Hebrews 11:1-2
Reading from the 11th chapter
of Hebrews, verse one. 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. Amen. This is God’s holy and inspired
and inerrant word. May he bless it. Let’s pray together. Our God and Savior, we thank
you that these few simple words can give us the strength we need
to live life, life in a world that is full of uncertainty,
life in a world that comes with pain and suffering, with losses
and crosses, with sickness, but it also comes with joy. And so
we pray that the same faith that saved us will be the same faith
that will see us through and land us safely on heaven’s shores. We need your help. We need your
grace. We need your blessing. We need eyes to see and ears
to hear, hearts that understand. And most importantly, we need
hands and feet that will go and do what your scripture asked
of us. So by your grace, help us in Jesus name. Amen. In the
1600s, there was a man by the name of John Bunyan. Now, not
to be confused with Paul Bunyan, the lumberjacker, but John Bunyan
was a tinker. He mended and fixed metal pots
and pans and other assorted things. He lived in the 1600s in England,
when shortly after the Reformation, Parliament, the English Parliament,
issued a law that the Church of England was the only official
church. They wanted what was called conformity. They wanted all worship to look
the same. They wanted all churches to be
the same. They wanted their clergy to follow a certain standard.
And so there was the Conformity Act. What that basically said
was, outside the Church of England, five or fewer people could gather
for prayer. But if there were six or more,
they had to gather under the Church of England. Well, Bunyan
was a Baptist. Bunyan was a nonconformist. He was a tinker by trade, but
he often found himself preaching in the churches in the countryside
of England. And this made him a nonconformist. This made him one not conforming
to the act that said all churches must be Church of England. And
somewhere else in this period of time, there was what was called
the Conventicle Act. And it restricted, as I just
mentioned, how many people could meet together. Well, Bunyan was
a good preacher. He would gather many people out
in the countryside. And so very soon he found himself
in jail, in jail for preaching the gospel. in jail for being
a nonconformist, in jail for doing what he thought was right.
Well, in our own Presbyterian or A.R.P. heritage, this led
to some of our forefathers we call the covenanters. They believed
that God ordained worship, that Jesus was the savior, head and
king of the church. And like Bunyan, they continued
to have gatherings of the church. They continue to have preaching.
So like Bunyan, who ended up in jail, many of our Scottish
forebears ended up in jail, some even put to death for their desire
to continue the church. Well, Bunyan, while he was in
jail in the county jail of Bedford in England, he wrote a little
story, one that you’ve probably heard called Pilgrim’s Progress. The official title of the book
is called The Pilgrim’s Progress from this world to that which
is to come. delivered under the similitude
of a dream. You see, the length of titles
back in those days was rather humorous. But the Pilgrim’s Progress,
as we have it now today, is one of the greatest works in English
literature, one of the only books, one of the few books that has
never been out of print. Well, what does the story of
Pilgrim’s Progress tell us? Well, it tells us of a pilgrim
named Christian And he is going from the city of destruction
to the celestial city. He is going from Babylon on earth
to Jerusalem, which is above. And as you read the story of
Pilgrim’s Progress, this little work that Bunyan, a tinker, wrote
while he was in prison for preaching the gospel, you see Christian
making his way from earth to heaven, and he endures every
hardship that you face, temptation. Lust, sickness, enemies, weariness,
despondency, being depressed, being cast down, having good
days, having bad days, bumping into those who are discouraging
to his Christian walk, bumping into those who are encouraging
to his Christian faith. And there’s a particular part
of the story where Christian enters the slew of despondency. He is weighed down, he is burdened,
he is He is tempted to give up, but there’s encouragement in
the gospel. There’s encouragement in faith. And all the while he
is making his way, though worn out and weary and tempted and
tried, he keeps his eyes on a shining light. He can’t make out exactly
what is ahead, but he sees a shining light. It is beyond the wicked
gate. It is beyond the wicked gate
where, not the wicked gate, but the wicked gate where heaven
is. And so this story of Pilgrim’s
progress from this world to the next, this story of Christians
progress from this life to heaven is fraught with difficulty, but
he fixes his eyes on heaven. He never lets his gaze fall and
land and stay upon this earth and its temptations and hardships. Pilgrim’s Progress is a wonderful
story. It’s a wonderful parable. It’s
a wonderful allegory. And it’s helpful to us as Christians
to see the realities of the struggle of Christian faith, to see the
realities of the unseen world and the darkness, the deception,
the work of the devil, the temptations, the sin and the evil that falls
upon us. It’s helpful for us to see that, for it encourages
us to carry on in the Christian life. Well, Hebrews 11 is a passage
of scripture that does much of what Pilgrim’s Progress does.
