Introduction
There was a
very cautious man who never travelled fast.
He wouldn’t
risk a step of faith; it was safety first and last.
And when, one
day, he passed away, his insurance was denied,
For since
he’d never really lived, they claimed he’d never died.
I don’t know
who wrote that poem, it’s anonymous, but it’s perfect for opening this series
on faith. We’re going to be going through Hebrews 11, on and off, until the end
of November.
Why a series on
faith? We’ve all got faith, haven’t we?
We hear every day about faith but it’s not the faith God is looking for.
There’s talk of faith communities, faith schools, interfaith initiatives,
faith-based charities and all the rest of it, but that’s just a new way of saying
“religion.”
Someone said
to me this week, “The answer to the question ‘do all religions lead to God?’ is
no. Not because some do and some don’t, but because no religion leads to God.”
When we talk
about “faith” over these next couple of months, we’re not talking about
belonging to a religion. We’re talking about daily trust in Jesus Christ as the
way, the truth, and the life.
People say, “I haven’t got much faith; it’s all very
vague for me.” But faith is not clarity, it’s not sight, it’s not knowledge. Faith
doesn’t know the future, but it knows the one who does.
Hebrews 11 is
all about faith. The word appears 27 times in this one chapter and you find the
words “by faith” 22 times. Hebrews 11 is a guide on the sort of thing living by
faith involves.
If I had to sum
up Hebrews 11 in a few lines, I’d say it’s all about people in the Old Testament;
seventeen are named personally, who were given the land of Canaan but were never
content with it. They were yearning for a better country. They were hoping for
something more. They were looking ahead into the future to something - or someone
- who would fulfil all their spiritual longings, and when Jesus came, he was
it. None of them lived to see him, but they never gave up looking until the day
they died.
We too, as
Christians, are people who long for more. Many Christians say that they don’t
quite feel at home on this earth. We don’t totally belong. We’re misfits.
People think we’re a bit weird. They’re probably right!
I have a
brother called Richard and a sister called Fran, neither of whom are
Christians. I feel like a spare part whenever I’m with them. They don’t
understand me and I never feel at home in their company. In many ways, I feel a
closer family tie to you and all Christians worldwide. You’re my family, and this is home.
I’ve got a
United Kingdom passport. So this is where I’m from, and there are things I like
about my country, but I don’t feel I completely belong here. My patriotism feels
stronger for God’s kingdom than for the United Kingdom. Hebrews 13.14 says, “We
do not have [on earth] an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that
is to come.”
So it’s as if
I’m just passing through here. I’m like a traveller with no fixed abode. Is it
just me? Do you ever feel like that? Well, faith gives us rights of citizenship
of a heavenly country.
Definition
Hebrews 11
starts (v1) with a definition of faith. “Now faith is being sure of what we
hope for and certain of what we do not see.”
You might be
saying to yourself “I’m never sure or
certain about anything. I’m riddled
with doubts.” Do you ever say that?
Martin Ayers
wrote a really good book on dealing with doubt called Keep the Faith. And in this book, he asks you to imagine that
you’re on jury service for an important trial.
“You arrive
on the first day and you sit there with other members of the public. You see
all the same things and hear all the same evidence. Speeches are made,
witnesses are called, exhibits are passed around, and right from the start, you
think it’s fairly clear. The defendant is guilty.
Each day of
the trial leaves you more and more convinced. The evidence is overwhelming –
stacked against him. By the time you listen to the closing arguments, you think
it’s a dead certainty. And then comes decision time. You and your eleven fellow
jurors gather in the jury room. As you sit down, people are already saying what
you expected them to say. “Well, it’s fairly straightforward isn’t it?” “No
question in my mind.”
But then a
shocking truth begins to dawn on you. Everybody else is convinced the other
way. Every one of them thinks he didn’t do it... You pluck up the courage to
say what you think and mention that you think he’s guilty, and the others gaze
at you with astonishment. A few of them appear angry – they’re aghast at the
way they think you’ve misread the facts.”
That’s a bit like
how it feels to be a Christian in the modern world. Everyone else seems to
think you’ve lost the plot. Such is the overwhelming tide of opinion against Christian
truth, the environment we live in can feel daunting. No wonder we wobble!
But faith is
being sure of what we hope for. The
word ‘hope’ in English is a tentative, abstract kind of word. Is it going to be
sunny tomorrow? I hope so. In England, that means, “who knows?” Basically, “I
hope” is indistinguishable from “I wish.”
