Transcript
Once, a very special newspaper article featured a picture of a high school freshman as she prepared for a track meet.
With shoulder length brown hair, she looks like most runners her own age, thin, focused, intent on the race ahead. Undistracted, her face turned downward, she holds one hand at her right ear. In the other, she carries a tiny radio attached to a fanny pack.
Nearby her father, Matt McCarthy, speaks into a small transmitter. Natalie McCarthy, the ordinary-looking girl in the picture, sprints both the one hundred and two hundred meter dashes for her high school track team in Washington.
It is her almost total blindness that makes her most extraordinary. So, how does she do it? How does she line up with a group of healthy, sighted teens and dash for a finish line she cannot see? By radio.
Natalie runs with a single earpiece in her right ear. With her father’s voice coming through the tiny transmitter, she hears the course corrections he gives her from the sidelines.
With nothing more than trust, and her father’s verbal directions, Natalie runs at full speed toward a goal she cannot see, with competitors she can only hear, over obstacles she can only imagine.
We are instructed to walk by faith, not by sight in God’s Word. We cannot see our heavenly Father, but we hear His voice by His Word. He guides, directs, and makes corrections to our walk, and we are called to trust Him completely each step of the way.
Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Faith is foundational to the Christian life. You cannot become a child of God without faith. And we live and grow as believers by faith. For the believer, faith is not just a one-time experience that takes place to be saved. The whole Christian life is a walk of faith.
Hebrews 11:1 describes how faith operates and what it produces. In this verse, the author of Hebrews gives us a twofold description of what faith is certain about. Faith pertains to things that we hope for and things which we cannot see.
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for,” verse 1 says. Faith is not a blind shot in the dark, positive thinking, wishful fantasy, or a vague superstition. Faith is not some feeling that we manufacture. Faith is confidence in God. It is believing Him and the testimony of His Word. It is our response to what God has revealed in His Word.
It is a conviction that what He says is true, and what He promises He will do. It is a confidence grounded in the truth of Scripture. The Word is the basis for our faith.
The word “substance” means a setting or placing under and thus describes a support, a substructure, or foundation. It is that which goes underneath something which causes or makes it to stand. Thus, the word refers to that which gives confidence and assurance.
Faith is the foundation, the support, and the confidence “of things hoped for” in this verse. Hope in Scripture is about the expectation of future good and blessing. And faith is the ground of that expectation.
Our faith should rightly demand the surest revelation, the strongest evidence, and truest testimony in the universe, and we find that in the Word of God. The Word is what gives our faith substance, assurance, and a sure foundation.
Faith is the assurance that things yet future and hoped for will happen as God has revealed they will in His Word. It is a persuasion of that which is hoped for. It informs its possessor not only that there are such things ahead, but that through the power and faithfulness of God we WILL possess them one day. Faith gives us that assurance.
The Word of God is the objective foundation on which our hopes result and are based, but faith provides a subjective foundation and assures us of the certainty of them.
Faith provides us a firm foundation and standing ground while we await the fulfillment of God’s promises. It gives us support and assurance until that time.
As verse 13 of this chapter says, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them.”
Romans 10:17 says that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” When Paul says that faith comes by hearing, he is referring to a hearing that results in a spiritual understanding.
As we hear God’s Word and we grow and understand it more, faith is seeing God’s promises to us afar off and being persuaded of them, fully embracing them.
Then resting on the sure promises of God, and expecting the accomplishment of them, faith gives the things hoped for at a future time, a present reality, power, and comfort to the soul. It brings distant things near to our heart. Faith is the union between the soul and the things God has promised in His Word.
It is a firm persuasion and expectation that God will perform all that He has promised us in Christ. As Romans 4:21 defines faith, “And being fully persuaded that, what He had promised, He was able also to perform.”
Faith is only as good as its object, and the object of our faith is God. That is why our faith has real substance to it and gives us assurance.
Deuteronomy 7:9 says, “Know therefore that the LORD thy God, He is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations.”
Faith is not blind trust in the face of contrary evidence, not an unknowable leap in the dark; rather, faith is a confident trust in the eternal God who is all-powerful, infinitely wise, and always trustworthy, the God who has revealed Himself in His Word, whose promises have proven true from generation to generation.