It tells us that the victory can be won. It tells us that
there is an end to our journey. It tells us that if we live by
faith with our eyes fixed on Jesus, that we will land safely
and victoriously in heaven as well. And so Hebrews chapter
11, though we’ll only look at really verse one today, will
take us on a journey that will show us that if we long for heaven
and look to Jesus by faith, we will land safely on heaven’s
shore. It’s been said very often that
the job of the pastors and elders of the church is to get people
safely to heaven. That’s a good motto. That’s a
good rule of thumb for the ministry of the elders of the church.
We’re going to get you safely to heaven. If you come to worship,
if you sit under the teaching of scriptures, if you suffer
together with the fellow travelers in this sanctuary, if you do
all those things, we live together, suffer together, pray together,
worship together, hear and study God’s word together, eat together,
all those things, we will together encourage one another in the
faith. Well, what is faith? That is
sort of the question for the day. What is faith? Well, verse
one gives us a small part of the true definition of faith.
We can say all kinds of things about faith. Faith is the the
content of our belief. Faith is what we do as an individual
to lay hold of the promises of Christ. Faith is our creeds,
faith is our catechisms, faith is our trust, faith is our belief,
faith is our resting, it’s all kinds of things. Well, Hebrews
chapter 11 verse one tells us two things that faith is. And so let us look to these verses,
this verse to encourage us as we are making our way from this
life to the next. So, brothers and sisters of the
Lord Jesus Christ, as we are longing for heaven and looking
to Jesus and living by faith, we must understand first that
faith is assurance. Faith is assurance. Look at the
beginning of verse one. It says faith is the assurance
of things hoped for. One of the hallmarks, one of
the highlights, one of the most fundamental things that we need
to understand as Christians is that we can and we must take
God at his word. We must believe that this book
that we have, these 66 books, is the very word of God, that
it is written for our instruction, that it tells us how we can glorify
and enjoy God. It tells us how to be married.
It tells us about our parenting. It tells us about our ethics
as one of our Sunday school classes looked at today. It tells us
who God is and what he’s like. It tells us who we are and what
we are like. And it tells us how to live by
faith in order that we might safely make it to heaven. Faith
is assurance. It’s assurance of things hoped
for. And those things hoped for are
listed for us in the Word of God. And so we must understand
that when God’s Word speaks, it speaks truth. And when we
put our hope and faith and trust in the Word of God, the promises
of God, the commands of God, all the total scriptures of God,
everything He says will come to pass. Chapter 11 of Hebrews
lists all sorts of Old Testament characters who lived by faith
and they lived by faith in promises that God made that were not fulfilled
in their lifetimes. Did Abraham see Jesus? No. Did Noah see Jesus? Absolutely
not. What about Sarah and Gideon and
Barak and all those listed in the great roll call of the heroes
of faith? They did not see Jesus. but they
believed that a Messiah would come and that if they put their
faith and hope and trust in the promise of Messiah, they would
have salvation and that what God promised to them would eventually
come to pass. Maybe not before their eyes,
but it really would come to pass and it would benefit them. Let
me encourage you in this way. As you live life, as you live
life with all of the circumstances that come your way, What do we
like to say in sickness and in health and plenty and in want
and the good and the bad and the ugly as we face hardships,
as we encounter obstacles, whatever life throws in our path, we must
keep our eyes on the goal. And the goal is not forever in
this life. Our goal is forever in the next
life. Our goal is to live before the
face of God in the celestial city of heaven, the new Jerusalem,
where God is and where he desires that we who truly possess faith
and rest in Jesus alone for our salvation will be brought safely
home. How do we like to say it? As
Paul says in Thessalonians, to be absent in the body is to be
present with God. That is our goal is to get to
heaven. Remember the Apostle Paul, when he was worn out and
weary with ministry, he was imprisoned, he was sick, he was facing all
kinds of hardships. He said, my death is imminent. For me to live as Christ, and
it’s for your good, but to die is gain. And that would be far
better for me. He knew that to live life in
this world was hard. It was full of pain and struggle
and hardship, but his life was for the benefit of preaching
the gospel to those God wanted to save. And he saw that benefit. But he said, oh, but to die is
gain. For Paul, he would enter heaven,
the thorn in his flesh would be removed, his sickness gone,
his imprisonment would be over and he would be free, no more
shackles, but be fully free in the presence of Almighty God.
