Faith Defined / Hebrews 11:1-3, 12:1-3
Well, if you have your Bibles, open if you will to the book of Hebrews. We are introducing a summer teaching series, something we’ve done every year. And if you happen to be a guest with us, let me set up what a summer teaching series really means for us.
The Vision: An Equipping Church
One of the values that has driven our church from the very beginning is to be an equipping church. This means we see Ephesians 4 as being a critical component of who we are: that He gave some as apostles, prophets, some as evangelists, and as pastors and teachers for the equipping of saints, for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.
Ephesians 4:11-12 (NASB)
And He gave some [as] apostles, and some [as] prophets, and some [as] evangelists, and some [as] pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;
As a pastoral staff and as elders, we don’t see our job as doing the work of the ministry ourselves. We see our job as training and equipping the body to do the work of the ministry. Why? Because to be candid with you, you’re much better at it! And it’s much more fun when your Christian faith is engaged and you’re using your gifts for the betterment of others. That is the Gospel on display.
The Summer Teaching Series: A Teaching Hospital
Because we are an equipping church, we use the summer to raise up other pastoral staff and help them get some “reps.” We want to help them develop their teaching gifts and their pastoral experience by standing in front of different environments. So, last week we put our Matthew Miracle series to bed, and today we start something that can be both connected and yet stand-alone.
We know people vacation in the summers. You’ve got places to go and people to see, which is great. If for some reason you miss a week, we don’t want you watching a series like an episode of a show where you miss one part and wonder what in the world just happened. These are stand-alone messages, but we want them to be connected in concept. This summer, you’re going to be hearing from 13 different communicators across our various congregations. We have ten gatherings throughout the week, including one in Spanish, and we’re turning communicators loose who don’t usually get a ton of reps in this context.
Think of this church like a teaching hospital. We’ve got a main physician, and we’ll put a resident physician with them to train them up. Now, these people who are going to teach have been vetted by us. It’s not like we just found some dude off of Monster.com and put him up here. These are pastors on our staff who sit in our teaching team meetings. They are being poured into and mentored by our team. They’re going to teach, and then they’re going to get feedback from our team. And I’ll promise you from firsthand experience: that feedback is brutal.
It starts every Tuesday. I’ll come in and say, “Hey, this is what I taught. This is what I liked. I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have had so much coffee because I talk too fast.” I give myself feedback, and then those guys fill in the blanks. Truthfully, if you do anything and you ask for feedback and people just say, “Oh no, you were great,” that’s actually not helpful because you aren’t able to grow. What helps us grow is when people say, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy,” and they point out that you use a certain word too much or have a distracting hand motion. We want to help our communicators grow, and that’s what this summer is about.
Introduction to Hebrews: Jesus Is Better
For this series, we chose Hebrews 11. If you’ve ever read through Hebrews, it is a fascinating and challenging text. I want to give you a little bit of the “411” upfront so the other guys can just step in and teach their specific characters later.
One of the challenges with Hebrews is that we don’t know who wrote it. There’s all kinds of conjecture and people have theories and hot sports opinions, but at the end of the day, there is no conclusive authorship. We also don’t know specifically who it was written to. We know it was written around 68 or 69 AD, and it seems to be written to an audience familiar with the Jewish faith—people the author was relationally connected to.
But the theme of Hebrews rises to the top very quickly. In summary, it is simply this: Jesus is better. Jesus is better than the Law. Jesus is better than Moses. Jesus is just flat-out better than the priests. Jesus is better than the sacrificial system. He is better.
Defining Faith: Assurance and Conviction
When you get to chapter 11, you see a list of names. This chapter has often been called the “Hall of Faith.” It’s an interesting title because the people in Hebrews 11 aren’t necessarily all saintly. It’s a list of some 20-plus names, not all of whom you would call a hero. Samson is in the list, and let’s just say we don’t necessarily want to follow his moral example. David is in the list—a man after God’s own heart, but also a murderer and an adulterer. These people are included to show us something very specific.
In the first two verses of chapter 11, the author gives us a definition of faith. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. By this, the author says, these people—both men and women—gained approval.
Hebrews 11:1-2 (NASB)
Now faith is the assurance of [things] hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval.
