verse 17 to you because I've
read it so many times to you now. But I want to say one more
thing about this. Let me read it to you. Ephesians
3 and verse 17. And then Hebrews chapter 11. That Christ may dwell in your
hearts by faith. That Christ may dwell in your
hearts by faith. And then in Hebrews chapter 11,
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence
of things not seen. Paul says that Christ dwells
in our hearts by faith. Then here we have the only definition
of faith that I'm aware of that's given in the whole entire Bible. And you and I tried a few weeks
ago to Consider what it meant for the Lord Jesus Christ to
dwell in our hearts by faith. We know that He visits us on
occasions, He manifests Himself. But this is talking about experimental. Christ settling down in the heart,
abiding there, residing within the heart. When somebody comes
for a visit, they come for a visit and we sit and talk a while and
eat and they leave. But this is different. If somebody lives
in your house, then on a daily basis, you're going to associate
with them. You're going to eat with them.
You're going to talk with them, because they live there. They
dwell there with you in your house. Now, you know this as
well as I do, that every child of God has the Spirit of Christ. There's no such a thing as being
a child of God by faith, by new birth, And Christ not being in
the heart, He abides in every believer. Because you're sons. You're sons of God by faith in
Christ, and because you're sons, God has sent forth the Spirit
of His Son into your heart. Crying, Father, Father. Christ
is in the heart of every believer. Now that in itself is an amazing
thing. But Paul is speaking about more than that, he's speaking
here of the experience of it, the reality of that, living in
the enjoyment of that on a daily basis and the assurance of it.
Can you imagine living in this world and the living God, which
Christ is, dwelling in your heart? while you live in this world,
living with the daily reality that He dwells with you. Listen to what the Lord Jesus
said about this triune God. I will pray the Father, and He
will give you another Comforter that He may abide with you forever,
even the Spirit of Truth, which the world cannot receive, because
the world don't see Him And the world doesn't know Him. But you know Him, for He dwelleth
with you and shall be in you. That's the Spirit. And then He
went right on to say this, If any man love Me, he will keep
My words, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto
him and make Our abode with him. There you have the Holy Spirit.
You have the Father and you have the Son, abiding, dwelling, supping,
fellowshipping in the heart. Listen to this passage. Know
you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which
is in you, which you have of God? You are not your own, you
are bought with a price. Your body is the temple of who? The living God. You know, one of the things I'm
convinced, brothers and sisters, one of our problems is we don't
think about this. We just absolutely do not sit
and think about this, how it would change our whole attitude
living in this world. Your bodies are the temples of
the living God. And then he says this, 2 Corinthians
6, verse 16, "...Ye are the temple of the living God, as he hath
said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them, and I will be their
God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore, come out from among
them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord. Touch not the unclean
thing, And I will receive you and will be a father to you."
The living God dwelling within us, and He says, I'll be a father.
Heavenly Father. You've got an earthly father,
you've got a heavenly father. Saith the Lord God Almighty. And you know, this is the only
place I know of. Different times He said, I'll
be a father to you and you shall be My sons. But here He said,
you shall be My sons and My daughters. I don't know how you ladies feel
about this. When we always talk about any
man and that man that trusts Christ, and we always speak in
the mass, do you ladies ever feel left out when we do that?
Well, just in case you do, here's a verse just for you. You shall
be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord. The indwelling of God. And this same God, this same
triune God that fills heaven and fills earth, abides in the
hearts of all His children. And this is what Paul is speaking
of. I want you to live in the reality of that. In the experience
of that. And this is the reason why he
adds to this by faith. By faith. That Christ may dwell
in your hearts by faith. I looked up that little phrase,
by faith, and it is all through the New Testament. The New Testament
is saturated with that little phrase, by faith. By faith. And you look up these words,
just some of them, let me just give you a few of them, and you'll
see why faith is a precious thing. It's a very precious thing. When
we look at just these two little words, by faith, in Acts 15,
9, listen to this. God put no difference between
the believing Jews and the believing Gentiles. He put no difference
between the Jews and the Gentiles, purifying their hearts by faith. Blessed are the pure in heart,
they shall see God. How is a man's heart purified?
