Take your Bibles and turn with
me this morning to Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews 11 is called by those
who study the scriptures, the faith chapter. The whole chapter is dedicated
to tell us and show us by example what it is to believe God. Tells
us about men and women who did believe God. who pleased God,
whom God translated, whom God took into glory with Him. He begins in this chapter with
creation, and he goes all the way through the Old Testament
pointing out example after example of those who had the faith of
God's elect and exercised that faith to the saving of their
soul. Now Hebrews 11 is not just an
abstract writing about faith with no bearing on the rest of
the book at all, but rather it's a summation of that faith that
Paul's been talking about all the way back from Hebrews chapter
one. And especially of what he said
in the last two verses of chapter 10. Look up there with me for
just a second. Verse 38, it says, now the just
shall live by faith. But if any man draw back, my
soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them who
draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving
of the soul. Now what I want to do this morning
is to try and answer this question from the word of God. What is
it to believe God? What is it? A lot of talk about
it. I hear men and women on TV talking
about it all the time, talking about faith, faith, faith, faith. What is it to believe to the
saving of my soul? What is this thing called faith
without which it is impossible to please God? He tells us just
a little further down here in Hebrews 11. Talk about Enoch. Before he was translated,
he left this testimony, he pleased God. But without faith, it's
impossible to please God. What is this faith without which
we shall be damned? He that believeth not shall be
damned. What is this faith that's given
by the grace of God and that only to his elect? You may be here this morning
and be ignorant of that. Faith is only given to God's
chosen people. Nobody else will believe. Well,
can you make good on that in the scriptures? I think I can.
Our Lord said to the Jews, you believe not because you're not
my sheep. As I said unto you, my sheep
hear my voice. And I know them. And I give unto
them eternal life. And they'll never perish. And
nobody's going to pluck them out of my hand. What about those
Gentiles at that church at Antioch? What about them? Boy, the Jews
got hot, Paul and Silas preaching the gospel to them, and they
got hot and stirred up the people and made fun of the apostles
and tried to mock what they preached. Paul just quoted a scripture
out of Isaiah, and he said, this is, the Lord talked about you
people, and this is what it is. You're not going to believe this
gospel, though a man stand and proclaim it to you, you're not
going to believe it. So he said, since you judge yourselves unworthy
of everlasting life, he said, behold, I turn from you to the
Gentiles. Here's this bunch of heathens.
Had no idea they even had an interest in God. Was just there
out of curiosity. Was there to listen to this message
that included them in these things. Their ears were tuned. And it said they was glad when
Paul said that. Oh, my soul, they were glad.
They were glad. Now listen. And as many as were
ordained to eternal life believed. What is this faith without which
we shall be damned and which is only given to His elect? What is this faith which works
in us, enabling us according to John chapter 1 to become sons
of God? To believe on His name. and to
be born, not of the will of the flesh nor of the will of men,
but of God. What is this faith which makes
the promises of God to take root in the hearts of chosen sinners? Hebrews 11 chapter one gives
us as good a definition of faith as I've ever read. Now faith. What faith? This faith that he
said in the previous chapter, in the very last verse, that
we believe to the saving of our soul. This is the faith he's
talking about. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence
of things not seen. Well, what is faith? Well, it's
the substance of things hoped for. What's that mean? Well, let me see if I can illustrate
it for you. I wasn't there when the Bible
was written. My grandfather wasn't there,
my great-grandfather wasn't there, and we can go back a whole lot
of generations beyond that, and they weren't there either. I
wasn't there when holy men of God penned the holy scriptures,
but by faith I know that they did. I know that they did. and that they did it over thousands
of years from all different walks of life, under various forms
of government, and that nothing that they wrote contradicted
itself or failed to come to pass or can even be proved to be a
falsehood now. But mostly, I take God at His
word. He said, all scripture is given
by inspiration of God. I believe God. That's where it
starts, isn't it? That's where this faith starts.
It starts believing God. Moses wrote about creation. He
wrote about the fall. He wrote about the flood of Noah. He wrote about the confusion
of language in Babylon. All happened thousands of years
before Moses was ever born. Where'd he get his information?