Friends, that’s how we have to live life. We do not live life
by the realities that we can see. Our money, our retirement
accounts, our houses and the foundations and the things of
this earth. I mean, yes, they do benefit
us. Yes, they help us. But we live like Christian in
Pilgrim’s Progress with our eyes on that little bitty glimpse
of light that is beyond the wicked gate, that is in heaven itself. And if we fix our eyes on Jesus,
if we long for heaven, looking to Jesus, living by faith, we
recognize through the word that faith is assurance. Faith is
the assurance of things hoped for. And friends, we as we read
the Bible and hear God’s word, we can be fully assured that
everything God has promised will come to pass. For God is utterly
reliable. He is faithful. Everything that
is told to us in the scripture is yes and amen in Jesus Christ. You will not wake up someday
after having trusted Christ for your salvation. You will not
wake up at the end of your life and say, this was a scheme. This
was just a scam. You will not persevere in the
Christian life and find out at the end, at your death, that
this was an empty promise. No, God is faithful. He is the only faithful one in
the entire universe. He is the only one who speaks.
And we know that without a shadow of a doubt, what he says is true.
And why is it that we can know that? Is it just because we can
read these sacred pages? It’s because the Holy Spirit
at work in each of our lives affirms it and confirms it to
us. This is no scam or scheme. No,
we are on the way to the heavenly city to the new Jerusalem that
is from above. Think about how God has encouraged
his saints in the past. Think about John as an old man,
John, the pastor of the church at Ephesus after Timothy and
after Paul. He’s on the Isle of Patmos, a
prison island. He’s on the Isle of Patmos because
he was a preacher of the gospel, much like Bunyan when he was
in prison for preaching the gospel in England. And how does God
want to encourage John the revelator? How does he want to encourage
the church, even the church today through the book of Revelation?
Well, he takes John into heaven and shows him the unseen realities,
the unseen spiritual realities of heaven itself, of God, of
his throne room, of Jesus, the risen lamb of God slain before
the foundation of the world. And he shows him the future of
the history of the church. And he says, this will encourage
you. And so a faith is the assurance of things hoped for when God,
through the scriptures, through the experience of John, tells
us these things will come to pass. Friends, that’s all we
can hope in. You know, we’re given advertisements
every day, our monetary system is going to fail, so you better
buy silver and gold. And so we do that. We We think
someday there’s going to be a run on grocery stores so we get a
little rice and beans and tuck it away in the cabinet because
when everybody else is without food, we’ll have rice and beans.
We do things based on what we think is future. How much more
so? Should we bank on what God says
is future? There is a new heavens. There
is a new earth. It will come down from heaven.
There will be trumpet sounds and cries and loud shouts from
heaven. And God will come and make all
things new. And his dwelling place will be
with us. And so all of the hardships of
life, all of the difficulties of this world are as nothing
because God encourages us. He encourages his saints by telling
us the future. Now think for just a moment,
if you knew the future and you could pay someone to tell it
to you, wouldn’t you do that? And you would go invest in all
the right markets. You would put your funds in the
right stocks and bonds. You would buy and trade and sell
this house or that you would make plans accordingly. But we
don’t have that privilege in this life. But we have the privilege
of knowing what the next life is like. And so when the writer
of Hebrews tells us faith is the assurance of things hoped
for. We hope for what God has said
in his word to be true. You remember what Jesus said
to his disciples in my father’s house are many rooms, many mansions. I am going to go there and prepare
a place for you. And it’s as if they’re doubting.
