All right, take your Bibles, open to Hebrews chapter 11. Turn me up, folks. Hebrews chapter 11, and look down at verse number 1. We're going to begin a series in Hebrews 11 and 12 called Hall of Fame of Faith. And tonight I want to talk about what is faith. What is faith? Hebrews 11, verse number 1. Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. For by it, the elders obtained a good report. Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. So that's the question tonight, what is faith? What is the essence of faith and how are we to understand faith? I think there's some confusion about this in Christianity today. Today, people in the Word of Faith movement talk about the power of faith as if there's some kind of a mystical power that faith in and of itself has. They're really talking about a faith that does not exist. They're talking about faith as a kind of a personal power that we possess so that we can create our own future. You've heard of name it and claim it. It's this idea that we can change the world. We can literally manufacture our own future. If there's something that we can conceive in our mind and really believe it in our heart, we can actually name it and we can actually determine the future. We can determine history. That's kind of a scary thought. I don't know about you, but I don't want the history of the future in some people's hands. I would rather it be in God's hands where it belongs. But they say we can literally believe things into being. We have the power of faith that can create whatever we want, whatever we desire, it can create healing, it can create all these other things. We have the power of faith so we can change our economic situation. That can take us from poverty to wealth, or it can take us from having little to much, or from being deprived to being prosperous, and from being a nobody to being a somebody. This notion of faith is a power, it's something that you can create, it's just simply not how the Bible defines it. That's not in the Bible at all. That kind of faith is simply not true, it's a lie. Faith is not a power that you possess to create your own future, okay? Faith is a God-given ability to trust the future that God has promised you. to trust in the promises that God has made with reference to the future. So it's not really your word that matters, it's God's word. God's word is the one that determines the future. So I don't really want to write my own future, do you? I mean, I don't trust myself to write my future, to think I know what's best for me, so therefore I can write it out, I can say, here, this is the best thing for me, and so I can claim it that way. I'm more than happy to leave my future in the hands of the one who loves me perfectly. So I want us to look at Hebrews chapter 11 to help us understand this idea of faith. This is called the faith chapter of the Bible. Again, some have called it the hall of fame of faith, or the heroes of faith, or the honor roll of faith. Hebrews 11 records the faith of people in the Old Testament that simply believed in the word of God. The people to whom this writer was addressing desperately needed to understand what faith really was. They needed to get a good grasp of it. So notice, go back to chapter 10, just go up a few verses, chapter 10, verse number 38. Look at the verse here. Now the just shall live by what? By faith, right? 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. So we have at the end of chapter 10 a very familiar statement, the just shall live by faith. And the writer is quoting, of course, from the Old Testament, Habakkuk 2, verse 4. This phrase is quoted by Paul in Romans. It was quoted also by Paul in Galatians. This might even be an argument why we think Paul is a writer of Hebrews here. It's being quoted by the writer of Hebrews here. If it's not Paul, it's someone who knew this passage. And so we understand this principle, salvation is by faith and faith alone. That's the very heart of the gospel. It's not by works, you're not saved by any religious works, you're saved by faith. But let me show you how this flows, this logically flows into this chapter. For 10 chapters, the writer of Hebrews has been writing about one major point. And what is it? That the new covenant The blood of Jesus Christ is superior in every way to the old covenant. That's the whole idea. Jesus is superior. Jesus is better. In fact, that's the key word, and the whole first part of Hebrew is better. Jesus gives a better sacrifice. His sacrifice took away the sins. The sacrifices in the Old Testament of the blood of bulls and goats, they could never really pay for sin. They can only point forward to the one who could pay for sin. And so the writer is saying that, look, Jesus is better than everything connected to the old covenant. Jesus has a superior sacrifice. He made a better offering. In chapter 1, Jesus is better than the angels. The angels were servants of God. Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is better than the prophets. They can only give a portion of the truth. Jesus is the revealed truth of God. Jesus is better than Moses. He's better than Aaron. He's better than Joshua. He's better than all the other priests. He has a better priesthood than that of Aaron, a superior priesthood. He's the mediator of a better covenant. And so for the first 10 chapters, the writer is saying to the Hebrews that he's writing to, put your faith in Jesus Christ. He is in every sense superior to anything in the Old Covenant. Move on from the symbolism of the Old Covenant. Move on from the picture to the reality. That reality is in Jesus Christ. And so the warning is, look, don't turn back. And so what he's talking to, who he's talking to is a group of Hebrews that have connected themselves somehow to the church, and they were considering the claims of the gospel and the claims of Christ, but they haven't yet fully committed to Jesus Christ. They've come a long way, but they haven't made that ultimate, full commitment to Jesus Christ as Savior. And so the writer of Hebrews is saying, look, you've come a long way. Don't turn back. Don't turn back into the old covenant. This is a warning. Don't neglect the great salvation. Enter into that rest that is available to you. Having heard all there is to hear about Christ, don't turn away. Why? Well, the writer gives several warnings in Hebrews 6. He said, I know there are some people that try to use that verse to say you can lose your salvation. That's not what it's referring to there. He's referring to people that have come close to making that full commitment to salvation. They have been convicted. They've been given all the pre-salvation blessings that a person can get. They've been ministered to by the Holy Spirit pre-conversion. They've tasted of the word of God. A person who's lost can come into a worship service and they can sense the moving of the Holy Spirit. They can be convicted. They can enter into our worship and be blessed by it and yet not be truly believers. because they haven't fully committed to Christ. These are all pre-salvation blessings. And if you, he's saying, look, you've gotten all these pre-salvation blessings. If you, after all of that, turn away, God will not renew you again on the repentance. He's not gonna bring you through this process again. The illustration I like to use is, you know, when you go to Sam's on Saturday and they give you all these samples, after a while you've eaten 10 of the samples, it's time to either make a decision or buy or move on. All right, buy it or move on, stop eating. All right, free meals, little snacks there. And there's a sense in which the Holy Spirit, God, has given us or given people that come to God's house free salvation, blessings, and now it's time to make a decision. And that's what he's saying to these Hebrews that he's writing to. Don't turn back. Again, look in chapter 10, verse number 38, where he says this. 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. That's not talking about someone who's a true believer, right? You can't draw back to perdition. If you're saved, you'll never see perdition. But of them that believe to the what? To the saving of the soul. So don't turn back. into Old Testament, Old Covenant Judaism, come all the way to eternal life in Christ. After all, everything in the Old Covenant pointed to Jesus Christ, the better sacrifice, the greater mediator, the one who died for our sins. Put your faith in Jesus Christ. That's the message of the book of Hebrews. So in chapter 10, we have this warning. In verse number 38, look, don't draw back. Don't turn back. You've come to Christ by faith. Now here's the problem. The difficulty was for some of these Hebrews to move from this Old Testament system over to New Covenant salvation. They were accustomed to the Old Covenant way of doing things. First century Jews had a religion of works, and so I need to clarify this. The first century Judaism was not Old Testament Judaism. Essentially it was an apostate form of Old Testament religion. The Old Testament says, the just shall live by faith. The first century Judaism came along and it basically added works to salvation. It became a system of works. But that's not what was taught in the Old Testament. What does it say about Abraham? Abraham believed God and it was accounted unto him for what? Righteousness. Salvation was always by faith. That was the way that anyone was saved. Those in the Old Testament as well as those in the New. But a study of the Gospels reveals that Judaism in the New Testament was not true Judaism. It was leading people away down a path of works to please God. It had corrupt leaderships. The leadership, the priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, all of them were corrupt, and they had changed the way of salvation. And Jesus said to them, you are of your father the devil. That's a pretty strong word, you're of your father the devil. Because they had so corrupted what the Bible taught, Old Testament had taught, any system of salvation by works or by merit is a satanic counterfeit. And so, You have these Hebrews now that have been influenced by that kind of Judaism and they're being presented the claims of Christ, they're being presented salvation by faith alone in the work of Christ. And it's hard for them to kind of pull out of that old system and put their faith in Christ alone. And so, but again, the Bible's clear about that. We know that salvation is only by faith. And yet here's this group that have connected themselves to the church, and they're listening to all this, and they're having a hard time making the connection and accepting all of this about salvation by faith alone. They had the tendency to go back and depend upon their works. They really wanted to accept this reality of salvation by faith rather than by works coming to Christ. They wanted to accept that. But is it possible that they could get some illustrations other than what Jesus said and what Paul said? Is there anything in the Old Testament that illustrates this principle that salvation comes by faith? And this is what the writer of Hebrews is doing. This is why he says in chapter 10, verse 38, look, The