A Blossom Bible Podcast
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A Blossom Bible Podcast
Hebrews 11:1-3 Faith: Substance for the Unseen
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What if everything God allows in your life is designed to develop one thing: your trust in Him? In this exploration of Hebrews 11, we discover that faith isn't a blind leap into the dark—it's something with substance and evidence that radically changes how we live.
The "Hall of Faith" presents us with a museum of faithful believers, showcasing ordinary people who learned to trust an extraordinary God. Faith functions as our spiritual receptors, allowing us to perceive realities our physical senses can't detect. Just as our eyes see light and our ears hear sound, faith helps us grasp both the heaven we hope for and the spiritual world that surrounds us.
We journey back to creation itself, recognizing that faith begins with acknowledging there is a God who designed our intricate world with purpose. The complexity of life points to a Creator, and believing this fundamental truth is essential to pleasing Him. As the chapter states, "Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."
The most encouraging aspect of these faith examples? They were all deeply flawed individuals. Abraham doubted, Moses hesitated, and others made significant mistakes. Yet God worked through their imperfect faith to accomplish His purposes. This reveals God's primary work in our lives—through every trial and difficulty, He's developing our trust, prying our lives from our own control so we can fully rest in His care.
Ready to join the great cloud of witnesses? Consider what God is revealing about Himself to you today, and how you might step out in faith with the practical realities of your life. Because true faith isn't just believing something—it's living like it's true.
Hebrews, chapter 11, if you're not already there, hebrews chapter 11. I didn't get any input from y'all as to what to go through next, and so we're diving into the middle of a book Not standard but will be good, and it might take us all the way to Christmas. So you got time to pray about it and think about it. What we go through next, but Hebrews, chapter 11, famously known as the Hall of Faith. It's a sort of almost museum of the faithful, and since I like museums, I come back to this right. I like history, I like just the life and all the emotion in these kinds of things, but it is known as the Hall of Faith, hebrews, chapter 11. The word faith, or an idea of faith, is over 29 times in this chapter, so there's a lot of it. But again, as calling it the Hall of Faith, you can picture it. I love me a good museum. Art museums are cool, but history is like. That's where I'm at and you know, when I was in England, I actually I don't know if any of your kids were on this, anybody here was on the England trip, but I jumped off the bus. The kids were all sleeping on the bus the first day we got there and I went to the British Museum, asked some of the adults if I could do that and they said, okay, go for it. I went to the British Museum and I saw, like the Rosetta Stone and the walls of Nineveh, because England's taking it all. But anyways, you know, and there it was and you get to look through there. I totally nerd out. You know, when you go to Washington DC it's the Smithsonian there and you see the old Star Spangled Banner and all those things. But you get inspired in places like the Capitol Building, right, you know Statuary Hall, there in the Capitol, all these statues representing, you know, the greats from each state. And you know I could just totally nerd out and go from one to the other and see the lives of these Americans who, you know, did different things for the country and for their state. And there they are, their statues cast in bronze or marble, and I like to read through their stories. Well, this chapter is like that. I put that in your head because this chapter is kind of like that. It's like a museum, it's an exhibit of those who have lived by faith.
Speaker 1:Now we're jumping in in chapter 11. Usually we start in chapter one, verse one, because that's usually how you do it, but just a little bit of a background of what's come before in the book of Hebrews. Check it out yourself. But the author to the Hebrews is pointing a group of Hebrew believers to Jesus. They were tempted to go back back to all the rituals and the priests and the sacrifices and the Mosaic law. They were tempted to go back and the author to the Hebrews says you can't go back, you gotta go forward. You gotta look to Jesus, not to all those other things. And so the book of Hebrews is really encouragement to live by faith. And chapter 11 here after he's said Jesus is better than the priesthood, jesus is better than the temple. You know Jesus is better than the Mosaic law.
Speaker 1:He points them to this fact in chapter 11 that faith has been the way that God's people have always dealt with him. This is not a new thing. To live by faith. This is the way it's always been. And notice we kind of see that in verse 39 of chapter 10. So back up one verse to chapter 39, verse 10. He says this kind of summing up those first 10 chapters. But we are not those who draw back to perdition but those who believe to the saving of the soul, those who believe. Now, that word believe there is that same word faith. The translators have used the word believe, but it's faith. Those who have had faith have always went forward to the saving of their soul. 11, and the proof is that this is always the way that it's been.
