Hope Church LV Sermons
Not By Sight :: Week 1
When you think about someone putting their faith in Christ, what first comes to your mind? When you hear that phrase, "Man, they put their faith in Christ." What most of us think about when we hear that phrase, "Man, somebody put their faith in Christ," we think about that moment of decision, that moment of decision that all of us who are believers have had in our lives, when we heard the gospel, we heard the glorious good news of Jesus Christ that we were sinners, we'd sinned against God. And because of our sin, we were separated from a love relationship with God and destined to an eternity separated from this God, but God stepped in and did for us what we could not do for ourselves. God made a way for our sin to be taken away from us. Through Jesus Christ, God became a man, lived a sinless life, and on the cross Jesus died for our sin. He gave His life on the cross to reconcile us with God. And Jesus died for the sins of the world and He didn't stay dead, He rose again as a testimony that God had accepted His sacrifice for our sin. And when we hear that good news of the gospel, we respond and we come to that place of putting our faith in Christ. The Bible describes it this way in Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 8, "For by grace you have been saved through what, faith, and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God." Through faith we receive God's gracious gift of salvation. And when we think about faith in Christ, most of us think about that moment of decision. Now don't misunderstand me. The moment of decision is a significant moment in our lives as followers of Christ. That is the beginning of our relationship with God. When you and I began a relationship with God was when we put our faith by faith we trusted in the gospel, we believed in Jesus, and it was in that moment of faith that we began a relationship with God. But I want to put the emphasis on the word began. That was the beginning of a journey of faith in Christ. I want to show you another verse, 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 7. And I want you to read this verse out loud with me off the screen either here or at our Boulder City campus. I want you to read this out loud. Ready? One, two, three, four, we walk by faith not by sight. For we, who's the we? It's us, right? Paul is writing in 2 Corinthians to a group of Christians in Corinth in particular, but it's written to believers in Corinth and in the generations to come which includes us. So Paul is writing to a group of Christians and he says we walk by faith. The word walk in the New Testament is a Greek term that literally means to live one's life. And in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 it's used in the present active tense meaning that it describes ongoing, continuous action, meaning that it doesn't just describe seasons of my life, it's not just at certain times in my life, it's not just at a weekend service, it's not just in my personal time with God. No, he's describing something that is the moment by moment way I am to live my life. Here's the point. Faith in Christ is not a decision I make. Faith in Christ is a life that I live. Faith in Christ is not simply a decision that we make at a point in our lives to put our faith in Christ. Yes, it begins there. Don't let me undervalue that. That is a significant first step on the faith journey. It is a decision that we make at a point in our lives, but faith in Christ is not simply a decision that we make. Faith in Christ is a life that we live. You and I are to live our lives moment by moment, by faith in Him. Now, it raises a lot of questions because faith is a difficult concept to define. Faith is a difficult spiritual term to even comprehend and put into words so much so that there was a missionary named John Patton who lived in the 1800s. John Patton in the 1800s was a missionary to the South Pacific Islands, the Hebrews Islands, and he was there trying to translate the gospel into a language of an unreached people, people that had never heard the gospel before. And John Patton reached a point in his process where he was really struggling because he could not find a word in their language for the word "faith." He couldn't find anything that would adequately communicate that concept to this new people that had never been exposed to the truth of God's word before. And one day he was sitting in his hut and he was translating and he was wrestling with this issue, and one of the islanders came into his hut, kind of burst in and plopped down in a chair. And in his own language, here's what the islander said, "It's so good to rest my whole weight in this chair." And immediately John Patton said, "There it is. There's my phrase." And as he translated the gospel into their language, when he would use the word "faith," he said, "faith is resting your whole weight on God." When we come to that moment of salvation, what do we do? We surrender our lives by faith and we rest all of eternity on the promise of God in the gospel. But as a follower of Jesus Christ, faith is not just a decision that I made at a point in my life, but I'm to live my life moment by moment, resting all of who I am on the person of God in my life, a little over ten years ago. There were a handful of adults gathered in my living room joining in a journey that would ultimately become this fellowship called Hope Church. And when we began together as that small group of people just over ten years ago, we understood that we were resting our whole weight on God. We knew that what God had called us to be a part of was bigger than us. We knew that the