He says, if it were not so, why would I be telling you this?
Jesus is saying it is so, bank on it, believe in it, live by
it. And so friends, we live by faith. Faith is the assurance of things
hoped for. In the old covenant, Hebrews
11 will tell us, these things were far off. These things were
far off, yet against all odds, they had a firm hope that what
God said was true. Their faith was not in what was
seen, It wasn’t in houses and markets and retirement funds
and insurance policies and all those sorts of things. No, their
faith was in the promises of almighty God. First Peter, chapter
one, the apostle Peter tells Christians in a similar situation
as the audience of Hebrews. He says, You’ve not seen Jesus.
Any of you seen Jesus? You’ve not seen Jesus yet. You
love him. You’ve not seen Christ yet. You
long for his appearing. And so friends, that’s exactly
what we are called to do as Christians. We are to believe in what we
cannot see simply because God tells us it is true. Every year,
our family goes on the same vacation. We go to the same place. We go
the same week, the same everything. And about a month before we go
to this place for vacation, after we’ve sent in our final payment,
they mail us a key. And it’s a big ceremony in our
house to open that piece of mail that has the key to this place
where we’ll stay. And so for a month, about a month
before we go, we’ll put that key on the key ring of the car
we’ll drive. And it’s a, it’s a sign. It is a symbol of a time
that is soon to come that we will enjoy. And that key is more
than something that opens the door of the place where we will
spend that week. It symbolizes rest. It symbolizes
for us vacation. It symbolizes for us, it happens
to be a place of great beauty. And friends, that is what heaven
is like. It is a place of rest and beauty,
and it far exceeds any vacation that I could take or you. But
there’s something about having that key a month in advance on
our ring. And maybe we need a reminder
like that in our lives, some sort of key, some sort of symbol
that reminds us Heaven is coming. We can’t see it, but we can feel
the weight and the glory of it. Friends, our Bible gives us those
promises. And so maybe it is our scriptures
that we should hold. Maybe it’s our copy of God’s
word that we should hold in our hands and never let go of until
we land safely at home. Well, brothers and sisters of
the Lord Jesus Christ, as we long for heaven and look to Jesus,
the author and perfecter of our salvation, as we live by faith
We must first remember faith is the assurance of things hoped
for. But look at the second part of
verse one. Faith is also conviction. Faith is the conviction of things
not seen. This is a legal piece of terminology. It’s proof. Those of you who
work in the court system, those of you who know anything about
law and legal things, you’ve got to have proof for something
to be so. And God gives us proof in the
scriptures. He gives us proof of our past,
of our present and our future. And he’s saying to us that faith
is not only the assurance of things that we hope for, it’s
not only hoping in things that are to come that are promised,
it is being convicted in the evidence that is presented to
us in God’s word, that what God says is true, what he promises
he will do, what he has done in the past really happened. And he says, you can be sure
about it. You can be certain about it. You can hold convictions
about these things. And he’s going to give several
examples in the rest of the chapter of Hebrews. He’s going to say
God exists. That takes faith to believe that
he’s going to say the world was created. That takes faith to
believe that God created the world. He’s going to give us
example after example of God’s hand in human history. And he’s
going to say to you, it takes faith to believe that God is
and does and has worked in real space and time to save mankind. So faith is conviction. Faith is being convinced and
sure that what God says, what you cannot see has really taken
place. And so, friends, let me ask you
this. Are you persuaded by God’s faithful word that what you cannot
see is true, that what you cannot touch, taste, smell or hold in
your hands or lock in a vault or clench tightly with your fist,
that Though you can’t respond to it or interact with it in
that way, that it really is true. You know, we can walk around
this earth and we can see shiny things, we can touch and taste
and smell glorious things, all things God has made for our good
and enjoyment. But it won’t last, it may appear
to be lasting, and we might go hard after it. But what does
Jesus say? and rust will destroy. It will
pass away. It will not make it through the
fiery judgment of the next world as it passes away and the new
comes. And so God says to us, take hold of my word, take hold
of my promises by faith, by trust, by belief. You can be assured
that what is hoped for will come to pass and you can have convictions
that what you don’t see is really true. Think, for example, of
the wilderness generation living in the desert. There’s not much
to see in the desert. Brown sand, brown rocks, manna,
water out of rocks and a bunch of smelly, stinky, grumbly Israelites.