God purifies it. How does He do it? By faith. Romans 117, the just shall live
by faith. No man ever lived by the deeds
of the Law. All the Law ever did to any man
was stir up sin in him. You look to the Law, apart from
Jesus Christ, and you know what He'll do? He'll stir up anger. He'll stir up wrath. How does
a Christian live? By faith. We come to God through
Christ by faith. He that cometh to me shall never
hunger. He that believeth on me Coming
and believing are the same. We are saved by faith. Thy faith
has saved thee. Go in peace. We live by faith. The life that I now live in this
flesh, I live by faith of the Son of God. We are justified
by faith. Therefore, we conclude that a
man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. We are
made righteous by faith. You can't do a thing to make
yourself righteous. You're made righteous by faith. Listen to
what Paul said. That I might be found in Christ,
not having my own righteousness which is of the law, but that
which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which
is of God by faith. Abraham believed God and it was
counted to him for righteousness by faith. We stand by faith. Paul said, because of unbelief,
the Jews were broken off, and you Gentiles, you stand by faith. Be not high-minded by fear. Listen
to this. We walk by faith. We are always
confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body, we
are absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith. Everything is by faith. Chapter here, the 11th chapter
of Hebrews, 21 times it's mentioned, either by faith or through faith,
which is the same. By faith, Abel offered unto God.
By faith, Enoch went with God and was translated. By faith,
Noah built an ark. By faith, Abraham obeyed. By
faith, Sarah received strength to conceive seed. By faith, Moses
refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. By faith
they passed through the Red Sea, as by dry land. By faith the
harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not. By faith
they subdued kingdoms. By faith they wrought righteousness,
obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the
violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness
were made strong, waxed violent in fight, turned to flight the
armies of the aliens. All by faith. ever been of it
by faith. This is the victory that overcometh
the world, even your faith. If somebody ever comes to you
and says, What's your rule of life? I hope you're established
enough in the Scripture and you're confident enough that you can
say without fear of being contradicted, My rule of life is faith. The just shall live by faith. It's the rule of everything.
How do you come to God? He that comes to God must believe
He is. There's no way to come to God but by faith. Christ dwells
in our hearts by faith. I tell you what, it must be precious
then. It must be precious. Because it's the entire rule.
We can't know God. We can't be saved. We can't walk
with God, we can't enjoy Him, except it's by faith. Christ
cannot dwell in the heart except it's by faith, that Christ may
dwell in your heart by faith. Not many people have faith. It's
a very rare commodity, Scott Richardson said. You know what
makes some stones precious? There's not many of them. That's
what makes faith precious. Not many people have it. It's
a precious thing. What is it? Look here in Hebrews
chapter 11. As I said, this is the only place
that I'm aware of where the definition of faith is actually given. Now, faith is. Faith is. Here's what it is. Here's the
definition. If you've ever looked at this before and couldn't understand
it, I'm going to keep this just as simple as I can. Because it's
when we begin to see this, we begin to understand what Paul
said when he said that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.
Here's the definition. Look at these two things. Faith
is the substance of things. Substance. What is substance? This is substance. It's something you can see. It's
something you can feel. For years now, you've been coming
in here, you've been looking at this pulpit, you've been looking
at this podium, and it's real. You can come up here and stand
on it. You can lay on it. You can feel it. It's real. When
you go outside this building at home, do you ever imagine
this pulpit and this podium? Sometimes you do, don't you?
But what's the difference in it? When you're here looking
at it and touching it, it's real. As opposed to when you're home
and it's only imaginary. That's the difference in substance. It's either real or imaginary.
Faith is the substance. It's the reality of what we hope
for. Faith gives the reality to something. substance, solid, real. Now, I know that God is real,
whether anybody believes it or not. We know that Christ is the
Savior. We know this Bible is the truth,
if anybody ever believes it or not. But it's faith that makes
it a reality to us, to our hearts. Faith makes God my God. Faith makes Christ precious to
me. Faith makes Him my own personal
Savior. Faith makes this Word, words
of life, to us, you see. Faith gives reality to anything. Faith is the reality of things
hoped for. So see that? Just that alone? Can you see why Paul said, Christ
may dwell in your hearts by faith? Faith gives the reality of Christ
in the heart. It's not a notion. It's not something
that we merely imagine. It's not a fantasy. Christ dwelling
in the heart is real because He dwells there by faith. It
was years ago, sometime, I think in the generation, I'm not for
sure, but I think it's sometime in the generation before me. when the Lord saved me, Rex Humbard. Some of you remember Rex Humbard
and John R. Rice and those fellows. I think
it was them that started this. They would preach their sermons
and they would invite people to come forward and pray. I wrote
Rex Humbard a letter about this one time. He did answer me. He
answered me. And he got people to come up
front and he said, I want you to repeat the sinner's prayer.
