Is. Faith believes that God is. And then faith works because faith believes that God blesses. Verse 6 says, He rewards those. who diligently follow him.
And then faith believes that God is faithful. Notice verse 11. in Hebrews chapter 11. It says, By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him faithful who has promised. Faith believes that God is.
Faith believes that God blesses. Faith believes that God is faithful. And in verse 19, we read that faith believes that God is able. Notice verse 19, concluding that God was able to raise him up. Even from the dead.
That's Abraham's rationale. For taking the life or going to the mountain to take the life of Isaac. He believed that God was able to raise him up. And then finally, faith believes that God is present with his people. Verse 27 of chapter 11 says, By faith Moses forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured.
Now watch this, as seeing him who is invisible. He saw God every day in his experience. And I wrote this down. This is kind of quaint. But maybe you won't forget it because of that.
You know why faith works? Here it is. Faith works because God is. Faith works because God has. Faith works because God does.
Faith works because God can. And faith works because God will. That's why faith works. It works because he is, because he has to do what we ask him, he can bless us. He does what we ask him to do.
He can do what we ask him to do, and he's willing to do what we ask him to do. That's why faith works. Now, having said all of that.
Some of you are wondering, what does that have to do with my commitment to stewardship?
Well, let me just. bring all this back together at the end here. You see, faith has never changed. And whether it's the faith we exercise in some big challenge or it's the faith we exercise in our everyday walk by faith, faith is still the same. It's based on a revelation from God, it's based on our response to that revelation.
There's always going to be some resistance, and God has promised to reward us if we walk by faith. Amen. I've said oftentimes that faith and risk go together. You say, I'd like to begin tithing, but what if it doesn't work?
Well, you have to trust God that it will work, but you'll never find out if you don't do it. You have to take the first step. And the Bible teaches that and illustrates it from the beginning to the end. Faith is walking. on God's promises.
It's going where you've never been before often and into places you have never even imagined, doing what God calls you to do. the faith of commitment. Friends, we are thankful for your participation in this series. We're thankful for your faithfulness in giving and praying. And we know that as we send out the Word of God to bless you, the way you encourage us is through your response, and we're so grateful for that.
For those of you living in Canada, your response stays in Canada and helps to fund the programming and stations that are there.
So thank you very much and God bless you. We'll see you next time right here in this good station. Our message today originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Dr. David Jeremiah, the senior pastor. Turning Point is also on radio and TV this weekend.
To learn where to find it, visit our website davidjeremiah.org slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org slash radio or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's new book, What God Promises You, Seven Truths That Will Change the Way You Live. It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard New International and New King James Versions, available in your choice of attractive and durable cover options.
Tell us how this ministry helps you grow. Write to Turning Point, PO Box 3838, San Diego, California, 92163. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us Monday as we conclude the series Investing for Eternity on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
