Hebrews chapter eleven begins with this way: Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” With these words the anonymous writer of the book of Hebrews begins what is now known as the great “Heroes of Faith” chapter.
Now that very name gives birth to something in our minds. They were “heroes of faith.” They had extraordinary faith. Life-changing faith. Strong faith. The list of people in Hebrews chapter eleven reads like a “who’s who” of the Old Testament. Noah. Abraham. Moses. Each of them commended for their faith. Each of them held up as an example for us to follow.
Certainly faith is important. I remember one of my earlier seminary classes. There was one class where a professor was challenging us not just on what we believed, but why we believed. And as young seminarians, we began to trot out all the common answers that give us grounds to prove that our faith is valid. You know, good things like the scientific evidence for creation, the concept of intelligent design—where the order and structure of the whole of creation is cited as evidence that someone must have created it—and even things like the circumstantial evidence for the resurrection of Christ and the presence of absolute truth.
And this professor shocked—no, stunned—the whole class when he simply said, “What do you guys have against faith?” His point was—and although it took a few years to really get ingrained into my mind—that we as a church are a community of faith. We don’t live by evidence. We don’t believe in God because He is the most logical option. No, our existence is lived by faith. It is defined by it. The presence of faith—call it blind faith, reasoned faith, or whatever—is the thing that binds us together as a religious community.
Now if that is true, if faith is the core component of the religious life, then it must be true that strong faith is also important. I mean, no one wants a weak faith . . . “Dear God, if you do truly exist, and if you love me . . . which I’m not sure that you do . . . then grant my sister the healing she needs . . . if you can, anyway . . . anyway, if it be your will, ummm . . . amen.” No! Nobody wants a weak, wimpy kind of faith! We want a strong faith! You know, where we just walk into the room and the demons get a little shaky. The mountain-moving kind of faith; the kind that prays insanely bold prayers. “Lord, we know that it is your will that little Johnny be healed, and therefore we pray that your healing will come this hour, this minute. Cast this demon of teething pain away from this little boy and give him and his parents a good night’s rest. Oh, and while you’re at it, park a new Mercedes in my driveway by the time I get home. In Jesus’ strong name, amen!”
If we want that kind of faith, then how do we get it? What’s the magic formula for growing that kind of faith? What prayers do we need to pray? What do we need to give to get that strong, mountain-moving, world-beating, demon-terrifying, rock-solid, bedrock kind of faith? How do we become “heroes of the faith”?
Let’s turn to chapter eleven of the book of Hebrews for some answers. Open up those Bibles and let God’s word soak in a bit.
As we read through chapter eleven, I want you to notice that there are two kinds of people in there. Two groups of people, but really only one common situation. We’ll get at the common situation in just a bit, but first let’s look at the two groups. The first group is the people for whom good things happen. We’ll begin at verse four.
Hebrews 11:4, “4 By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.”
Abel is commended as a hero of the faith because of his good sacrifice. Abel offered God his best. He gave Him the very best he had. It takes a strong faith to offer God your best, not to just give Him what’s left over after the bills are all paid, and that’s exactly what Abel did: he offered God his best, and was commended for it.
Hebrews 11:5, “5 By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.”
Enoch was “one who pleased God.” His faith was of such character that God saw fit to even remove him from the pain of death. Enoch’s faith in this life was so evident that it literally carried him into the next.
Hebrews 11:7, “7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.”
When warned of a coming flood—something that seems pretty bad on the surface—Noah trusted God in faith and built the ark. In so doing he not only saved his family, but in fact the whole of the human race. Everyone else—the people without faith—perished, but Noah and his family survived and inherited the righteousness of God.
Hebrews 11:8-10, “8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”
Abraham was called by God to go. Go where, he didn’t know . . . but in faith he went. And when he answered God’s call in faith, Abraham never had to worry about where he was going to live, because God always provided for him. He lived each day in faith, each day seeing the bounteous providence of God in his life.
Now certainly these are all good things. Offering God our best and being recognized by God Himself for it. Being spared from the agony of death. Surviving a world-wide flood on a boat made of gopher wood. Living every day surrounded by God’s blessings.
Is this what strong faith brings? No, it is how strong faith grows. Strong faith grows when people believe in the promises of God and then live to see those promises come true.
Now this just makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? After all, when people promise us something and then fulfill those promises, then we begin to trust them more and more, don’t we? It’s the same way with God; when He fulfills His promises to us, our faith in Him naturally grows stronger each time we see another promise fulfilled. We learn to trust Him more and more because of the good things that happen.