And he said, for fear that some of you may not pray, I want you
to repeat it after me. And it went something like this,
God, I know that I'm a sinner, and I'm sorry. But I now invite
Christ to come into my heart. And they would repeat that prayer
after him, and then he'd send them back to sit down, and later
they would baptize him. And so many of those people,
they would come to him, and what stayed A very, very small percentage
even continued to come back to the worship service. But here
is the problem that they faced. They said, there's no change
in me. I can't see any difference. I
don't feel any difference. I don't think any different.
And here was His answer to them. You've got to take it by faith. And all of us have saw them,
when they did that, try to reason with them. They'd put a Bible
right underneath their face and say, now read this. If you confess
with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart, then
you're saved. You just got to take it by faith. But there was
no reality in that kind of faith. Therefore, it wasn't real. Faith
gives reality to something. You can't have this faith that's
a gift of God, that the Holy Spirit works in the heart. A
hard faith without it giving reality to things. Because that's
the definition of faith. Faith is the substance. It's
the reality. The reality of things hoped for. Think about the implications
of this for just a minute. What do we hope for? Faith gives
reality to what we haven't got yet. John says it like this. It does not yet appear what we
shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be
like Him, for we shall see Him as He is, every man that hath
this hope in him, purifying himself." What is the hope that we have
of someday being like Christ? What faith does, faith makes
that a reality now. Hope says it's just to come.
But faith says it's real now. The reality of it. And here's
the way Peter said it. He was talking about the trial
of our faith. You are now in heaviness through manifold temptation,
that the triune of your faith, because it's so precious, might
be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of
Jesus Christ, whom you have not seen, And though you see Him
not, yet believe Him. You rejoice with joy unspeakable. See that? John said, we're hoping. We're hoping for His appearance.
But Peter said, because you believe. You believe Him. It causes your
heart to rejoice even before He appears. We hope. And faith makes this hope a reality. The Lord Jesus said, I am the
resurrection and the life. He that believeth on Me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth
in Me shall never die." Brothers and sisters, stop just for a
minute and imagine the implication behind such a statement. He that
believeth in Me, though he were dead physically, yet shall he
live. My goodness, think of that. Think
of that. You talk about the things of
this world fading. And though he were dead, yet
shall he live. And he turned to Mary and said,
Mary, can your faith get a hold of this? Believest thou this? Martha, do you believe this?
Why did he ask her that? Because he knows faith is the
reality. It gives reality. Our conversations in heaven from
whence we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall
change our vile bodies and fashion it like unto His glorious body. That's what we hope for. Faith
makes it a reality. Looking and hastening into the
coming of the day of God wherein the heavens being on fire shall
be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat
Nevertheless, we, according to His promise, look for a new heaven
and a new earth. Faith. It gets a hold of this. The reality of it. You just go
through the Scriptures or think in your minds what you hope for. That's recorded in His Word.
And if your faith can bring those things and make a living reality
of it, you'll be amazed in your mind how it changes your heart.
Faith is the reality. But not only, he said, faith
is the reality of things hoped for, it's the evidence of things
not seen. Now, first of all, remember what
faith is. It's the substance. What is substance? It's something
that's real, as opposed to something that's imaginary. And he adds this to it. It's
the evidence of things not seen. When you think of evidence, what
do you think of? It's a legal term. We think of legal terms,
don't we? When the prosecutor is going
to prosecute someone, or when the defense attorney is going
to defend someone, what do they do? They gather evidence. They
gather proof. And they present it in the court
of law, and then the jury looks at the evidence, And they come
to the conviction that a person is either guilty or they're innocent. When you look at this word in
the Greek, this is what the commentaries tell us. When you look at this
word in the Greek, this word evidence means that whole round. The gathering, the proof, the
presenting it and bringing forth the verdict. Convincing. Convincing. Faith is the convincing. It means in the court of our
hearts, the court of our conscience. The Holy Ghost has set up a trial. He has held court in our conscience. And He's brought forth this proof.