Speaker 1:Now, why is faith important? Let's read verses 1 through 3, and then I'm going to skip over to verse 6, for today, notice this. Now, faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, for by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. Look at verse 6. But without faith, it is impossible to please him, to please God. Look at verse 6. So we realize here that faith is the only way to please God, those who please God. It's impossible to please God without faith, and that's why we're looking at this idea of faith. Now, if we glance back again to chapter 10, verse 38, he also says this. He references a verse from Isaiah. Verse 38, he also says this. He references a verse from Isaiah Now, the just shall live by faith. So faith is just part of the believer's life, it's essential to being a believer.
Speaker 1:And so we start then in verse one with this idea what is faith? If faith is so important, what is it? And you know, I always go back to Sunday school and really a lot of confusion in my life. It wasn't my teacher's fault, it was probably my fault. But if you were to ask me the question back in Sunday school, what is faith? I would say it's believing something you know can't be true. Right, a leap of faith. It's not a good idea, but it's a leap of faith you know, a faith in. Well, you know Santa Claus, right, you know, I just have faith, I believe in, you know, and that's kind of the way a lot of believers I think look at, faith is believing something you know, just probably isn't true. But that's not what we're told here in verse 1. We start with the question of faith, and here on the doorway to the museum we could say is a definition in verse 1. Maybe not a definition, but a description of faith.
Speaker 1:Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, and so when describing faith, the author here uses some pretty solid words, right, some pretty solid words. Substance and evidence right, some pretty solid words. Substance and evidence, right? Substance, hold onto your chair. Substance, right, you see it, you feel it, it's got substance. Evidence, right, it's something you find in the game of Clue, right? You know some evidence to the crime, something physical, you pick up and you look at. So faith has substance and evidence. That's important because we have again a kind of wishy-washy view of faith. Like you know, the Padres that come from San Diego, the Padres keep the faith. You know, I don't know if that's an easy thing to do or a hard thing to do, depending on what their stats are, but here we see that faith is something you can hold on to. It's got substance and evidence.
Speaker 1:Um, there was an account of a Scottish missionary I heard about, john Patton. He ministered in the South Pacific and they were trying to come up with an idea for this word faith. There wasn't any direct word faith in the language and so, like they often do in translations, they had to come up with an idea, and the idea that the native there of that country came up with was sitting in a chair, but not just sitting in a chair, sitting in a chair with your feet up. You could all try it right now. Right, and there was this idea of resting all of your weight on something. That's faith. It's this real thing of resting all of your life in trusting God.
Speaker 1:And so here we're told faith is substance and evidence. It goes along with what James tells us in chapter 2, verse 17, that faith without works is dead. Without some kind of substance and evidence, faith isn't really faith. Faith has to change the way we live. It's not just empty words. So notice, faith realizes substance for things and evidence for things that we can't see. Substance for things hoped for we can put in heaven would be a good one to put in for that heaven. And evidence for things unseen, perhaps a spiritual reality all around us. Now check it out.
Speaker 1:The Bible talks about heaven, but not many have been there. Right, we haven't been there, but we believe it. Here's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2.9. As it is written, I has not seen nor ear, heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him. We could say this about heaven Nobody has really seen it, maybe a couple of people here and there, but nobody has really seen it. It hasn't even entered into our hearts. How amazing it is. But yet, by faith, we look forward and we hope for it. We don't just hope for it, like I hope it's there, but we live our lives in light of the truth of heaven. Another thing, though there's this evidence of things not seen. We get this, and not to be creepy or a little freaky on this, but the Bible points to a reality beyond what you can see with your eyes 2 Kings, chapter 6. You ought to check it out.
Speaker 1:It's a great account here of Elisha the prophet, and Elisha got himself into trouble for some various reasons, and the king of Syria was trying to get rid of him, trying to capture him. So he was in the city resting in an Airbnb I'm just going to guess, you know and his servant gets up in the morning to make coffee, of course, and the servant goes to the window, looks out the window and, oh my goodness, the whole Syrian army is around our house. That would be freaky, right, if you wake up and a whole army is surrounding your house and he runs into Elisha and says master, master, there's an army outside, you got to come and Elisha, you know, wipes the sleep out of his eyes and he just prays a very simple prayer. I added to that story, by the way, but he has a very simple prayer. He says God open his eyes that he could see. And the servant looks around and surrounding the army that was surrounding them was an army of angels with spears and swords, an army of chariots on fire. Right, and it was surrounding that army.
Speaker 1:Now read the rest of that story. It's amazing how God takes care of things there. But what we see is there is a spiritual reality around us that we can't see with our eyes. This is what the Bible presents a whole reality around us. Now, it doesn't make any sense to us, but it's no less real just because we can't understand that. It's what the Bible says. Now check it out.