just shall live by faith. Again, he's quoting from the Old Testament, Habakkuk 2.4. And then again, he warns them, you know, don't turn back. God says if you turn back, he'll have no pleasure on those that turn back. You turn back into eternal destruction. If you leave the message of salvation by grace through faith, And you turn back to that Old Testament way of thinking that it's by works, which is not really what the Old Testament taught. It was what Judaism taught that it said. If you go back into that, then you're gonna lose your soul. You're gonna draw back into perdition. So, How's this writer going to get his case across? How's he going to prove to this group of Hebrews that are considering the message of salvation by faith? How's he going to get through to them? And the answer is in chapter 11, what he does is he gives a list of Old Testament saints whose lives were marked by what? By faith. All of their lives were marked by faith. And so chapter 11 is loaded with illustrations of faith. Chapter 11, verse 4, by faith, Abel offered. Verse 5, by faith, Enoch was translated. Chapter 7, by faith, Noah. Excuse me, verse 7, by faith, Noah. Verse 8, by faith, Abraham. Verse 17, by faith, Abraham. Verse 20, by faith, Isaac. Verse 21, by faith, Jacob. Verse 22, by faith, Joseph. Verse 23, by faith, Moses. And then again in verse 24, and then you go further down to verse number 31, and you have by faith, Rahab. And then you go to verse 32, there's Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets, who by faith did all these amazing things. The great heroes of the Old Testament are people who please God, not by works, but by their faith. They lived by faith. They were saved by faith, and they lived by faith. So the question is, what is faith? What is it? And so, I want you to see three things in these opening verses that help us to understand the essence of biblical faith. First of all, the description of faith. Again, look at verse 1. Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. This is really not a full theological definition of faith. It's more of a description or a declaration, and it's defined in two ways. First of all, the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. And so the writer is very close to saying the same thing, and those two expressions, to me it reminds me of Hebrew parallelism. He's saying two things maybe, or the same thing maybe in a different way. However, there is a slight difference. Notice the first line, the substance of things hoped for. So faith is seeing what is not yet visible. It is seeing what is not yet visible. Faith makes the future unknown a present reality. The substance of things hoped for. Now the word faith means belief or trust or confidence. Substance here is a word, hupostasis, to place under or to set under. Literally it means a foundation or support. I like the word here substance. Our faith is not blind faith, it's based on something. It has substance to it. It's something substantial. Faith takes something hoped for, it's not yet realized, something out there that it's not fully realized, it may be invisible, it's out there yet in the future, and it gives it substance. It's able to see it. It's able to grasp it. So we have faith, but our faith has substance. It has... weight, we have faith in things hoped for, things we haven't possessed, things we haven't seen, things yet to come, but faith gives them a present substance. It's weighty with us, it's a present reality with us, even though we haven't seen it, even though it's out there yet in the future, it is so real, it has substance to us, and we can see it. As this chapter will show, in the Old Testament times, there were many men and women, and they had nothing but the promises of God. That's it. That's all they had. In fact, all of them had nothing really but that. Look at verse 39 of chapter 11. Notice what it says. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promises. That is, they had a good report from God. God looked at them. God was pleased with them. And they had received not the promises. They had the promises of God. God gave them promises of what was yet to be, but they never really came into fulfillment during their life. All they had was those promises, and yet they believed them, and they were so real to them, so much so that they acted out according to them, and God gave them a good report. We know what was promised to them was what? was realized in the coming Messiah. All the Old Testament promises related to the future. They related to the coming of Jesus Christ. All the Old Testament saints had nothing but promises to rest their hope on about what God was going to do. through his son, Jesus Christ. They had no visible evidence that those promises would be fulfilled, yet those promises were very real to them. Very real. So much so that those promises had substance. They had substance. And so those promises were so real that they made the future unknown a present reality to them. J. Oswald Sanders put it perfectly. He said this, quote, faith enables the believing soul to treat the future as present and the invisible as seen. Those people lived in promises they had never, ever seen. This is the characteristic of the people in this chapter. In fact, look in chapter 11, look at verse 26, and notice what it says, an incredible statement about Moses. Again, an incredible statement. Moses was willing to give up the in-hand visible treasures of Egypt for Christ, who was merely a messianic hope, something that was yet unseen and in the future. So here you have, on one hand, Moses