And He's convinced us of the truth. He's weighed the evidence
right before our eyes. And He's convinced us. Faith
is the conviction of things not seen. Faith is being persuaded. Faith is having the evidence
of things that's not seen. How sure are you that Jesus Christ
is the Son of God? How sure are you of that? Are
you convinced of that? If you're convinced of that in
your heart, the Holy Spirit has set up court in your soul. And
it's Him that's brought forth the evidence. It's Him that's
given you the conviction. That's what faith is. Why did
Paul say, I am persuaded? That's the same word. I am convinced
that He is able to keep that which I've committed to Him against
that day. What is that? That's faith. That's
the very definition, clerks, of faith. Being persuaded. We have it here in verse 13 of
Hebrews chapter 11. Look at this. He's speaking of
the old patriarchs of old. These all died in faith, not
having received the promises. But look at this. But having
seen them aforeoff, they were persuaded of them, and they embraced
them and confessed. See the process? They saw them. They saw them. They said, there's
promises. Precious promises. Yes, but are they true? Are they
true promises? Whose promises are they? God
gave them. He gave them in His Word. And they began to turn
this over in their mind until finally they not only saw them,
but they said, we're persuaded of them. We're convinced that
they're true. And then what did they do? They
made those promises their own. They embraced them. He became
a living reality. That's where faith comes in.
And then how did that affect them? They said, we're strangers
here, bud. We've got a better home. You
sure there's a heaven that you're going to? Yes. Faith is the evidence of things
not seen. The conviction of it. You read
the 11th chapter of Hebrews, You've got all of this chapter,
almost all of this chapter, is the effects of what faith really
is. Why did Abel take this lamb, went out and
found the best lamb in his flock, searched him over, fat lamb with
no blemish on him, and he took his knife and wrapped it around
his neck and slit his throat. picked him up in his arms and
brought him and laid that lamb between himself and God. Why
did he do that? Especially while his brother
was over there mocking him. Boy, you're plum crazy, man.
Look here at this fruit I've got. Look how pretty it is. Look
how hard I've worked to get it. And you went out and slew this
innocent lamb? And look at the blood. Look how
nasty it is. Look at you. You're going to God with that
mess? Why did he do that? He was convinced. Conviction
in his mind that that's what God required. Why did Noah get him a hammer and nails and
saws and go in the woods and begin to cut trees and rip them
up and nail them together and put tar in them, building a boat
when it never had rained? People mocking Him and cursing
Him. Why did He do that? Conviction. He was convinced. That's what faith is. It's going
to rain. That's a reality. The judgment
of God is coming. That's a reality. I'm convinced
of it. Why did Abraham leave his house
and his father and his land? And why did he go off into a
land that he had never seen before? Conviction. Why did Moses say,
I'm going out into the desert to suffer with the children of
God rather than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season? Why did
he do that? By faith. Conviction. Conviction. There was people
back then that said, you put us in that fire, we're not going
to bow to your eye. Now, Bud, that takes conviction,
don't it? That takes conviction. That's faith. That's what faith
is. You throw me into the lion's den, I'll go there by faith. If God's pleased, He'll deliver
me. There were people who said, you cut us up with a sword, you
throw us into wild beasts, we'll die. We'll die. With this conviction
that there's a better day coming, there's a resurrection coming.
See what faith is? It makes the reality. It makes
God, makes Christ, makes salvation a reality. And it not only makes
it real, it gives a conviction about it. It's not some notion
we have. It's not a preference. The kind
of faith that we hear of today is more of a preference than
a conviction. It's just a silly notion, fantasy. They can turn it loose and let
it go. They talk about their faith and how strong it is. But
when it comes testing time, what happens? No, it's more than just the reality.
It is that, but it's a conviction that changes a man's life. Now
do we begin to see why Paul said, Christ dwells in your heart by
faith. It's not an empty thing. It makes
it real. Oh, I've received Christ as my
personal Savior, but I ain't changed at all. Nothing's any
different. I have no assurance at all. Nothing's changed at
all. Then, brothers and sisters, what
about faith then? What about faith? Is it real? Is it real that Christ may dwell
in your hearts by faith? Do you believe Him? Are you living
in the daily enjoyment of it? We say that. We say that. But
we all know it's not that easy. It's not that easy. If Christ
dwells in this way in our hearts by faith, then we're going to
experience His dwelling there by faith. And that means your
faith must be exercised. And how is faith exercised? By
this inward man. And where does this inward man
get the strength to live upon this faith? From God Himself. And therefore, that means the
man who enjoys Christ is going to have to live not only by faith,
but off the means. If you and I aren't praying people,
if you and I aren't reading the Bible, if we aren't meditating,
if we're not applying the means, then Christ is not dwelling in
the heart as Paul said. That's why I said this morning,
we're progressing in this epistle. Have you noticed that? It's a
progression. I don't want to leave you behind.
I don't want to leave any of you behind. I want you to experience
this for yourself. And Paul said he wanted all saints. All saints. This ain't for the
pastor. This ain't for commentaries.
This is for you. Every one of you. to know Christ
and experience His daily presence for yourself. May God help us
all to live there. Let's pray.