Hebrews: Faith as Assurance

So we've been going through the book of Hebrews.

We are in chapter 11.

This morning we're going to study the first half of chapter 11 of the book of Hebrews.

So let's jump right in.

Verse 1.

Now, faith is the assurance, and that's going to be our key word pretty much for the whole sermon.

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.

So that's our key word, assurance.

That faith gives us assurance.

It doesn't give us more anxiety, it doesn't give us fear or a scorecard inside of ourselves that gives us assurance.

And that word is connected to faith.

So it's not the sum of our faith or how much or how little, but that we have faith is actually creating assurance in us, and that assurance is connected to hope.

We're going to make sense of all that.

A few years ago, I went to buy a new car.

I was looking very specifically for a 2008 Gray Toyota 4-Runner.

Now I needed to be around 100,000 miles specifically, hopefully, one owner, maybe two owners.

I might entertain it, but really a one-owner, 100,000 mile car that was like 12 years old.

That's what I wanted.

It took like six months for this car to pop up.

And so when it popped up, it was at the CarMax up in Kennesaw.

And so, of course, I don't know anything about cars.

I didn't even go ahead and say that.

Like I don't I don't know anything.

I can put gas in it and I can drive it.

That's about it.

I've never even changed the oil.

So I don't know anything, but I can watch YouTube.

So I watched YouTube and I watched a few videos of how you check out a used car.

And so I show up like I know stuff with my flashlight, and I'm all over the car.

I'm in the car, I'm under the car, tugging, you're supposed to pull on the door.

I did that, I pulled on the door.

I'm doing all of it.

Then at the end of it, I said, Well, we'll just go on a test drive.

And so the salesman says, Okay, let's go to, we're gonna go around the block.

I'm like, Yeah, we're not going around the block.

Like, we're getting on the interstate, because that's what the YouTube video told me to do.

We gotta go on the interstate, and so we went on the longest test drive that this guy's ever done in his career.

And why did I do all that?

Because I'm neurotic, part of it.

I mean, that's definitely part of it.

And the other part of it's just like I want an assurance, right?

Like I want to be assured this is a good car, like this is a car I can sit in and drive for years to come.

Like, like it'll it'll hold me for a while.

And that's this image here of assurance that faith gives us that it can hold us, it's stable, it has substance.

That's the word, substance.

Minister and author David Zoll, when he's writing about Hebrews chapter 11 and assurance, he starts to compare it with reassurance and self-assurance.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

Here's what he says.

Oftentimes religion boils down to a strategy of reassurance.

Reassurance is a pat on the back, a pep talk, a hug even.

Hang in there, it's gonna be all right.

At best, reassurance is a reality check, a reminder of how things really are.

At worst, it's a pie in the sky dismissing another's fears or doubts.

Either way, reassurance depends on the reassurer.

So do you get that when you when you live in reassurance, you're depending back on yourself.

It's like having faith in your own faith rather than having faith in the one who gives you the promises.

And that's the point here.

And this is almost the toxic game of people pleasing, right?

Like you get enough likes or enough pats on the back, and then you're good.

But if those go away, suddenly all the reassuring you're using to feel validated or worthy or forgiven.

Now, where do you stand?

I feel that.

I mean, that's strong in me.

I mean, I want to do a good job at what I do, and I want to use all that encouragement to feel like I'm a worthy human being, right?

That's strong.

The problem with it is what happens when it goes away.

Then David Zall goes into what self-assurance does for us.

Self-assurance, on the other hand, is a way of creating our own hope, reacting to those things unseen by attempting to bring them into being ourselves.

Self-assurance is tied to our performance and ability.

As such, it works well when the stakes are small or when we're in our comfort zone, not so much when we've exhausted every avenue.

What happens when our best isn't good enough?

So, this would be how we talk about a performance-based life, that it doesn't work.

It works as long as you're performing well, but as soon as you don't, what happens?

What does that mean about you?

Right?

This is the internal scoreboard that we can so easily live by.

And that's a performance-based life that's eventually gonna leave you exhausted and condemned.

You score enough, you're good.

But as soon as you don't score enough, it doesn't work.

That's self-assurance, and eventually it'll crush you.

And for me, that's strong also.

I'm like, I want to do that, right?

Like I would have felt like that I can reassure myself because then I don't have to live by faith in God to me.

I can just live in my own faith and myself.

But there's a third way, and that's the way of faith, the way of assurance.

Just like Tim Keller talks about, there's three ways.

There's religion, there's the world, or secularism, and then there's gospel.

There's three ways here for us.

There's reassurance, people pleasing, there's self-assurance, I'll just do it all myself, and then there's assurance, which comes by faith.

That's verse one.