And God and His faithfulness are what allows the believer to praise Him and rejoice at our hope and future blessings as though we are already in full possession of them.
Faith faces the future with confidence. One day, we know we WILL be in full possession of our hope and the things of our hope in God’s Word will come to pass, because our faith is based on the firmest of foundations: the faithful God and His Word.
This confidence and assurance in God and His Word is the basis for what it means to walk by faith. Our faith and trust in our sure hope, the truth of His Word, and God and His faithfulness is to influence and drive our daily walk forward.
We walk by faith in the sure belief of future grace and eternal glory, which gives peace, strength, and motivation to our walk.
We trust the ever-living and faithful God, we know His Word is true, we believe in our hope and all that the Word of God reveals, and then we act on it and we walk by faith.
For centuries the islands of New Zealand were unpopulated. Then the first settlers arrived. They were Polynesians from other Pacific islands who had sailed a thousand miles in outrigger canoes. The Polynesians came with the purpose of settling in New Zealand.
How did they know the land was there? How did they know they would not simply sail across empty seas until food and water ran out and they perished?
The Polynesians had known for generations that land was there because their voyagers had seen a long white cloud on the distant horizon.
They knew that when a cloud stayed in one place over a very long period of time, there was land beneath it. They called New Zealand the “Land of the Long White Cloud.”
Faith is like that. It is voyaging to an unseen place and a glorious future. But it is not mere guesswork, or chance, or superstition. There are facts, proof, and evidence behind our faith, that of the Word of God.
Next, the writer of Hebrews states that “faith is…the evidence of things not seen.”
The term “evidence” means conviction, a proof. It is that by which invisible things are proved and we are convinced of their reality. And, again, the Word of God is how and where invisible things are confirmed and why we are convinced of their reality by faith.
“Evidence,” describes faith as the inner conviction of the heart by which we know that God, angels, demons, heaven, hell, and forgiveness of sin are just as real as rocks, trees, the sky, and the things we see every day.
Physical eyesight produces conviction or evidence of visible things, while faith is the means which enables people to see the invisible with conviction.
Though the “things” and promises of God are only “hoped for” and “not seen” at present, this verse says that the eye of faith can see them, and the hand of faith can grasp them.
This means that faith is stronger than any of our senses. We see, by faith, what cannot be seen by our eyes, and we grasp, by faith, what cannot be grasped with our hands.
Faith does not put all its confidence in the visible. Faith brings reality to the heart of things outside the range of natural vision and the physical senses.
As 2 Corinthians 4:18 states, “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen…”
Faith is our confidence regarding those things which God has promised, for which we hope, but since these things are future and are spiritual, they are things we cannot see with the human eye. But we have conviction by faith that they will come to pass because God is always faithful to His Word.
Later, in this chapter, speaking of Moses, verse 27 says, “By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, AS SEEING HIM WHO IS INVISIBLE.”
Like Moses, we can see God, Who is invisible, by faith. We know and have conviction that God is real by faith, though He is “not seen” to our physical eyes. And we have the proof for that conviction by His creation and by His Word.
A couple verses later, verse 3 reads, “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.”
To help us understand what the writer means by faith as described in verse 1, he supplied an illustration in verse 3. Verse 3 demonstrates the truth of verse 1.
“Through faith we understand,” verse 3 says. This shows that faith is the vehicle and means of spiritual perception, and that perception comes by trusting God’s Word.
The understanding of creation and origins comes entirely by faith. The creation we see is the product and result of what is “not seen.”
By faith we understand that the worlds, or the universe, came from what is not visible. Things that we see were not made out of things that we see and are visible this verse says.
The creation is not eternal, and it did not produce itself. It was made by Another.
The creation is the work of the unseen Creator God and the result of His unseen Word, that He spoke and all things came into being. And a spoken word can only be heard not seen. The creation around us is “the evidence of things not seen,” as verse 1 says.
By faith, we understand, we believe, we have proof, and thus we have conviction of God’s existence, wisdom, and divine power in the creation, and we also have the evidence and conviction that God created all things by the written revelation of His Word.
