Hebrews 11 part 2, “You have to take the medicine.”
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When you are sick, and your doctor gives you a prescription for the medication that you need to get well you need to do more than just reflect on the idea that your doctor knows how to help you. It will do you no good to marvel at the medicine, at the doctor’s wisdom and insight, or how great the pills look. If you want to get well, you have to take the medication.
When you are spiritually sick, do you show up every day to the Word of God or every week come to church to hear what the doctor has to say but stop there and think about how good it was to talk with the doctor. Or leave church or the Word thinking how great the prescription sounds but remain sick because you don’t take the medicine by acting on it. You have to take the medicine.
Hebrews 10:35-39
- “My righteous one shall live by faith.” Whatever faith is, it is meant to be a lifestyle. Faith is not meant to be a concept you visit. It is meant to be how you operate your life.
- This letter has laid out the supremacy of Jesus, it has laid out the superiority of the Gospel, and now the author starts laying out how we should respond to all that he has written.
- Faith is how we are to live in response to who Jesus is and what He did and what He has promised to do.
- Faith is how you and I are to live as we wait for Jesus to return.
Hebrews 11:1-16
Faith starts with discontentment.
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” “Things hoped for.” Hope is to expect something future, to trust something will happen. If there is hope in you it is because you have found the current state of things in you unsatisfactory. If you hope that your marriage becomes better, it is because you are discontent in some way with the way your marriage currently is. If you hope that one day you will have a better job it is because right now you are discontent with the job you have.
The starting point of faith is a discontented heart. A heart that has realized that no matter how good things may be in this life there is something more, there is something better. Without discontentment there will never be a hope for something more, for something better. Are you content with the life this world has to offer? Are you content to eat, sleep, have a little fun, and then die? Or are you discontent with that? Is there something inside of you that wants more, that yearns for more?
Faith is rational.
- Rational is defined as agreeable to reason; reasonable; sensible. Having or exercising reason, sound judgment, or good sense.
- Faith takes thinking and faith deals with something that is real.
- “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.” Hebrews 11:1-3 ESV
- The word conviction is a word that means to validate through evidence.
- Verse three says, “By faith we understand” and that word understand is another word that means to think or reason.
- Faith is rational, it involves our minds, reason, thinking. Faith is not simply a subjective religious feeling that is divorced from the objective truth that God has made known.
- Faith isn’t just believing something hard enough. It is not blind faith.
- But real faith—biblical faith—is reliable, since it is based on the trustworthiness and the reliability of God.
- The writer isn’t talking about a longing for something that may or not happen. He’s not talking about believing in the improbable against chance. He is talking about a belief in what God says as opposed to what man suggests.
- There is substance involved with faith. Our faith is in something real, something tangible, something with substance and evidence.
- What this means is that your faith is only as good as the substance or reality that it is attached to. So, the strength of your faith is not really tied to the amount of your faith but to the substance of your faith.
- What makes faith powerful or weak is the substance, the reality it’s attached to.
Faith is personal.
Faith is a personal encounter with God. By faith . It’s a call, a call comes into Noah’s life, a call comes into Moses, a call comes into Abram’s life. It’s God saying, I want you personally. And when that call comes into your life, it makes you question, “Why am I here? Why am I doing what I’m doing? It makes you question everything. Makes you say, “What am I living for? What am I working for? What am I making money for?” It can change the entire direction of your life.
Faith must move from just rational belief in God to a personal encounter with God. It’s not enough just to believe in a kind of general way. There has to be a call, there has to be a sense that God is coming into your life and personally saying I want you. I want you to follow me. Even though maybe you knew this with your head it suddenly presses down on your spirit. Either there is no God, and everything is meaningless, or there is a God and if there is a God, nothing is more important than my relationship with Him. Has your faith moved from being just rational to being personal?
Faith is responding to the call.
When God speaks, if we have faith in Him, we respond. We take a step into the personal calling. Just getting a call is not faith, answering the call is faith, stepping into the call. And there will be a personal call. A call to salvation, a call to holiness, and a call to service. Everyone receives the calls. Will you by faith answer the call? What might keep us from answering the call? How do we position ourselves to hear the call?
Living Hope Ministries 