Now, faith is the assurance, the word there's like substance that we can stand under of things hoped for.

So it's connected to that which we're hoping for, the conviction of things not seen.

Point number one is this faith is relationship with God, resting in God's promises for you.

It's all of that.

Faith is a relationship with God, it's about being with God long before it's about doing things for God.

And then it's about his promises for you.

That's that in which we're hoping for.

Years ago, we lived in Atlanta, and Christy and I we were on a walk.

We were walking around Chastain Park.

Have you ever been there?

There's this sidewalk that goes around this big park, and inside the park, there's normal park, there's tennis courts, there's playgrounds, there's also a big golf course.

We were rounding the south end of the park, and I think it's Power Sperry.

We were coming back up the other way, and as we were coming back up, we could see these just massive black clouds coming in from the north side.

It was summertime, it was hot out, but within like three minutes it dropped like 20 degrees, got really cold.

The wind started to pick up, like limbs started to fly around a little bit.

Suddenly, like some huge limbs fly around.

A road sign toppled over.

We looked across the golf course, and there was a little micro tornado whipping across it.

And it just all of a sudden, everybody, no discussion with everybody, just all of us that are walking on that sidewalk just headed into this neighborhood, like sprinted into this neighborhood to take shelter.

As Christy and I were running across the street, we hear this crack and we we look back, and the tornado had picked up an oak tree, just fully picked it up and just laid it on its side.

And within seconds, Christy and I and another couple, we are under the shelter of a front porch of somebody's house we don't know, and we are huddled in the corner, the four of us.

We became good friends with these people.

Right?

We needed something of we needed something of substance to stand under.

That's this word.

This is what faith gives us.

Now, in that moment, that wasn't about like us, like look at all of our faith, right?

I mean, that that was that was like mustard seed stuff, like like I can get here, but like this is about the structure, right?

Like this wasn't about me, this was about the structure.

That's why our faith can give us assurance, and it's not self-assurance.

It's because it is about the relationship with God we have and his promises to us.

That's the image we have here, is that of substance that we are under God Himself.

Verse 2 for by it the people of old received their commendation.

So this is a Sunday school point.

This is what I would call this, right?

The question in Sunday school would be well, if Jesus is salvation, well, how about all the people in the Old Testament?

Like, you know, how did they get saved?

And the point here is that people who live before Jesus are also saved through faith.

While we are saved by faith in that which God did for us on the cross, they are saved by faith in that which they were looking forward to, a coming Messiah.

So they have faith resting in that which would come.

Sunday school point.

Verse three 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.

Point number three is this faith informs us about our world, our beginning, and our story.

Faith's not against science.

Like we welcome science to come in and help us make sense of the wonder of God's creation and his creative process.

And that gives us what it means to be stewards of a story with a creator intelligent God.

In the beginning of our story.

That we're not accidents.

That's how it intersects our stories.

You're not an accident.

You didn't just happen.

You're a purposed child of God with a calling.

You have a beginning and a story God is writing, and knowing the beginning of that story really helps us as we live our lives of faith.

Genesis 1 can really revolutionize our hearts as we see we're not just sinners in need of grace.

We are creating the image of God.

We are worthy and beautiful.

And we are sinners in need of God's grace, looking forward in hope to the world of heaven to come.

All four parts.

This is a four-part story for us.

You are a beautiful creation of God who's a sinner in need of grace, holding the hope of heaven.

So at this point in our passage, the writer takes us from this conversation about faith and our origin, and then he begins to give us all these stories, these examples of people of faith.

Now it's so easy once we start to read examples of people of faith in the Bible, to just go, oh, like Bible heroes, like people, you know, super Christians.

It's like, no, that's not what it is.

Like if we dissect all of these, like these are train wrecks of people who happen to be people of faith who took steps of faith, but they are train wrecks of people.

They're like me and they're like you.

Point number four is that people of faith are ragamuffins, trusting God is enough for them.

That's what that's what people of faith are.

It's nothing more than that.

And in the resting in that substance of sitting under that which is faithful to you, you can take a step of faith.

The story that's focused on the most here in Hebrews 11 in the first half is Abraham and Sarah.

So this is the man that God covenants with in the Old Testament to build out the people of Israel.

Eventually, Jesus comes out of that lineage.

But let's not forget, this guy goes and he sleeps with Hagar to produce a child because he was so frustrated that his wife wasn't producing the child for him.

Train wreck.

But a person of faith who still takes steps of faith.

Verse 8.

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance.

He went out not knowing where he was going.

By faith, he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.

So Abraham and Sarah, they took steps of faith.

They had these two promises.

Have a child, get the land.

Right?

These are absurd promises to them.

Sarah was barren.