vision and the burden that God had placed in our heart to birth the church that would not just touch this city, but that would ultimately touch the world, places like Thailand and Egypt and Central and South America. We knew that it was bigger than us and we understood that we were embarking on a journey of faith. So when we began this fellowship together, we studied a passage of Scripture for a number of weeks, actually a few months, Hebrews, chapter 11. If you have your Bible, you can go ahead and open it to Hebrews, chapter 11. Because this weekend, as we're on the brink of taking another significant step on this journey as a church family, and just a few months, we'll be relocating and finally having a permanent place for us as a church family. We're moving into a campus that's going to be a home, but also a launching pad for us to continue to join in God's activity locally and globally. As we take this next step and as we pray through God, what is it that you want us to study in this last series leading up to that step? He brought us back to the verses that we studied when there were 18 people in my living room. Because the reality is, we must rest our whole weight on God today just as much as we did back then. So this weekend, we launch a series simply entitled, "Not by sight." Ordinary people, extraordinary faith. Hebrews, chapter 11, we're going to begin in verse number one. We're going to look at the first three verses this weekend. Here's what it says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for. The conviction of things not seen." Now just stop right there for a moment. That verse in and in itself there gives you some of the difficulty in trying to understand and explain faith. That is the closest you'll find in the Bible to a definition of faith and when you read verse one, really you've got more questions than you've got answers after reading verse one. It's the assurance of things hoped for. It sounds beautiful. Just what does it mean? Just the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval. 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. What Hebrews, chapter 11 does is it opens with these first three verses that don't define faith for us. Let me see what they do, they describe it. With some action statements, these first three verses lay a foundation describing faith in action and then the rest of this chapter is personal life story after personal life story. Starting in verse number four with Abel and running all the way through chapter 11 we'll read of people like Abraham and Sarah and Moses and we'll read stories of people like Rahab and Samson and David and Samuel all through chapter 11. We get life stories, testimonials of the faithfulness of God and the lives of His people as they walked by faith, not by sight. So this weekend we're going to unpack this description and then over the next several weeks we're going to look at each one of these testimonies individually. So let me give you four dimensions of living by faith. Here's the first one, faith looks ahead. Faith looks ahead and here's the defining statement, it appropriates God's promises to my life. Faith looks ahead. It appropriates God's promises to my life. The Bible says faith is the assurance of things, hope for the word assurance. There is a word that could be translated essence or reality and it was a term that was commonly used in business transactions as a document that provided evidence of ownership. It could be translated a title deed. The Bible says faith is the title deed, it's the document that provides evidence of what of things hoped for. Now it's important that we understand what the Bible is talking about here because we use the word hope a lot of times in our culture in a way that is not the biblical term hope. We kind of talk about a hope like we would a wish, right? We use the word hope like it's a wish that we're making. Matter of fact, listen to what William Barclay says about this word hope. He said it is not the hope which looks forward with wistful longing. It is the hope which looks forward with utter certainty. The Bible word hope is a word that means an expected outcome. The Bible here says faith is the assurance, it's the title deed of things that I know are going to happen. How do I know they're going to happen? The Bible says it's things that are hoped for and the way that the writer uses this phrase, it describes the very promises that God has given us. It's something, it's a hope that we've received from somebody else. The Bible says that by faith I lay hold of the promises of God. I look ahead, I do not see things as they are, but by faith I see things as they will be based on the promise of God. Another writer E. Schuler English, listen to what he said, faith makes them a reality. It reaches forth its hand and grasps them, talking about the promises of God. For faith is trust in God whose word has promised and who cannot fail. Faith appropriates, it looks ahead, and it grabs a hold of the very promises of God, and it doesn't see things as they are, but it sees things as they will be, not because I'm wishing for something, but because I'm grabbing hold of the very promise of God. Let me give you an example from my life. Christian and I, this coming May, my wife and I will be married 20 years this May. It's hard to believe that she has put up with me for 20 years. It's a miracle of the grace of God in and of itself. 