What kind of inspiration is there in that? Well, God speaks, God
promises, and through his servant Moses, he tells them we’re marching
to the promised land and we’re going to get there. But what
happened to that wilderness generation? They failed to believe. They
failed to lay hold of God’s promises. And what did God say? You don’t
believe, you don’t go in. And it’s the same for us as Christians. You don’t believe in the promises
of heaven. You don’t go to heaven. And so
there’s a challenge, a warning in this as well, that the writer
of Hebrews has given us over and over. Unbelief keeps you
from the promises of God. There’s a Temptation, apparently,
in the book of Hebrews, the writer, the pastor, whoever this author
is, is saying to the audience, to the Hebrew church, he’s saying
to them, don’t turn back to Judaism. Keep looking forward to Jesus
like your ancestors have done. So, Christians, dear brothers
and sisters of the Lord Jesus Christ, don’t be held by this
world. Don’t be held by the temptations
it offers. Don’t be weighed down and bogged
down by your guilt and by the difficulties of this life. Trust
in Christ. Receive and rest in him alone
for your salvation and live looking for that light. Live looking
for heaven and for the celestial city. Faith as we long for heaven
and look to Jesus. Faith is assurance. of things
we hope for. It is conviction of things that
we cannot see. And as you feed on the word of
God, as you feed today on the Lord’s Supper, the sacrament
that is before us, as you pray, as you receive and rest in Jesus
alone for your salvation, your faith will grow strong. But if
you remove yourself from the word and worship and sacraments
and prayer, if you Live life according to the world and its
shininess and its glitter and brightness. Your faith, your
faith will wane. It will shrink and you will be
tempted to unbelief. And you remember the warnings
that the writer of Hebrews has given. Don’t shrink back. Live by faith. Press on. Keep the faith. Trust and obey.
Fear and tremble. Some days you’ll be weak, but
be strong. There’ll be ups and there’ll
be downs. There’ll be sin. There’ll be victories. But friends,
by faith, if we long for heaven, look to Jesus. We have assurance
and conviction. We will land safely in heaven.
You know, I love when that key to our vacation place comes in
the mail and we hold it very dearly. But for the Christian
life, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be found walking through life,
clutching our Bibles? laying hold of the promises,
believing every word, reading it, soaking in it, digesting
it, making sure that we never have our eyes off the promises
of almighty God. For friends, the Christian life
is difficult. The obstacles, the pains, the
temptations and the hardships, but let us cling to Jesus, the
author and perfecter of our faith. Let us walk by faith and believe
in what we cannot see because God has promised it. and His
Word is faithful and true. Let us pray together. Our God
and Heavenly Father, we thank You today for Your Holy Word,
how it encourages us to keep our eyes on Jesus, how it encourages
us to live by faith. The world may say we are crazy,
believing in things we cannot see. They may even tell us that
Christianity is a crutch, that weak-minded, weak people must
lean on something, and so we lean on the Bible. Yes, we do. For we are weak and you give
us something to lean on. We lean on it hard by faith,
knowing that if we lean on it, it is trustworthy, knowing that
if we lean on it, we will never fall or fail because it is your
sure promise to us. We come now to your table. We
come now to your supper. And we pray that in these next
moments you will take what is common, what is bread and ordinary
juice and you will set it apart, set it apart to feed us and nurture
us and to help us, help us grow in grace, help us grow in our
knowledge of Jesus, help us grow in our knowledge of sin and our
hatred of it, that we might forsake it and run to the cross, run
to your word and to live according to it. We pray now that you would
bless each of us as we come to your table and partake of the
supper. We ask all this in the name of
Jesus, our great savior. Amen. Let me invite now the elders
to please come forward as we prepare for the Lord’s Supper.