has the riches of Egypt, he has the in-hand treasures of Egypt, because he's the adopted son of Pharaoh, and because of that, or the son of Pharaoh's daughter, I should say, he had a real position of leadership there. He could have been a pharaoh, had things happened the way his mother would have wanted. He had all of this in his hand, he had these treasures of Egypt in his hand. And then on the other side, what does he have? The promise of what God was going to do in the future, the promise of a coming hope, a coming Messiah that is yet unseen, invisible. There's no other evidence other than just that promise. And so he has these two things, and you know what Moses does? He gives up the in-hand treasures of Egypt, and he chooses the promises of God. Why? Because faith makes that future reality present. It has substance. In other words, he took God at His word. He took God at His word. And all the rest of the people in Hebrews 11 were people of faith who trusted in God's promise for the future, a future yet unrealized but having so much weight and so much substance that they bank their life on it. They base their whole life on what God said. They took God at his word, and that is the foundation of all true, genuine, saving faith. It's when you take God at his word, you must believe in the revelation of God. So when we talk about faith, we're not talking about something that is abstract. People say, well, I just believe it's all gonna work out. Just believe, just believe, we'll believe it. Okay, but what is that based on? I have faith. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the kind of bankable, life-transforming confidence in something that has been promised to you that has not yet been realized. And God promised it to us in His Word. What we have are the promises of God. And by the way, we had the fulfillment of all the Old Testament promises about the Messiah, right? We look back on those. But we still have not seen the full realization of everything that God has for us in our salvation. I've never been to heaven and come back. By the way, neither has anyone else that's written a book about it, by the way. All these people say they went to heaven, they came back. I don't wanna get off on that, but anyway. You know, we have the full record in the New Testament, all the promises of our future glory, as yet unrealized, and we're living for them. We believe in that. Those promises of heaven and our future glory, they're so real to us that it has substance. It has weight, and it should control how we live our life now. Just like those in the Old Testament were waiting for the first coming of the Messiah by faith, we are now waiting for the second coming of Jesus Christ by faith. And for all of our salvation to be fully realized. We live in the promise of his coming. And so we live by faith even as they did. So faith is not some kind of wistful longing. It's something that has substance to it. Faith is contrary to the world. This defies how people in the world live. People in the world look at us and they think that we're crazy. They look at us, they see our devotion to the Lord, our high dedication to worship and our giving and all that we do. and we're living based on promises, on things that we have not yet seen or have not yet been realized, it really defies how people intend to live their life. People in the world today, they wanna see something, they wanna hold something, they want something tangible. But the Christian hope is belief in God's word. It goes against the world. It goes against the way people live in this world. I mean, the people in this world today, they don't have a lot to believe in. They don't believe that they have a secure future, especially if you're placing your future in the hands of politicians or educators. Your future hope is based on them. No wonder people are depressed. We're watching the world come apart while these people are making all these promises, and so they're afraid of the future. They look at us and they see joy in us, they see happiness in us, they see peace in us, and they say, why are you so happy? How can you have so much peace? And we say, well, I live by faith. Faith in what? Faith in what God has promised, there's substance to that. I know how it's all gonna turn out. And so, this is the foundation of our faith. Our faith is anchored in the Word of God to such a degree that we are willing, like Moses, to suffer the loss of everything. that everything that this world could offer us, everything this world could give us, we're willing to suffer the loss of all of that, that we might lay hold of God's promises and trust in what God says. Another illustration is in the book of Daniel, you have the three Hebrew children. They were confronted with a choice. Their choice was to obey Nebuchadnezzar, who they could see, who was right there in front of them, They could obey him and worship the king like he demanded, or they could obey God, someone that they could not see, someone that was invisible to them. And they trusted God so much so, they believed in the promise of who God is, they believed in God's word so much that they were willing to say no to this visible king and willing to even die if need be for what they believed. That's faith. Faith is also contrary to the senses. Again, people in general would say, I want what I can lay my hands on, I want what I can taste, I want what I can hold. The senses tell us to grasp the thing that is there in the moment. Look again, look in Hebrews 11, look in verse 6. You want to come to God? You have to believe that He is, even though