20 years this May. When we first got married, we were young, we were, I was 20 years old, Christie was 19, we were in college, and you know, we had the great plan, we were going to finish school, wait five years, have kids, we've been married three months, we got pregnant. God had another plan, right? I wasn't making hardly anything. We were living in the married student housing there at the University of North Alabama and Florence, Alabama, and I was a student pastor at a pretty good sized church there in our town, but I was just kind of part-time because I was going to school full-time and so I was making about $10,000 a year and we're living in the married student subsidizing their own campus and then all of a sudden we get the news that we're pregnant and expecting a child. All the panic sets in, now I'm 20 years old, I'm a husband, now I'm going to be a father, I'm making hardly nothing, are we going to be able to provide, are we going to, and then we get this news from the doctor that Christie had a small heart complication and they wanted to put a heart monitor on her that she would wear for 24 hours and then they would get the results from that heart monitor and be able to diagnose exactly what we needed to do. So, you know, we find out about this heart monitor and the heart monitor is going to cost the 24 hours, it was like, I think the exact dollar figure was $624 that it was going to cost us for this one night wearing of this heart monitor. Now, when you got $10,000 for the year, $624 is a lot of money and I remember at that point in my life, my dad had sat down with Christie and I when we got married and he taught us like he'd done growing up about the principle of giving and tithing and we were committed to giving 10% of our income to the Lord even as a young couple investing in God's activity and all these thoughts are rushing through my mind. I remember leaving the office and I'm driving home, I was crossing O'Neill Bridge, it's a bridge there that crosses over the Tennessee River there in Alabama and I was crossing over that bridge and I'm just really at a loss with the weight of all of this on me as a new husband, going to be a new father, worried about providing financially, wrestling with the whole giving, generosity, principle and I'll never forget being on the bridge behind the will of my car and all at once the Spirit of God just flooded my soul with Psalm 23 and Psalm 23 verse 1 says this, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not what want. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." And it was like all at once God said, "Vance, it's not up to you to provide, it's up to you to trust me and I'll provide through you." And by faith I grabbed that promise of God, by faith I reached out, now it wasn't just a wish that I had, no I had a promise from the Word of God, He is my shepherd I shall not want. And I reached out by faith and I just grabbed a hold of that promise, I remember going home that evening and telling Christy how God had spoken to my heart and we still didn't know how it was going to work, we didn't know how it was going to add up, a couple weeks later we got an income tax check back in the mail, it was $626, God gave us two extra dollars, we went to McDonald's and celebrated God's provision. Now don't misunderstand what I'm saying, that was not my faith at work. That was the faithfulness of God at work. But it was faith that enabled me to appropriate that principle to my heart. I didn't see things as they were, I saw them as God said they would be based on His promise. I didn't know all the details, but faith allowed me to grab hold of that promise. Why am I explaining that? Because there is a dangerous philosophy being taught in the church in America today. It says if you just have enough faith, you can have anything you want. If you just have enough faith, you can get healed of any disease and if you're not being healed, it's just because you don't have enough faith. If you have enough faith, you can have all the prosperity, you can have new cars and a nice home, you can have all the material possessions that you want if you just have enough faith. That they'll tell you if you just have enough faith, you can have all the relationships that you want to have in your life. If you have enough faith, you can have all the success that you want in your life. The problem is that's not faith in the promises of God, that's faith in faith. You see the difference? God didn't promise me that I could drive two new cars and have a million dollar house. God promised he's my shepherd I shall not want. That means I'll always have every desire, what it means is God will provide and take care. I'm not putting my faith in faith, it's not about the amount, as a matter of fact the Bible said if you've got the faith of a grain of the mustard seed, it's not about the amount of your faith, it's about the object of your faith. Who is your faith in? Is your faith in God? A.W. Atoza wrote about it, let me show you what he said, imagination is not faith. That's important. You watch much preaching on television, you'll think it is. You just create it in your mind, you believe it hard enough and you can have it. Imagination is not faith. The two are not only different from but stand in sharp opposition to each other. And projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing, it simply reckons upon that which is already there. Faith looks ahead, it appropriates the promises of God to my life. Number two, faith looks beyond, faith looks beyond. It allows me to see from God's perspective. The Bible said faith is the assurance of things hoped for, then it says it is the conviction of things not seen. The word conviction is a word that means evidence or proof and it comes from a verb which means to bring something to light. Here's the point, faith enables me to see things from a different perspective. You