Speaker 1:Faith is like spiritual receptors to realize the things hoped for and the spiritual things unseen. You can compare it to our physical senses. Right, you have what? Five senses? Right? Four of those specifically show us things that we couldn't take in otherwise. Right, there's light all around us. We see it, but without eyes we wouldn't be able to take that in. Eyes are the receptor to take in light and color and all these things. They're there, but we need eyes to check it out. They're, you know, sound waves going all around us, all the way out into space. They're just sound waves and different things, but without ears we wouldn't be able to take any of it in.
Speaker 1:Come Christmas time not to belabor the point here, but come Christmas time, people will be making cookies, right, and the scent of cookies through the air, ah, that's my kryptonite, you know, but without a nose you wouldn't be able to take it in. Remember those of you who got COVID, like I did, you know, but without a nose you wouldn't be able to take it in. Remember those of you who got COVID, like I did, you know, the one thing we knew was that some people sometimes just stop being able to smell. You remember that how clean the world smelled, you know, because your nose just decided it was going to go on vacation for a while. You know, you needed that receptor to catch it right. And the same thing with taste. We could talk about that as well.
Speaker 1:It was weird, it was freaky, and yet faith is kind of like that. There are things that without faith, we just can't take in. But with faith and total trust in what God says and who God is. It's a reality of our life, right, heaven is hoped for. But there's this substance, right, it changes the way we live and that's what we'll see through the chapter 11 of Hebrews is that those who live by faith live with this reality of heaven. Those who live by faith, they live with this reality of the spirit world all around us. We don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, and we'll see that as we go through chapter 11, that this faith really changed the way these people live.
Speaker 1:Notice verse 2, as we step in the door to this exhibit, perhaps on the side, we read this, for by it, by faith, the elders obtained a good testimony. The word testimony here is witness. It's marturos in the Greek. It's where we get the idea of a martyr. Right In the early church, believers were, were witness to Jesus, and because they witnessed of Jesus, they had a testimony of Jesus. A lot of times they were persecuted and put to death. So the word witness and and martyr kind of mean the same thing in our books, but here we say that these elders, those who have gone before, obtained a good testimony by faith. Now, if you skip over to chapter 12, verse 1, kind of a bookend to all of this, he looks back at the things in chapter 11 and says Therefore, we also since we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses same word, right, testimony, witness that those in chapter 11 who had this testimony and these witnesses, they had a better one because they lived by faith.
Speaker 1:Now, real faith gives us a good testimony, a good witness. In verse 6 of chapter 11, we read a good witness. In verse 6 of chapter 11, we read it pleases God. It's impossible to please God without this kind of faith. It pleases God, that's good. Chapter 12, we'll see in verse 1, again, it gives us endurance. Right. In chapter 12, it switches from being a museum to a coliseum. In chapter 12, it switches from being a museum to a coliseum we could say A coliseum, and there's a race going on and we want to run this race of life with endurance. How do we do it? By faith, just like these folks in chapter 11 did. So having faith in our life will please God. It will give us a better testimony and it'll give us endurance to get through life.
Speaker 1:Life can be tiring and hard, but it gives us endurance, and this is really what God wants to do through life. I don't know if you've noticed this, but I feel like the longer I've gone through life, the more things I've been through. I find that this is something that God always wants to work in my life. He wants to give me Bible knowledge and experiences and stuff, but what God really wants to do in life is get us to trust him, to put all of our weight on him. I think it's a huge part of sanctification, this work that God does to change us is to get us to trust Him. That's why we experience trials and difficulties in life, all just to kind of pry our lives out of our hands so that we just trust God with it more and more and more, so that our. This is the purpose of faith to change us.
Speaker 1:Now verse 3, we have a couple minutes here to explore a little further Verse 3, we go back to the beginning. Faith goes back to the beginning. In verse 3, by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen are not made of things which are visible, and so the first place the author takes us is back to Genesis 1.1, all the way back to the beginning, where we read Genesis 1.1, where we read Genesis 1.1, in the beginning, god. Now God created the heavens and the earth, and we'll talk about that for a second. But in the beginning, god. The Bible doesn't explain where God came from. It just starts off by saying God was In the beginning. God was and there he was Now. That's the beginning of it all. But then we realized that God created the heavens and the earth.
Speaker 1:It's possible, I think it's possible, to be a believer and believe things like evolution. There are plenty of believers who believe evolution was the way that God created the heavens and the earth. It's not six literal days, it's six ages and whatnot. That's fine. I believe you can be a believer, and I don't know why, but you could. But no matter what, and hear this, no matter what, you have to ask the question where did it all come from? Where did it all start? Because matter isn't eternal. We know that Things are winding down. Matter isn't eternal, so there had to be a beginning to it.