you've never seen Him. You have to believe that He is. Not only do you have to believe that He is, you have to believe that He is a rewarder of those who come to Him. That's the foundation of faith. We believe that God is who He says He is, who He has revealed Himself to be in the Word of God, and we believe that He rewards those who put their trust in Him. That's what we believe. And so, verse 6 sums it all up. That's how we live our life. We don't live our life by empirical means of the five senses of taste and touch and seeing and hearing, but rather by the promises of the word of God. And so Christian faith goes contrary to the world. It's contrary to the world, but also faith is belief against the present. The Christian sacrifices the pleasure of the present for the promises of the future because we believe so much in that future. It's hard for people to do that. So a Christian says, I'm not interested in the momentary pleasures of this life. I'm far more interested in the pleasures of the life to come. And so, faith then is contrary to the world, and it lives for the future that is real, and not for the present. It's belief against the present. Now, everybody lives by faith to some degree. Everybody does. In the human realm, people exercise faith, right? How many of you drank from your water faucet before you came to church tonight? You trust the water? Really, you trust Baltimore water? You feeling okay? All right. We eat in restaurants. You trust how they fix the food and everything, that it's clean enough and all that? Evidently you do. We trust when the doctor gives us a prescription that he got that right, he got the diagnosis right. Of course, we don't go to the pharmacy anymore. That's all done electronically now, right? But there was a time when you had to go to the pharmacy and give them the prescription and they had to get that right. We go to the supermarket and you buy food, food in cans. You can't see inside that can. You just have to trust what the label says, right? And you have to trust that whoever put it in there didn't put anything else in there. Right? You exercise faith all the time. We all do. We get on the airplane. We trust the pilot. We trust the friendly skies of United. We go get an operation. The surgeon does an operation. You know, we don't know if he left anything inside there. You know, looking for my tools. Oh, there they are on the x-ray. But, so we live by faith all the time, right? But, when we're, and by the way, you know, it's easy for us to do that because all these things, for the most part, they've been proven to us. I mean, you know, for the most part, all these things, you know, have a crack record. That's what we look to, the track record of all these things. And so that's why we believe in doing these things and that we're gonna be okay. But we're talking, when we talk about eternity, however, there's really, we're talking about things that are unseen. And so this kind of faith that we exercise as believers, it's really on a different level. Again, no one's been to heaven and back to tell us all about it, except Paul in the Bible. And he said, I'm not going to tell you about it. He was called away and said, yeah, I saw a lot of stuff, but I'm not going to talk about it. You know, we've seen John's revelation of it, but I'm talking about people today, you know, who claim to go to heaven and back, that's not real. And so, this faith that we have in the eternal and what God says he has for us in the future, that is a different level of faith. And where do we learn about that? We learn about that through the word of God, the promises of scripture. And so, I believe all about that because that is what God teaches us in his word. But again, it's a new level of faith. And so we live on the promises given to us in the scripture because we believe that God's word is reliable. In fact, I'll say this, there's nothing more reliable than the word of God, nothing. It's more reliable than anything else. So that's biblical faith. And that's what it means to live by faith. Faith is seeing what is not yet visible. Faith makes the future unknown a present reality. And here's the other thing, faith is acting on what is not yet visible. Here's the second part of verse one, the evidence of things not yet seen. And I think this takes it to a greater intensity. It's not just hoping for something, something that you know is future, yet it's real to you. It's more than just hope, it's the evidence. It is the conviction that it's true. The word evidence here is an absolute conviction. So implied here is that this is an unwavering confidence. Again, it takes it a step farther. It is the firm conviction that all this is real. Heaven that I have not seen is real. The God who presents himself in the word of God. I believe that he is who he claims to be. It's also very real. So much so that I'm willing, I'm so convicted by that, I have such a conviction about who God is and what he says in his word about all he's promised us in the future that I'm willing to bank my whole life on it. And if need be, I'm willing to give my life for it. It is that firm conviction that caused believers in the early church to go to the martyr state and never waver. Faith is seeing and living based on those things not yet seen, but you're being so sure of them that it becomes your conviction, your conviction. And so we're moving here from what you believe to how you behave. Faith is not just what you believe here, it's how you live it out, how you live your life. So look in chapter 11, look at verse 27. By faith, we're talking about Moses again. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is," what? Invisible. Seeing him knowing God is real, knowing the future promise of a messiah, a messianic hope, that was so compelling to him, that was such a conviction with him that he forsook Egypt. And he didn't fear the wrath of an earthly king, because he believed in the Heavenly King. And then, chapter 11, verse number 7, God said to Noah, it's going to rain. And Noah said, what is rain? We've never seen rain. It's never rained before. What is that? Well, that's water falling from the sky. So much water, it's going to flood the entire world. God said, you have to trust me. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. About 120 years, it's going to happen. In fact, when your grandfather Methuselah dies, it's going to happen. That's why Noah, when he was building the ark, would every week go over and visit his grandfather, see how he was feeling. You know, Methuselah was the man who lived longer than anyone else in scripture. And tradition tells us the week that he died, the flood came. But God said, this is going to happen, and Noah believed God. He believed it so much that he did what? He built an ark. In the middle of a desert, he built an ark. Can you imagine building an ark? And not only did he build it, he built it for 120 years. He was all about being consistent for 120 years, dealing with the mockery of his neighbors. That's what puts faith in the action, believing in what God says. Real faith in the Word of God causes convictions, and convictions causes behavior in our life. That's the description of faith. Let me move on to number two quickly, the declaration of faith. Look at verse two. For by it, the elders obtain a good report. Now, who are the elders there? Well, the word elders is referring to the Old Testament saints. All the ones that he's going to talk about in chapter 11, those are the elders. And the ones he's going to list, all of these names, they all received a good report. Obtained a good report is one word in the Greek. It's a verb that means to be praised, to be approved. All these people on this list were approved by God. They were praised by God. God took notice of them, and he bore witness to the reality of their faith, that it was real. Again, without faith, you can't please God. But when you have faith, and you act in faith, and you live in faith, it pleases God immensely. So, faith is not just simply one way to please God, it is the only way to please God. What we do, we do it in faith. And so God looked down from heaven, and he saw these people doing all these things, and suffering because of what they believed, and saying no to the pleasures of the world, and all those things like we read here, and God said, I am well pleased. They gained the approval of God in heaven. That's why they are the heroes of the faith. That's why they are saints that we look to, and are example to all of us of faith. Abel believed God regarding sacrifice. He acted on that. He did what God told him. Enoch believed God so much, he walked with God, and the Bible says God took him. Noah believed God, and Abraham and Sarah believed God for a child, Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and everyone else. All of these people that are here are approved of God. It was as if God was saying in heaven, look, look at these, my people, look at the way they're acting. is because they trust me, they trust in my word. That's a wonderful thing in the sight of God, that we live out our faith. But let me give you the third and final thing quickly. The description of faith, the declaration of faith, it pleases God, it gets his approval, but here's number three, the demonstration of faith. Look at verse number three, this is an incredible statement. Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. And again, an incredible statement. You know what the writer is saying here to these Hebrews who had not yet fully trusted in Christ? He was saying, look, you already have a certain amount of faith in God, don't you? You already have it. How? Well, these Hebrews believed in the Old Testament scripture. They believed what Genesis said. And what does Genesis 1.1 say? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the writer of Hebrews is saying, look, you believe that, don't you? You believe it without any doubt. You believe in a creator, so you have some faith. They had that to start with, and the writer points this out to them. Look, you weren't there in the beginning of creation, were you? You weren't there to see God just bring the world into existence out of nothing? Again, in verse number three. Through 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 do appear. And so that destroys the argument of some evolutionists and atheists who believe that matter and energy are eternal. Creation is things seen in the universe made out of things unseen. That's the way God created ex nihilo. Out of nothing, the whole universe came. God in the beginning, through the power of his word, said, let there be. Divine fiat, and that's how creation came about. That is the power of God's word. You talk about something that has substance to it. When God says something, it's gonna happen. That's the power of God. So out of the invisible came the visible. Out of nothing came everything. How? The creator did it. And so the writer is saying to these Jews, look, you believe that already, right? You believe that God created out of nothing? God spoke and it was so. We understand this by faith. So they're saying, you need to take that faith and put it