So, I mean, what an absurd promise for her to accept or to trust in or to have any joy that this would come or play out in her life.

And then finally she has a child.

God names the child Isaac, or laughter.

I read this week is that this was God's way of marking God's joy in upending our expectations.

And they received the child.

Out of that comes the lineage of Jesus.

The second promise was land.

So for them, land was safety, it was provision.

It still is, by the way, in this world.

But it meant all of that to them.

So they moved to Canaan to that land.

But verse 9 says they always lived in tents.

So they lived there, but they never lived there in complete rest.

And stability.

So we get verse 10.

For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.

So verse 10 gives us the reality of living faith in this world.

We're living in faith, but we're looking forward in hope.

We have these promises, but they're not all playing out perfectly in our lives.

Sort of three sentences came to mind of like, what does this feel like?

What does it feel like to be a person of faith in this imperfect world?

For me, at least, it feels like this.

We're given promises of God of which we will receive.

You'll get it.

Like, you know, and some of these are so clear, like forgiveness, like you get it, right?

Like, but some of these promises that we have about being healed and being whole, some of those are like the already and not yet.

Like we're already that, deemed that, but we haven't yet like experienced all that in fullness.

We're given promises of God, of which we will receive, some we will wait upon, and some we're only gonna experience in part.

And that's why this faith and assurance is connected to the hope that we look forward to in heaven.

Number two, our faith is not in our strength or the promises, but in the one who gives the promises.

And then number three, being a person of faith is about a relationship with God in the context of his promises and our steps toward what he calls us to.

It's all those things.

That's what's happening in this chapter, it's kind of communicating to us about giving us a definition of faith and giving us examples of faith.

For me, this goes into three things.

Like, how do you know what God's calling you to?

Well, for me, it goes into three things.

It's what does scripture say?

Just right or wrong.

How do I handle a situation?

Look at what the scripture is.

How would the scripture say for you to do that?

Is this right and is this wrong?

Number two, wise people.

What do the wise people around me say about this?

And then number three is what is the Holy Spirit leading me to do?

What am I sensing?

Now I don't start in number three typically because maybe it was the bad dinner I ate the night before.

And also it can just be my abreaction, to be honest, it can be my ab reaction to past wounds or a current wound.

So I'm aware of that, but I gotta kind of live in these first two parts, and they all go together.

What's the scripture say?

What are the wise people saying?

What am I sensing the Spirit asking me to do?

Start something, stop something, mend a relationship.

All these things go together for what it means to be a person of faith, taking steps of faith in this world.

Verse 13.

These all died in faith.

Think about all these people of faith taking great steps of faith.

Here's where we're headed.

We're all going to die, by the way, just to let you know that.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised.

So they didn't get all the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have an opportunity to return.

But as it is, they desire a better country.

That is a heavenly one.

See, this is what they were hoping for.

They weren't hoping for just the land they were sitting on, they weren't hoping for the land they came for.

Their hope is being placed in the world to come, a heavenly one.

Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Point number five, last point.

Assured in faith.

We live in this world looking forward to the next world.

You ever been homesick, right?

Like the trip was just one day too long?

You went to camp and it was day one, it was like the first evening, and you just you just wanted to go home.

I can remember being in college and going to Europe, and I just wanted to eat at McDonald's, right?

Like you're in Paris and you want McDonald's.

That doesn't even make any sense except that like you're longing for home.

You just want to be at home.

Now, part of that certainly is sort of like our discontentment and our sin, like nothing's enough, and we're discontent.

And part of that's our sin.

Part of that is just like as believers, we're always going to be longing for heaven.

That there's part of our faith that is hope, looking forward to the next world.

The message of Christianity, of being a person of faith, faith walk, sometimes it feels like faith crawl, certainly, right?

It's just like being welcoming home and assurance.

David Zoll, the same minister author I quoted earlier about self-assurance and reassurance.

Here's what he says about assurance.

Assurance is to those of us losing hope and drowning under all the other failing ways of the world.

Right?

Don't we need that?

Like all the ways that the world fails us, don't we need a place to go to sit ourselves under something of substance that can hold us?

And that is the objective, powerful, one-way love of God that we know securely in the work of Jesus Christ, death, and resurrection for us.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your good gospel to us that finds us not always in great faith, but sometimes in just mustard seed faith, but thank you that our faith has assurance because you are of substance.

You are of perfect character.

And while we don't experience all your promises perfectly here, we receive the ones we do and we look forward to all of them in fulfillment in the world to come.

Help our hearts live in faith in these days.

Help us to trust you in greater ways.

Forgive us for the ways we don't, and help us set our eyes on a world to come where there will be no fear.

And there will be no tears.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.