Huh? How'd he know there was a river
running into that garden that branched off into four rivers
and run throughout the world? How'd he know that Adam fell
in the garden? Where'd Moses get his information?
He got it from God. Now you either believe that or
you don't. I mean, there's the line. I put
the chip on my shoulder, throw the thing down, there you step
over. This thing begins with believing God. Believing God. Moses had no historic records
telling him what happened or why. It was given to him by the
Spirit of the living God. And so it was with his future
prophecies. There was a lot of things Moses
wrote about that didn't come to pass for another 2,000 years.
But they all come to pass. And they come to pass exactly
as Moses wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit of God. And especially his future prophecies
concerning the Messiah. Our Lord said over in John chapter
five, he said this, He looked at those Jews who gloried in
Moses and gloried in the law and he said, had you have believed
Moses, you would have believed me because Moses wrote of me. But if you believe not his writings,
how shall you believe my words? My words this morning had no
bearing on you whatsoever if you do not believe that this
book is the book of God. It's just another opinion. And
I tell you, I get that back in my face so much anymore. That's
your opinion. No, it ain't my opinion. It's
the testimony of God. Acts chapter 10 verse 43 says
to him, give all the prophets witness. That through his name,
whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins. All
the prophets, every one of them. From Moses to Malachi. But if
we don't receive their testimony of Christ as being inspired of
God, and in fact the Word of God, then we have no other way
to know anything about who the Christ is, or what the Christ
is, or what he came to do, or what he did, or where he's at.
Do you follow what I'm saying? The Bible is the Word of God.
It's the foundation of our faith. But without faith, those things
set forth in the Word of God have no substance in the heart.
That's what Paul's saying here. Faith is the substance of things
hoped for. I must see by the Spirit of God
how these promises, warnings, and declarations apply to me
and how they apply to God. And then secondly, let me tell
you this. I've never been able to see into the hearts of men.
Sometimes I think I can, but I can't. I can't. I can see your
face and see what you're dressed with this morning. That's as
far as it goes. I can't see your heart. I can't
see your mind. Yet I believe that man fell in
the garden and the person of their federal head, Adam, And
that that death, that spiritual death incurred by his fall, passed
upon all his posterity. Romans 5, 12, it says, wherefore
as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,
and so death passed. Who did it pass on? Passed on
you. Passed on me. Passed on all his posterity. Romans 5.18, by the offense of
one, one man, judgment came upon all men to condemnation. 1 Corinthians
15.22, for as in Adam all die. That's pretty clear, isn't it?
You don't need an interpreter for that. Because of our fall in Adam,
we have inherited a nature of sin. A wicked, ungodly, depraved
nature which thinks and loves and walks and willfully practices
sin. We say, Preacher, I can't see
it. That's what I told you at the beginning. I can't see it
either. But by faith, I can see it. What would I know about sin?
I was born in sin. Everything seems natural to me.
It's as natural for a kid to lie as it is to tell the truth,
isn't it? Actually, telling the truth might be a little unnatural. Natural. We've never known anything
else but sin. That's why our thoughts and motives
don't disturb us, because we don't know anything about it.
But by faith, by faith, God tells us what's in our hearts. They
looked over those Jews, those religious Jews. People get all
swelled up in religion. They get self-righteous and,
boy, they had that head up in those broad phylacteries out
there and had all them things printed on there, had their name
on there, probably had a big Dewey button up here somewhere,
and they walking around, prancing around like a bunch of, I don't
know, ostriches or something. They was looking down on them
and they, Said, your disciples are defiling themselves. They're
eating corn with unwashed hands. Boy, if that's defilement, I'm
done for. I'll tell you, out working, when
I got hungry, I ate. And if there wasn't no water
to wash, I didn't wash, but I ate. And our Lord said this to them.
He said, out of the heart proceed evil thoughts. murderers, adulteries,
fornication, false witness, blasphemies. And these are the things that
defile the man. It's what's in his heart. But
to eat with unwashing hands, that's not what defiles him.