But the New
Testament (in Hebrews 6) describes hope, not as a lottery ticket, but as an
anchor. Anchors are never made of porcelain or papier maché; they’re usually cast iron; they’re weighty, they’re solid,
they’re built to endure. They’ve got to be up to the job of securing a 400,000
ton fully-loaded super tanker from being dragged off its mooring by powerful tides
and currents.
If someone
asks you, “Are you going to heaven?” how would you reply? Some people say, “I
hope so, fingers crossed, touch wood, if I’m lucky, we don’t know, do we?” Ask
a ship’s crew if they think their vessel is going to stay where it is after
they winch down a 30 ton solid steel anchor and sink it into the sea bed!
Faith is being sure of our anchors. It’s not optimism, or
positive thinking. It’s not about being sure of ourselves, it’s being certain
of what we don’t see; it’s about trusting in God.
Faith is not,
“I’ll wait and see how things turn out before I decide whether I believe or
not.” Faith is “I’m going to believe now, I’m going to give my life to this,
even though I can’t see absolutely every consequence.”
Faith in Creation
Verse 3: “By
faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what
is seen was not made out of what was visible.”
Where did everything come from? What’s it for? How did it
get here? The answer is we don’t know; we weren’t there. Even John/Bill wasn’t
there. Creation has never been replicated so we can’t analyse a repeat
occurrence of it. These are facts beyond our ability to know for sure, so we
have to take someone else’s word for it.
Imagine someone
suddenly threw a ball into this space from the narthex behind you and ran off
before you noticed it. With science you could calculate the distance the ball
travelled and its rate of deceleration before it stopped. You could gauge the
height it bounced, you could weigh it and measure it, and you could determine
what it was made of. But you couldn’t tell who threw it.
This is what
scientists have worked out about our origins:
About 13.75
billion years ago, in a spontaneous explosion called the Big Bang, everything
came into being from nothing. Nine billion years later, the Earth formed when
masses of very hot matter got pulled together by gravity to form a sphere.
It cooled
down over time and now happens to be the optimal size for a life-sustaining
planet. The earth’s mass has enough gravitational pull to support an
atmosphere, but if it were much bigger its gravitational force would press
mountain ranges down submerging the entire landmass under water. Our planet
spins at just the right speed, is just the right distance from the sun, and has
just the right mix of gases in the upper and lower atmospheres to allow flora
and fauna to co-exist, and has a powerful enough magnetic field to deflect
harmful solar wind.
Over a vast
period of time, and by the most unlikely chain of lucky breaks, the heap of
diverse elements, scattered chaotically over the world’s surface when it formed,
somehow got it together. It just so happened that there was an ideal
environment at the right temperature and the right atmospheric pressure for all
this to give birth to something.
By a series
of extremely complex chemical reactions, primitive cells eventually formed,
each one made up of a million, million atoms, all in just the right
arrangement. Amino acids and enzymes just happened to develop together at the
same time and in the same place. Not only did these cells form, they also began
to successfully reproduce themselves.
Even this ultra-primitive
life had long and highly complex genetic information. Francis Crick, who
co-discovered DNA, said, “The origin of life appears at the moment to be almost
a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been
satisfied to get it going.”
That’s what
science knows about the origins of the earth. It’s brilliant. It’s ingenious. But
it can’t tell you what or who brought it all about.
It’s by faith, not by sight, we understand
that something was made out of nothing, “that the universe was formed at God’s
command.” It’s by faith that we understand that God had only to speak for
energy and matter and time to come into existence.
When I used
to do homework with my children, they would sometimes struggle over something.
As long as it wasn’t long division, which I still can’t do, I tried to explain
as best I could, but I could sometimes tell that I wasn’t helping much. So I would
try to explain again in a slightly different way and then, suddenly, there’d be
a lightbulb moment and they’d understand what I meant.
That’s what
it’s like with creation. You understand with your mind as the Holy Spirit gives
you understanding. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
With the
illumination of the Holy Spirit, it is no big deal believing that God created
everything out of nothing. Once you know God, it doesn’t really surprise you at
all. “Creator God of earth and sea and sky, our awesome God.” He is grand
scale, almighty, omnipotent, all-powerful, and pre-eminently supreme. It’s what
you’d expect of him.
I think all the
science points compellingly to a creator. The more I read science, the more it strengthens
my faith.