Speaker 1:I listened to a lot of little stories this time around for this one and the story is told of an atheist who came to God ironic right and said you know what, god, with evolution, I can make man out of the dust of the ground. And God said hey, get your own dust right, because there has to be a place where all the basics came from. It had to start somewhere One way or another. You have to answer that and not in a mocking term. But when asked, most modern scientists would almost really say that life came from maybe another planet, maybe another part of the universe. It flew in on a comet or aliens or something like that brought the essence of life here and started it all. But you can change it to the other side of the universe. You still have to say but where did it come from? And there's no answer because it takes faith, it takes trust to believe evolution way more than just to believe that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Speaker 1:When you look at the complexity of life I'm not a scientist, I don't even. I didn't even do good well at science, you know. But when you look at the complexity of life, how if the earth was a little bit closer to the sun, we'd burn up, right. If it was a little bit further from the sun, everything would freeze, right, when you see the apparent design in some of the simplest things, in some of the simplest things, this perfect homeostasis that has to happen in order for life to exist, you see how marvelously we're created. I mean, just think about it. I mean, this is so simple, but I was thinking about it this morning. You know, we breathe oxygen, I know that much. We breathe oxygen. Plants take in carbon dioxide, right, and we're in this kind of back and forth thing. Right, we breathe out, you know, carbon dioxide, the plants take it in and they respirate. I guess they respirate oxygen back to us. We're dependent upon each other, right, be kind to your plants, right? No, but you know, if it wasn't that way, we wouldn't have the things we need to live. And so you see design in everything, the smallest and simplest things, and the more you see it, the more I think you can conclude that we and all of life is fearfully and wonderfully made. That's where it starts.
Speaker 1:Now notice oh, I lost Hebrews. Notice there in verse 6, that this is essential to real faith. Without faith, it's impossible to please God, for he who comes to God must believe that he is, that he's a rewarder for those who diligently seek him. That's what faith. Does we, by faith, look at the world around us and we go. I believe there's a God. There's no other way this could happen than a designer designed it. I believe there's a God and I believe it matters what we do with that information right. He's a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. If you live your life for him, it's worth it right Now. This is the essence of faith. There is a God. This is what he's like. The Bible tells us, and this is what he likes. This is the way life was meant to be. That's the way you ought to live.
Speaker 1:Now. The wonderful thing that we'll find in this. My wife always asks me what kind of application I got when I taught the Bible study, and sometimes I'm like I don't think I got any application. I don't know what I told everybody, but as we go through this and these accounts of people who just trusted God, we're going to see every single thing is practical application for our life, because these are just normal people. You know, you go into those museums with those statues of all the heroes, of you know, american heroes, and you go. Man, george Washington, he's just larger than life. You know Abraham Lincoln just larger than life. You know, this is something you know. He was just incredible.
Speaker 1:And yet, as we look at all these people, the great thing in the Bible is we find out that they were all flawed, just like we are. You find out that Abraham, the father of the faithful. He struggled with doubt a huge part of his life. He did crazy things that God never told him to do because he had doubt and he was afraid. But yet God looks at him in this and says but he was faithful, by faith, he did these things. You look at all the people on this list and they were all just human beings like us. They were all flawed and we'll cover that. They're flaws too, but God, by faith, god caused him to walk in these amazing ways and experience the life that God had created for them and trust God. You know, you get to the end of each of their lives and you find out wow, they really learned to trust God.
Speaker 1:And here's the thing God wants to do the same thing in us. We're just normal human beings in our time period, in our neck of the world, and yet God wants to work trust in each one of us. God wants us to not just believe something but live it, and that opportunity is even this week. What is God like? What does he like? What does he have for you? In what ways might you step out and just trust him with the things that are in front of you? And God works the same things that he worked in these people into our lives as well.
Speaker 1:So I'm excited as we move on in this study, god. It certainly isn't about us just psyching ourself out and having a little pep rally and being excited about life, but it's you that we need to not just trust you in our words, but with our life. To not just trust us with spiritual things, seemingly spiritual things but, god, to trust you with the practical things of our life, the things that are in our heart. God, I just pray that you would continue to work faith in each one of us. I just thank you that that's exactly what you want to do, god, and it wouldn't be to our glory, but it would be to your glory in the end. God, we love you and thank you for this time. In Jesus' name, we pray Amen.