It's what's in here. And you can't see that. I can't
see yours and you can't see mine. We can't see our own. I take
God at his word. By faith I receive his witness,
his testimony of what I am. I'm a sinner. I don't need to look into your
heart or mine. I determine, you know, to make
some determination. Is this man a sinner? Well, sure
he's a sinner. How do you know that? God said
he was. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. God who sees all things and knows
all things has already declared what's in there. And then again
I'll say to you that faith is the substance of this knowledge. You either believe it or you
don't. Thirdly, I was not there when the Virgin Mary gave birth
to that little child. That little boy laid him in a
manger, wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, laid him in a manger.
But I know that was God come into the flesh by a virgin birth
that he declared to his prophet Isaiah hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of years before Christ came. I wasn't there when the angels
bore witness of him. But the Word of God tells me
that they did. And it tells me that he was the
promised Messiah, the Christ, the Redeemer. He's the one these
prophets have been prophesying about for thousands of years.
He was born exactly where they said he was going to be born.
He was virgin born exactly as they said he would be. And they
moved him for fear of him being murdered by an evil king. They
moved him from there to Egypt that the scriptures might be
fulfilled. You go back and read the gospels and you get your
eyes and ears tuned to this. Every time he did something it
says that the scriptures might be fulfilled. That the scriptures
might be fulfilled. The prophets had declared his
birth, his mission, his life, his death in great detail, all
of which came to pass exactly as they prophesied. Paul used
this over in Galatians 4 talking to these men about faith. He
said, when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth
his son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them
that were under the law. Fourthly, I wasn't there when
the triune God formed the everlasting covenant of grace and gave it
to the Son of God. I'll talk to men about the covenant
of grace and they'll say, the what? But we sang about it just
a few minutes ago, didn't we? His oath, his covenant, and his
blood. Didn't we just sing that? I sang that when I was in Armenianism
and didn't have a clue about the covenant. I wasn't there when he did that.
appointed him as the sovereign mediator, the covenant surety,
as the federal headship of a people, that God chose a people in him before the foundation of the
earth. Yet these things are clearly taught in the scriptures and
included in all the apostles' gospel messages that they preached
when they went out preaching all over Asia. Everything needed
to save and call out chosen sinners was fixed in the covenant of
God and brought to pass exactly as God declared that it would
be. Each of God's elect obtained their inheritance, Paul said,
being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh
all things after the counsel of his own will. If you've obtained
that inheritance this morning, that's how you obtained it. You
can read it for yourself in Ephesians 111. Nothing is left to chance but
is purposed of God who hath from the beginning chosen us unto
salvation through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the
truth. Well, well, what if there wasn't any preachers there? Huh? You reckon God didn't know that? How shall he preach except he
be sent? God knows where to send his ambassadors. He knows who to send them to.
He knows when to send them. You know, unbelieving men are
always quick to try to find excuses to defend their refuge. Nothing is left to chance, it's
purposed of God. And God tells us these things
in His Word. You can read it in II Thessalonians
2.13. You can read about it in II Timothy
1.9. God has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according
to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which
was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. The Lord Jesus Christ came into
this world to accomplish the redemptive will of God, and having
done so, in His dying words, said, It's finished. It's done. And again, I tell you, I wasn't
there. But the Scriptures tell me that on the third day, God
raised Him from the dead. And to make it even clearer,
He tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that He rose again on the
third day, according to the Scriptures. Just exactly the way scripture
said he would be. And for the reasons that God
said he would. He was delivered for our offenses
and raised again for our justification. He was raised from the dead.