That word “faith” is the word pistis. It’s used over 250 times in your New Testament. Your relationship with Christ is built on the bedrock of this thing called faith. If these people are in the Hall of Faith, we ought to know why and try to emulate both what they did well and even remedy what they did poorly.
Faith, as defined here, is two things. First, it’s the “assurance of things hoped for.” This isn’t a reckless optimism. It’s not just “hoping” things turn out okay. It is grounded in a deep belief and a deep trust. It’s a heartfelt anchoring in the truth of God’s Word—believing that what God said, even if it is yet unrealized, will in fact come true. If God promised it, He is faithful. I can have an assurance that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. I can have an assurance that one day this perishable body will be laid aside and I’ll put on the imperishable.
Second, it is the “conviction of things not seen.” This is a life-altering belief that leads to action based on things you have not personally seen with your eyes. Whoever these individuals were, they lived it.
The Hall of Faith: Flawed Heroes
We are going to cover seven specific characters this summer: Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, and David. If you scan the chapter, you see a redundancy that adds emphasis. By faith Abel offered a better sacrifice. By faith Enoch was taken up. By faith Noah prepared an ark. By faith Abraham obeyed. By faith Sarah received ability to conceive.
Hebrews 11:4-5 (NASB)
By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; AND HE WAS NOT FOUND BECAUSE GOD TOOK HIM UP; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.
Hebrews 11:7-8 (NASB)
By faith Noah, being warned [by God] about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.
Hebrews 11:11 (NASB)
By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered Him faithful who had promised.
These men and women lived by something so critical to your relationship with God that there is a literal Hall of Faith dedicated to them. These people walked with God. They didn’t always walk perfectly or morally, but they walked with Him.
We want to learn their stories. We’re going to dive into the character of Rahab, who is one of my personal heroes. This is a girl who rejects her old life when she hears of the promises of God. Her heart melts, she pursues God, and God rewrites her story. I love that. You’re going to hear about Moses and his journey of what it means to really walk with God. These were normal, flawed people.
The Great Cloud of Witnesses
I would suggest to you that these stories weren’t written just so we would understand Old Testament history. Chapter 12 tells us exactly why they are written in the book of Hebrews. It starts with the word “Therefore.”
Anytime you see the word “therefore,” you have to ask what it’s there for. It means look at the context. The author just finished listing 22 names of people who lived by faith. Why? He says it’s because we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Because of them, we are told to lay aside every encumbrance and the sin that entangles us, and to run our race with endurance.
Hebrews 12:1-2 (NASB)
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Ultimately, when we talk about the real hero of your Bible—the real hero of Hebrews 11 and the real hero of our summer series—it is not Gideon. It is not David. It is not Abel. It is the One upon whom we fix our eyes.
The Real Hero: Fixing Our Eyes on Jesus
Jesus once told the religious leaders, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you’re going to find eternal life, but it’s them that speak of Me.” It’s not the story of Moses that brings salvation; it’s the Deliverer God who was faithful to use Moses, and His gift of Jesus, who is the ultimate Deliverer from sin.
Over the next few weeks, you will learn character and context. You will learn life lessons from these men and women who were as flawed as the day is long—which means we are in good company. But you will also begin to raise your sights to see the Author and Perfecter of our faith.
Hebrews 12:3 (NASB)
For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
We are going to get to the Gospel every single week through these stories. Some of these stories are good examples—whatever they did, do that. Other stories might make you think, “I can’t really let my kids read this yet,” because the decisions they made are so embarrassing. And yet, the hope is that by the time we finish this series, you’ve not only heard the Word of God through various voices, but you’ve seen Jesus in a fresh and new way. We need to be reminded that God not only used broken people back then, but He still does today—of whom we are the foremost of all.
Welcome to the summer teaching series. Welcome to Heroes. I pray that as we go through this, you see Christ in a powerful way. That is where we’re heading: a summer loaded with men and women you’ve seen before but maybe haven’t truly heard from. Let’s pray.
Closing Prayer
Father, I thank You for this introduction to where we are heading. As we look at these heroes of the faith, I pray that our hearts would be lifted. Remind us of the Gospel and the work You are doing—not only in the lives of these individuals whose stories were captured for us, but through the truth of their lives that we can learn from today. Ultimately, Lord, let us see the true Hero, Jesus our Christ. It’s in His name we pray, Amen.