And we see this all throughout the entire chapter! The author of Hebrews rattles off name after name, telling all the wonderful things that God had done for the great heroes of the faith! He goes on for so long, telling these wonderful stories, that finally he runs out of time! Hebrews 11:32-35, “32 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again.”
Who wouldn’t trust a God like that? Who’s faith wouldn’t be strengthened by seeing God’s strong hand of deliverance through trials and sufferings? When victories are won, we trust God all the more. When we become powerful through God’s workings, our faith grows stronger and stronger. That’s the first group of faith’s heroes: the people whose faith grew by seeing God’s promises fulfilled.
That all sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Having a kind of faith that is built upon a trustworthy God, where we just know . . . we know that we know that we know that God will deliver us from evil because He’s done it so many times in the past.
But there’s a second group revealed in chapter eleven, as well. If we’d back up a bit in the chapter, we’d hints of it in earlier parts, but this second group really becomes crystal clear at the end of chapter eleven. This second group is the people whose faith grew through bad things happening to them.
Pick it up half way through verse thirty-five. The author of Hebrews has just ran through those marvelous events of conquering kingdoms, shutting the mouths of lions, quenching the fury of the flames and women receiving back their dead, and then he says this rather frightening word, “Others . . .” “Others.”
Hebrews 11:32-39, “Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection.” Tortured . . . and refused to be released. That’s some seriously strong faith. “36 Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison.” What kind of faith can endure imprisonment?
“37 They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-- 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. 39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.”
This is the second group of people: those for whom strong faith is cultivated in the stinking fertilizer of suffering and pain and even death. And every time that these people faced a new and greater hardship, they looked to God, trusted in His promises, and believed that even if they were not to be delivered in this life, that God was more than capable of delivering them from suffering in the next.
There’s two groups of people, and although I think we all know which group we’d prefer to belong to, I want you to notice that they all have but one common situation: it is God that put them into situations where their faith must grow.
Whether your life is the pinnacle of blessedness of the pit of despair, God has put you there in order that your faith might grow. Are you living a blessed life? God is blessing you so that you may see the fulfillment of God’s promises and learn to trust Him more. But on the other hand, if you are in a world of hurt and pain, God has put you there so that you will be forced to trust in the graciousness and mercy of God despite the fact that everything that your eyes see tells you otherwise. Pain or pleasure, it is God at work to strengthen your faith in Him and His promises.
Grab a hold of that truth! Let that sink into your mind! Say it with me: Pain or pleasure, God is at work to strengthen my faith. Because once you really begin to understand this, every situation in your life begins to take on new meaning. You didn’t just happen to receive a check in the mail just in time to pay that bill that you had no way to pay: you’re seeing God’s providing hand in your life. You didn’t just happen to get bad news from your doctor, but God is asking you to trust Him despite the odds against you. You’re not just living a charmed life and it’s not that if it weren’t for bad luck you wouldn’t have any luck at all, but in each and every event of your life, whether good or bad, whether pain or pleasure, God is throwing you back to the foot of the cross where you can look up to Him and say, “Yes God, I do trust You! Do with me as you will! Bless me if you wish, yet even though you slay me, yet will I trust in you.”
One more thing about strong faith: it has to have an object. Faith doesn’t just trust, but it must have something to trust in. And the object of faith—strong faith, mountain-moving, demon-quaking faith—is the cross. The cross is the center of the Christian faith, for it is there that Christ made the ultimate fulfillment of every single promise that God ever has made and ever will make. Look to the cross . . . look in faith . . . in faith lean upon Christ’s cross, and everything falls into place.
You have riches? You have wealth of any kind given to you by God? They just pale in comparison to the riches Christ offers you on the cross. Every blessing you’ve received from God stems from that cross, and when in faith you look to that cross you are able to recognize them for the gift of God that they are, and your faith will be strengthened.
You have pain? You have suffering? That pain and suffering is absorbed into the cross through the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ. Every trial you face is a trial that Christ bears for you on His cross, and when in faith you look to His cross you are able to see that God is using this pain in your life to make you more like His Son . . . and your faith is strengthened.
Pain or pleasure, God is at work to strengthen our faith. It doesn’t matter which one is happening to us right now, because through all of it God is at work in all of us. But no matter what our circumstances are, we can as one body look up at that cross and together say, “Yes Lord, we do trust in you. Do with us as you will.” And in faith together we will move mountains. The demons will quake in our presence. We will pray insanely bold prayers. We will have strong faith.
In Jesus’ strong name . . . amen.
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