The first thing we are told in the Bible is that God created the heavens and the earth.
Faith believes God by believing His Word. Faith is to begin at Genesis 1:1 and it is to keep believing God all the way through to the end in Revelation 22:21.
Faith focuses on and perceives invisible realities. And as 2 Corinthians 5:7 tells us, “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”
These words by the Apostle Paul remind us that our faith is not based on what we can see or touch, but to believe in what we cannot see and to trust in what we cannot touch. It is to trust and rest on the unfailing promises of God.
Our faith is not confined by the physical world and only by what we see. Our faith is anchored in the spiritual and what we cannot see, in the unchanging, unfailing, faithful God and who He is. It’s grounded in Him, in His character, and in His Word.
John Stott once said, “Faith is a reasoning trust, a trust which reckons thoughtfully and confidently upon the trustworthiness of God.” We are called to have a faith that trusts in God’s trustworthiness, a faith that is not swayed by what we see, but stands on the truth of God’s Word.
And to walk by faith is about walking with the Lord, who we have not seen…yet. As Peter put it: “Whom having NOT SEEN, ye love; in whom, though now YE SEE HIM NOT, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”
We walk by faith not by sight within a real, personal relationship with our risen Savior.
Charles Spurgeon once said, “Those who walk by sight walk alone. Walking by sight is just this—‘I believe in myself,’ whereas walking by faith is, ‘I believe in God.’”
Walking by faith, we do not walk alone. Walking by faith not by sight is to walk with God, to live in communion with Him, and to depend upon Him and His wisdom and grace.
It is about trusting Him with our daily lives and our futures. It’s about surrendering control and yielding to His will. This relationship with God fuels our faith and gives us boldness to live for and to serve Him.
As we walk and grow in our relationship with our unseen God by faith, as we get to know Him more and more, our faith grows. We begin to trust Him more.
As we see His faithfulness and His hand at work in our lives, our faith grows.
And we walk by faith in His unseen plan for us, knowing that He is in control, even when things get difficult. But, by faith, we know He is always there, and we hold on to Him, and we trust that, as His Word says, He makes “every thing beautiful in His time” (Eccl. 3:11).
Hebrews 11:6: “But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.”
Here are some things that you should never trust: Trees, because they seem shady. Atoms, because they make up everything! Marine biologists, because something about them feels fishy. Pigeons, because they’re always planning some kind of coo. Elevators, because they always seem like they’re up to something, and they will let you down.
These “might” be things you cannot trust, but we can always trust the Lord.
In Colossians 1:10, Paul challenged the Church, “That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing.”
To do what is pleasing to the Lord, we learn very clearly from Hebrews 11:6 that faith pleases the Lord. Thus, we should walk by faith.
Faith pleasing the Lord is a timeless truth that has been the case throughout all the ages and dispensations and is true in our current dispensation of grace and for our walk in it.
Faith and confidence in God, in His faithfulness, His truth, His wisdom, His promises, knowing He is completely worthy of our trust, is pleasing to Him.
God cannot be pleased with the one who has no trust in Him, who doubts the truth of His Word, who does not believe that His ways are right or the best, who rejects His guidance and believes that their confidence is better placed elsewhere.
Faith gives God His proper place and puts man in his proper place too. It glorifies God and shows that we have more confidence in Him and His wisdom and power, than in our own. It recognizes our need for Him. It is to rely on Him, rather than on one’s own efforts.
And as we fix our lives on Him, allowing Him to lead and guide us, trusting Him, and His will and His Word, this will result in a walk by faith, which pleases the Lord.
The one who comes to God by faith, verse 6 says, must believe two things: first, that He is, and second, that He rewards those who diligently seek Him.
Faith does not simply believe that a divine being exists, but that He, the God of the Bible, is the only true, living God. It is to trust as the Lord said in Isaiah 46:9, “for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like Me.”
Faith believes in Him according to truth, as His character and nature are revealed in His Word. Otherwise, we are only trusting in a God of our own making and imagination.
To believe that “He is” is to exercise faith in God as He is made known to us in the Scriptures that there is one God, eternally existing in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This one God is sovereign, eternal, almighty, all-knowing, all-present, unchanging, with all of His attributes equally balanced and infinite in nature in His holiness, justice, love, kindness, mercy, grace, and so on.