Justin
Brierley, writing in Premier Christianity magazine in April wrote this about the
science of our origins: (You have to concentrate a bit to get what he’s
saying).
“Some 30 or
so fundamental numbers, such as the force of gravity, the rate of the expansion
of the universe and the ratio of electrons to protons in the universe, are so
exquisitely balanced that the tiniest fluctuation from their actual value would
mean that a life-permitting universe could not exist.
The odds of
the finely tuned universe we live in coming about by chance are so unlikely
that it’s difficult to conceive of the astronomically large numbers involved.
US Physicist
Hugh Ross gives a helpful analogy for visualising the ratio of electrons to
protons as sensitive to the degree of one part in 1037. ‘Cover the
entire North American continent in dimes all the way up to the moon, a height
of about 239,000 miles. Next, pile dimes all the way up to the moon on a
billion other continents… Paint one dime red and mix it in the billions of
piles of dimes. Blindfold a friend and ask him to pick out one dime. The odds
that he will pick the red dime are one in 1037.’
These then
are the odds of the correct ratio of electrons to protons arising by chance. [And
without the ratio being exactly so, life cannot exist.] When you combine all
the other (even more improbable) odds of the [30 or so] other fundamental
forces together, it becomes difficult to believe that our life-permitting universe
is a product of chance.”
I love this
stuff! And we need to understand that faith doesn’t contradict reason. Reason can
coexist with faith but you cannot argue someone by brilliant logic into the
kingdom of God. You can help them overcome some intellectual obstacles, but you
can’t make someone believe by force of argument.
Faith in God at Work
Verse 2 says
that the ancients were commended for their faith and then there’s a whole list
of people, most of whom were very fallible, and had major crises of faith. The
whole Bible is like this. God has chosen to reveal truth mostly in narrative,
in real situations, through people’s triumphs and failures - not in
philosophical platitudes.
I have about
two dozen biographies of great men and women of faith at home; books about
Smith Wigglesworth, John Wesley, Thomas Cranmer, and William Tyndale.
I’ve got
books by, or about, more recent giants of faith like Rachel Scott and Cassie
Bernall (who were shot dead in the Columbine High School massacre after
refusing to deny Christ), and Brother Andrew, Bilquis Sheikh (a Muslim woman of
noble birth who met Jesus in dreams) and Jackie Pullinger. These too were, or
are, ordinary people but their lives inspire me to live with greater faith. I’d
commend reading a good Christian biography to encourage your faith.
Faith is as
old as humanity. There was faith in the first family. If Adam was the first to
lose his faith, his son Abel (v4) was the first to find it. Abel lived by faith
because he had a right attitude towards God, unlike his brother Cain. Is your
attitude right towards God today? Are you open to him working in your life?
Enoch lived
by faith (v5). He didn’t just live for God. He walked with God. There was intimacy,
friendship. Step by step, every day, Enoch knew experienced God beside him. Would
you describe yourself as a friend of God? Do you need to grow closer to him?
Then it says
(v6) “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to
him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek
him.”
Noah lived by
faith (v6). He built a ship in dry desert miles from the sea and where it never
rained. But he believed that when God said, it would happen. Half-hearted
Christians never live by faith. They structure their lives so that they never
have to.
Jesus said
that what happened in Noah’s day is going to happen again. When he returns, he
said “people will be busy going about their lives, mostly ignoring God.” Jesus
is coming again to judge the living and the dead. Do you believe him?
Ending
I’d better
end. Maybe I should close with an encouragement.
Jesus’ 12
disciples exasperated him practically daily. They walked around with Jesus for
three years, watched him feed the 5,000, saw him walk on water, heal the sick,
turn water into wine, restore sight to the blind, cleanse lepers, calm a storm,
get paraplegics back on their feet, raise the dead and do the same things
themselves, even then they ran away
at his arrest, denied him at his trial and refused to believe when he rose from
the dead. No wonder Jesus often castigated them for their lack of faith. They
were champions of doubt and unbelief.
But he never
gave up on them. You haven’t seen half of what they saw. And he won’t give up
on you either.
So without
faith, it is impossible to please God. But acts of stepping out in faith do
please him. He loves it. Whenever Jesus did see faith, he commended it and
power was released. “Woman, you have great faith” he said to the Caananite
woman, and signs and wonders followed.
Faith is what
sets us apart from the rest of the world. What, specifically, are you doing in your
life that requires you to take a step of faith?
Let’s go for
it – and ask God to release his power as we step out.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 2 October 2016
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