see we live in a physical world that is real, right? We know this physical world through the power of our senses, we can see it, we can taste it, we can touch it, we can hear it, we can unfortunately sometimes smell it, right? The world is real and we know it because we can experience it, it's a physical world. We know people, we eat food, we breathe air, we experience the world. And often we live our lives only by the perspective of what we can gain by looking around us. We look at the reality of our circumstances. We see what's going on in our lives and we're limited in our perspective because we can only see our situation, how do we say it, under the circumstances, right? Where we look at our past experiences and we suppose a reality because it happened in the past, if I make this decision, I know what's going to happen this time, right? Because I experienced that in the past, here's what I know is going to happen, or we look around at other people and we get their opinions and their ideas and their criticism and if we're not careful, we simply make our decisions based on what we can see around us. But faith doesn't simply look around at what I can see. Faith looks beyond to what I can't see. You see it is true that we live in a physical world that is real, but we also live in a spiritual world that is real. Listen to me. The spiritual realm is even more real than the physical world that we live in. How can you make that statement past advance? How can you say that the spiritual realm, here's why I know that, because God is in that spiritual realm and God in the spiritual realm is holding together everything that's in the physical realm. Everything we can see, taste, touch, feel and smell, all of those things are being held together by God who you cannot see with your eyes. It's even a more real reality than what you and I can experience in the physical world. T.W. Tozer said it this way, "We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of any other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world, but we doubt that it is real in the accepted meaning of the word at the root of the Christian life, lies belief in the invisible. The object of the Christian's faith is unseen reality." Let me give you an illustration from the Bible. I'm not going to take the time this weekend to read it, but I want you to go home and read Exodus chapter 14. Exodus chapter 14 is an amazing story in the Old Testament. God made a promise to the children of Israel. The promise was, they'd been for 400 years in bondage and slavery to the Egyptian people. And the promise God made them through Moses is, "I'm going to lead my people out of Egypt and I'm going to lead them to a promise land that I'm going to give them." And Moses comes and he brings this news after, can you imagine 400 years of slavery, 400 years the Egyptian Empire been built on the backs of the Jewish slaves? Moses says, "We're getting out of here. We're going to a promise land." And you know the story, how they fight through all of that with all the plagues. You can read that in the first 12, 14 chapters of the book of Exodus, all the 10 plagues. And finally Pharaoh says, "Okay, get out, go." The children of Israel, as you read it, they begin to sing these wonderful songs of freedom and deliverance as they're believing the promise of God and they're marching out of Egypt in victory. And they only get about a day into the journey and they come up to the Red Sea. And it was real. They could see it. If they jumped in it, they got wet. And then they looked behind him and Pharaoh changed his mind. And he's bringing the largest army on the planet after them. So here they find themselves rocking the tambourines and now they got the Red Sea in front of them and the Egyptian army behind them and they had two options. They could see things as they were. And nobody could have denied that the Red Sea was in front of them and the Egyptian army was behind them. That was very real. Now if they simply saw things as they were in the physical visible realm, here would have been their response. We are in deep trouble. You're talking about a rock and a hard place. And this Egyptian army, they were mad. Remember the last plague right, the firstborn of every family in Egypt had been slaughtered. They were ticked off. They were coming and they were coming ready to fight. The other alternative is the Red Sea in front of them. The other option is, God had made a promise. They couldn't see it. In the physical visible realm, it made absolutely no sense at all. But God had made a promise. Now you know the story. They believed the promise of God and God took care of both problems, right? He parted the Red Sea and he held the waters at bay and dried out the ground and over two million Israelites marched through the Red Sea on dry ground to the other side. And then as the Egyptian army chased them into the Red Sea, God collapsed the Red Sea and drowned the entire army. You see what they couldn't see was even more real than what they could see. Pastor, are you telling me this weekend that I am to live my life not simply by what I can see, but I'm to put my faith in God even when I cannot see? That is exactly what I am telling you because the one you cannot see controls everything you can see. So how do you do that? How is this possible for us to live our lives by faith? Because our faith, although it is in the unseen, it's not in the unknown. Paul was in prison in Rome. Nero had imprisoned him as Paul. And Paul was headed to be executed for his preaching of the gospel. And listen to what Paul wrote from prison to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1 and