To walk by faith, we must have a correct understanding of the God in Whom we trust. And the Word of God reveals that to us.
Second, “he that cometh to God must believe…that He is rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.”
God rewards faith in Him for salvation with life, righteousness, and forgiveness. God will reward faith in Him for service by the Body of Christ with eternal rewards at the Judgment Seat. He will reward faithful Israel with rewards in His earthly kingdom too.
But for them that “diligently seek Him,” to find Him and seek Him above all others, I believe this verse is saying that they will be rewarded with an increased understanding and knowledge of Him and a closer relationship with Him.
Proverbs 8:17: “I love them that love Me; and those that seek Me early shall find Me.”
The greatest reward for our lives is the privilege of knowing God, knowing Him in a deeper more profound way, and having a personal relationship with Him.
The Lord God told Abram in Genesis 15:1: “Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.”
As we walk by faith, living our lives fixed on Him, seeking Him, we will have that great reward of “increasing in the knowledge of God.”
Colossians 2:6: “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him.”
To receive Christ Jesus the Lord in salvation, God’s Word is clear: “For by grace are ye saved through FAITH,” Ephesians 2:8 tells us. And Romans 5:1 states, “Therefore being justified by FAITH, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
We are saved by faith alone in Christ, trusting that He died for our sins and rose again. Paul teaches the Church, the Body of Christ here that we are to live the Christian life the same way it began: we are to walk by faith.
The term “walk” here is an action word. Walking indicates that our relationship with the Lord is not to be stagnant but growing, moving, and active.
You cannot walk and remain in the same place. And walking refers to progress, going from where one is, to where one needs to be. As a believer walks by faith, one makes progress and moves forward in their spiritual life.
In this passage, the Apostle Paul teaches us a weighty lesson, that it is not only by faith that we first come to Christ and are united to Him, but that it is by faith that we are to live. Faith is how we receive Christ as Savior, and like faith is essential to our salvation, faith is essential for our walk and our relationship with the Lord.
The Christian life begins with faith and it never stops. The first step is faith in Christ, and every other step after that is also by faith in Christ.
For those who have received the free gift of salvation by faith alone in Christ and His finished work, many have mistakenly thought that after this, everything depends on them and their diligence and effort in the Christian life.
But the life of grace is always a walk of faith. The one daily and unceasing duty in the believer’s walk is faith. Like faith is the channel through which we receive God’s grace in the salvation from all our sins, faith is the channel through which God’s grace and strength flow into our hearts, which empowers our walk.
The walk of the believer is like Peter walking on water. It is impossible to do on our own, or in our own strength and ability. We must look to the Lord. When we look to Him by faith, He empowers our walk.
But if we try to do it on our own, or like Peter, if fear causes us to take our eyes off Christ, we’ll sink and not be able to move forward. We need the Lord.
Paul uses the full designation for the Savior here in verse 6: “Christ Jesus the Lord,” as the One we received in salvation. This calls to mind the greatness of His Person and the completeness of His work of redemption as revealed in this letter of Colossians.
He is extolled by the Apostle Paul in Colossians as the One in Whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins, that He is the Creator, the Head of the Body, the firstborn from the dead, and that in Him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom of knowledge.”
All that is needed for the believer’s walk and for us to move forward is found in Him. The power and the wisdom for our walk is all available to us by faith in Christ. We trust Him for all needed provision and guidance in our daily lives.
Like nothing needs to be added to Christ’s finished work and He did it all and we only need to trust what He did for us, we need nothing else but Christ for our walk.
Grace teaches us that we need Christ for our salvation, and grace teaches us that we need Christ moment by moment, day by day. We cannot live a godly life without Him.
As Philippians 4:13 reminds us, “For I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 4:13).
The Christian life begins with Christ, He saves us from all our sins when we trust Him as Savior. The Christian walk and journey is Christ, walking in Him, walking in union with His mind and heart, and in His love, grace, and strength.
And at the end of the believer’s walk in this world comes the joy of being forever with Christ in glory. From beginning to end and on into eternity, it’s all about Christ.