And after hundreds, above 500 at one time, confirmed it. He ascended into heaven itself,
where he sat down at the right hand of God, expecting till his
enemies be made his footstool. Well, preacher, you ever seen
him sitting there? No. Well, how do you know he's sitting
there? Tells me where he's at. Tells
me what he's doing. Sixthly, I've never seen or heard
the Spirit of God speak. Have you? God the Spirit ever spoke to
you like I'm speaking to you this morning? I've never heard
Him. Not in a dream, not in a vision, not late at night, not out on
the river, not anywhere, not in the woods. Never heard Him speak. Not one
time. And yet I know He speaks to chosen
sinners through the preaching of the gospel and the way His
presence and power are known is when that preaching becomes
a picture when the heart and they believe god how do you how do you know if
the spirit god speaks to a man he believes and i won't be so when he does
when he does when a man believes and according to how much you
believe He'll rearrange his life around what he heard. Not just
so. He believed God. He believed
God. The Bible said he was delivered
for our offenses, raised again for our justification. And Paul
says this about preaching. He said our sufficiency is of
God. We're not sufficient to think
anything of ourselves. But our sufficiency is of God,
who hath made us able ministers of the New Testament by the Spirit. And by His Spirit, life is given. Life is given. Knowledge of God
is given. All right, now let's get down
to it. God tells me I'm a vile sinner. Wretched. He thought you was rich. increased
with goods and had need of nothing, and you didn't know, you're blind
and a pauper and wretched and need everything. He tells me I'm a vile sinner,
born in sin, by nature a child of wrath, even as others, Ephesians
chapter 2, verses 1 and 2. To be reconciled to God, I must
have two things that are absolutely impossible for me to produce. I must have a perfect righteousness. I must have a perfect obedience,
an obedience that flows from a godly nature with godly motives
and godly affections. And this obedience must begin
at birth and continue throughout my life, unbroken in motive,
thought, and deed. Cursed is everyone who continueth
not in all things written in the book of the law to do them. And this obedience must continue
under persecution. It must continue throughout temptation. It must continue through suffering
and death. I've never kept a single statute
of the law as God commands it to be kept. Have you? Now he said the whole law hangs
on these two things. Love the Lord thy God with all
our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. Everything else has to have those
motives. That whole law hangs on that.
Now I don't care how much of this law you outwardly do, you're
still guilty of it because you didn't have those two motivations. I've never kept a single statute
of the law as God demands it to be kept, and I'm guilty of
the whole law. Yet I have hope in a righteousness
that's based on the full satisfaction of the law. How can that be? You're guilty of the whole law,
but you have hope in a righteousness that's based on the full satisfaction
of that law. How can that be? Because God
tells me that in my Redeemer and my representative, I have
a righteousness that has exalted the law and made it honorable.
I'll tell you how I got it. I'll tell you how I acquired
it. God, before he ever made the first man, took His elect
and put them in Christ in union with Him. And when the fullness
of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman,
made under the law to redeem them that were under the law.
How did He do that? I was in union with Him. I obeyed that law perfectly.
I obeyed it under persecution. I obeyed it under suffering.
I obeyed it under temptation. I obeyed that law from the cradle
to the grave in my substitute, in my savior. That's my righteousness. And God said he hath exalted
the law and made it honorable. And when God raised him up, Paul
says in Ephesians 2, talking about us dead sinners, he raised
us up with him. And when he sat down at the right
hand of God, accepted, he sat us down with him. That's my righteousness. The Bible said, For Christ is
the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.
Believers are not going about in their zeal and determination
to establish a righteousness. That's what Israel did that cost
them their soul. Paul cried, Oh, he said that
I might win Christ and be found in him not having my own righteousness. But that which is through the
faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. Philippians
3, 8 and 9. And then secondly, God demands
a full and complete retribution for my sins. My sins have to
be paid for. We say, okay, I'm guilty. I don't have nowhere else to
go. I guess I'm just going to have to pay for them. You can't. You don't have what it takes.
You don't have the price. We're together to become unprofitable.
There's no worth in us. How are we going to pay for it?
We're bankrupt sinners. What are we going to use to pay
for it? We couldn't satisfy hell, it's
everlasting. Read it in the scriptures, it's
everlasting. Why is it everlasting? Because
no man has the value to pay for his sins. He'll burn forever
in hell because he can't pay his way out. He can never satisfy
the justice of God, the wrath of God for his sins. But Christ
did. And the same way I have that
righteousness, I have this free justification. Being justified
freely by His grace through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus.
Can you hear what I'm telling you this morning? This is what
the Scripture teaches. And I'm telling you this, He
told Moses, He said, I will by no means clear the guilty. He's
not gonna clear it. Their sins have to be paid for.
And for that reason, he spared not his own son, but delivered
him up for us all. And the word of God tells me
that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.