verse 12. He said, "For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed. For I know whom I have believed." And am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day. It may be unseen, but our God is not unknown. We can know him and walk with him daily. Number three, faith looks above. It clarifies God's purpose for my life. Like verse 2, the writer of Hebrews says, "For by it the men of old gained approval." That phrase gained approval literally is what the scholars call a theological prayer. It's passive. It means that it's God's testimony about them. Through their radical faith, the Old Testament saints had rested their whole weight on God and in that they pleased the Father. We're going to study in a few weeks, Hebrews chapter 11 verse 6, look at it on the screen. It says, "And without faith it is," what? Get out loud, impossible to please God. Unless I'm resting my whole weight on God, unless I'm living moment by moment in total dependence on Him. Let me say it another way. Let me give you that verse flipped around. Only through a life of faith is the Father pleased with me. You see God's ultimate purpose for you and for me is to live in total dependence on Him. You see how that clarifies God's purpose for my life? You have a wrestle with the question, "What is God's will for my life?" It's a real simple answer. Live moment by moment in dependence on Him. All the other questions will get answered if you'll just live moment by moment in dependence on Him. Fourth and final characteristic, faith looks behind. Faith looks behind. It assures me of God's presence and power. Back at verse 3, "By faith we understand that worlds were prepared by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible." Faith looks behind. Faith looks behind for truth. By faith we understand truth about God. In particular, in this text, the Bible tells us that we understand about the creative power of God. How do we do that? Faith we read in the book of Genesis, in the beginning God created the world. By faith we look behind and we accept those things to be true. I want you to look back at Hebrews chapter 11, verse 3. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared and stop right there. Every person has to acknowledge that to be true. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared. Believers and non-believers, right? You know why? Because none of us were there. The person who today would say, "I believe that it just all happened with a big bang." Let me tell you what that is, faith. You know why? They weren't there. No matter what you believe about where the universe came from, you believe it by faith because none of us were there. As Christians we have a record of God's Word and the Bible as we've looked at in the past is the most documented historical source of antiquity. If you don't accept the historical accuracy of the Bible, you have to throw out every other book from ancient literature that we have today to learn from. And as Christians we look back in the Bible and God gave us the Bible to build our faith that we could understand truth about God. By faith we look behind and we learn truth about God. But also by faith we look behind for inspiration. We look at people like Moses and Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and David, Samson and Samuel, Isaiah, Ruth and Rahab and Peter and James and John and Paul. And as we look back by faith and read those words of Scripture we gain inspiration. How many have you ever been inspired by the life of Job? We go back and we read the story of Job and the difficult days of our lives and by faith we find encouragement and it builds our faith. That's what we're going to do over the next several weekends, the next couple of months. We're going to be studying these stories of old and it'll grow and deepen our faith. Well let me close with this question. Where does faith come from? Where does it come from? Let me give you the biblical answer, Romans 10, 17. So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Faith demands fellowship with God. Last weekend we talked about time alone with the Father. Why is that so important? Faith comes by hearing. I was driving my car across that bridge. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. God didn't just drop that verse out of the sky, I read that verse in my time alone with the Father. Faith comes by hearing. When we hear the word and promise of God it inspires faith. If you're here this weekend and you're not a believer, you've never given your life to Jesus Christ. You hear the gospel and you respond in faith and you give your life to Christ's faith. Where did that faith come from? It came by hearing the good news that Jesus could save me, that Christ could forgive me of my sin and give me a relationship with God. It was in hearing the gospel that God birthed faith in my heart. Listen, if you're here this weekend and you're a believer, as you spend time with God every day, let me tell you what happens. It deepens and grows your faith. Here's what you don't want to be. You don't want to be with the Red Sea in front of you and the Egyptian army behind you and not have heard the promise of God. We try to live our lives. We pop in a service on the weekend, maybe we hit a small group but we don't spend time with God. Then the crisis comes and all of a sudden, "Oh God, I need a word." Listen, God wants to speak to you every day of your life as you live your life moment by moment in intimacy with Him. That is where faith is built. When the crisis comes, your ability by faith to walk through the crisis is born in your fellowship with the Father. We live not by sight, by faith. [end]