in a Christ that you have not seen, who is the Savior of the world, because this is what God's Word says. Since you believe in the account of creation, you just need to exercise that faith, faith in a past event, what Christ did for you, fulfilling all the Old Testament, and you need to put that faith in Jesus Christ. Exercise that faith in the Son of God. Now, of course, many people today believe, they don't believe in a creator. And we have science today that likes to explain to us how creation came about. And I always like to remind scientists, when they want to tell us how it all happened, You know, and they say something like, well, you know, we don't believe the Bible, account of creation. You know, we're scientists. And here's how it all happened. And I want to say to them, were you there? Were you there? Did you see it? No? Then sit down and be quiet. I don't need your speculations. I already have the written word of God. And this is from someone who was there. Someone who did it. You can't use scientific experiments and empirical evidence to prove creation. There's no such thing as creation science. Because the only way you can use science to prove creation is you have to use experimentation and theory and all this sort of thing. And you know what, there was no one there to see any of it. Creation was a miracle. And you can't use science to prove a miracle, okay? Like I've said before so many times in seminary class, let's just say we had some scientists that were there when Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes to feed the 5,000, and as soon as people ate that food that Jesus multiplied, the scientists are there and say, we need to take a sample of that, please. We need to take some of that, we're gonna study it, we're gonna examine it. By the way, how did you feel after you ate that food? Were you full? How much of it did you eat? How much did it take to satisfy you? Then they do a complete analysis of the loaves and the fishes. All those scientific facts and data that they bring together cannot explain how Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes. You can do all the science you want on it. It's a miracle. You either believe it or you don't. Where do fish come from? They come from fish eggs. How do you make barley? Well, you have to plant the seed, and then it has to grow, and then you have to do all that stuff to make it. And Jesus did it all just like that. Out of nothing, he created something. That was a miracle of creation right there. And no one can explain how he did that. I don't care how much science you use. So, I don't know how I got off on this anyway. But scripture says God created this world And we live in it, and we can see the evidence of His creation. And so, the writer of Hebrews is saying, look, either you believe what God's Word says, or you don't. You don't have any other option. And so, through 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 do appear. Worlds is aeon, physical worlds, the universe, the operation of it. It includes all that exists. It was all framed by the word of God. Again, there are a lot of theories out there from science on how all this happened. I heard about a college student who was racing across campus with a book under his arm. Someone stopped him and said to him, you know, why are you running? Where are you going and why are you running so fast? He said, I just bought the latest physics book from the bookstore and I'm trying to get to class before it goes out of date. That's because science is always changing. But I'll tell you something that doesn't change. It's God's Word that doesn't change. So what is faith? The description of faith, faith is seeing what is not yet visible. It is acting on what is not yet visible. The declaration of faith, it pleases God. It gets His approval. And the demonstration of faith, it's taking God at His word. And it's believing that everything that we have in this world already, that is because of the word of God. That's the power of God's word. That's what faith is to rest in, is to rest in the word of God. And that's how you're saved. You're saved by believing in the promises of God's word, putting your faith in what God says, that and nothing else. The just shall live by faith. And it begins with salvation when we put our faith in Jesus Christ. And we live every day after that with faith in what God says in his word. That's just how we live. Let's bow for prayer together tonight. So, Father, thank you for your word. There's nothing more sure than your word. Thank you, Lord, that through the word of God, we have all that we have. It's your word, Lord, that created the world. The world was framed by your word. All that we have and all that we are, Lord, is because you spoke it into existence. And our salvation is based on what you tell us. and a Savior that we have not yet had the privilege to see, we will see one day. And that is so real to us, Lord, that it's a present reality. It's a future thing that is unseen and yet it's real to us. It's got substance. We know all the promises that you give us about our future glory in heaven. All of that is so very real that we're willing to live like pilgrims in this world. with our full focus on the things that you have laid up for us there in heaven. Lord, let this be our life. Let this be seen by others. Let the hope that we have in Christ be a testimony to other, a watching world, so they can see the hope that we have and come to know Jesus as well. Lord, bless this word. Every hearing heart tonight, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.