What's the scriptures say about his death? It says the good shepherd
giveth his life for the sheep. That's what it says. In Romans 8, 33 and 34, he tells
us that God justified his elect because Christ died for him and
rose from the dead for him and intercedes for him in glory.
He bore our sins in his own body on the tree. By his own blood,
he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal
redemption for us. Now, what are you going to do
with that? What are you going to do with
the testimony of God? Will you put it on the shelf
with the so-called science and philosophy of this world and
everything else that you've learned up to this minute and mix a little
of one and a little of the other? What are you going to do with
the testimony of God? Will you put it on the table
and say, well, we'll hear of thee another time? That's interesting. I'd like to come back someday
and hear you again. What will you do with the testimony of
God? Can I tell you something? Believers
believe God. Period. They believe God. They take God at His word. When God says to them, you're
a fallen, depraved sinner, they believe it. And they act as if
the leprosy had already broken the skin. I've been hearing about
sin since I was that big, just as small as some of you in here
this morning. I've been listening to my daddy sit me on a feed
sack and I listen to those preachers preach to the winos. Talking about sin, sin, sin,
sin, sin, it never meant anything to me until God gave me faith. And I tell you, the minute he
did just like that, that sin broke my skin just like the leprosy. I could see it. I could feel
it. I knew I was a goner. I was a sinful man with no hope. Without God in the world. No
hope for me. Nothing to obligate God to show
me anything. A sinner. That's what it means
to believe God. And people, I preach that to
people and they wait around, keep looking at their skin, see
if they don't see anything. You're not going to see anything,
you see it in here. When a man realizes his doom
and Adam and their condemnation under sin and that Christ may
appear at any moment, sealing their doom for all eternity. They don't just say, well, I'm
going to think about it a little bit. Maybe next week I might
be baptized. You haven't seen anything. You haven't seen anything. That's the difference when God
speaks and when a man speaks. That's the difference. and His
glorious atonement. Oh, we see that righteousness
of Christ. It sits before us. Once he's
convinced that man of sin, then he'll surely have to be convinced
of righteousness after that, because he knows he ain't righteous.
But he convinces him then of the righteousness of Christ,
and he sets it before him, and it looks like a pearl of great
price. It looks like a treasure beyond
anything he's ever seen. He'll give all for it. He has
to have it. And then His glorious atonement,
so effectual was His suffering and death that it perfectly and
eternally put away our sins forever. Oh, David sang about it. He said,
Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not charge sin. He's a sinner. But God won't
charge him with it. He won't charge him with it.
Why? Because he charged his sins to his son. That's why. Believers believe God. They take
God at his word. They act upon his declarations.
They bow to his authority. They follow his instructions.
They rest and rejoice in his son. When God told Abel through
Adam to bring a lamb to the altar, he didn't consider anything else.
He brought a lamb. The brother didn't hear the same
thing he heard. He brought a bunch of carrots
and cabbage and whatever else he had in his garden. He throwed
that down. You think that lamb something,
that old bloody lamb, look at this. Look at this. God spit
on his offering. He received Abel's because Abel
offered his through faith. God told Noah he's gonna destroy
this world in judgment. He's gonna save some by putting
them in an ark. It said Noah moved with fear.
Nobody else did. Why'd Noah move with fear? Because
he found grace in the eyes of the Lord. He moved with fear,
prepared that ark, and walked in it. He believed God. When will this saving grace be
known? In the hearts of chosen sinners, when the gospel comes
to them, not in word only, but in power, in the Holy Ghost,
and with much assurance. Salvation is a work of grace
in the heart that makes everything real and effectual and glorifying
to God. So what is it to believe? It's
the substance of things hopeful. What makes you think you're a
saved man? I believe. That's it. You got anything else? I don't
have nothing else. I believe God. I believe God. It's the substance of things
hoped for. Well, what evidence do you have? That's my evidence. I believe God. I believe him. What can we do to work the works
of God? This is the work of God that
you believe on him whom he has sent. What's my evidence? I believe God. I believe God. Almighty Lord, press that upon
your hearts and show you the difference between profession
and believing