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Grace Emmanuel Church
Pastor Sam Chess
THE POWER OF FAITH 8
What is going on in your life that you are trusting God for that can not possibly happen, apart from the direct personal attention of
God.
What impossible situation have you brought before God, in
faith, and even though your circumstances remain the same…. you
have become certain that an answer from God is on the way.
Where in your life do you have hold of a line of faith, and you
know that what you have hold of, on this end, links you directly
into the throne room of heaven where God himself is giving personal
attention to your specific need and the return answer here on earth
is as good as done, even though you haven’t seen evidence of it
yet?
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen. (NKJV) ..Faith is being sure
of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (NIV) It
is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to
happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see. (NLT)
I. Faith vs. Hope
I have spoken on this topic 13 times this year (6 times in the
spring…7 now in the fall). In every single sermon (I think), I quoted
Hebrews 11:1 from various versions of the Bible to give us flavor…but
all the versions say basically the same thing:
Faith is: definition….
Substance/surety/confident assurance,
Hoped for things
Evidence/certainty
Unseen/not-yet seen
I have said at least a dozen times:
Every person, in Scripture, who had faith, were people who were
able to catch a glimpse over the hill of what is… and grasp a picture
in their spiritual mind of what God wanted to be! Into their minds
came the assurance of what was not as if it already were!
I been talking about the faith part of the equation but never
mentioned the hope part of the equation.
Faith is substance….. substance of what?.... substance of things
hoped for!
Oh come on Chess.. it’s all mixed together in one big blob. It’s two
ways to say the same thing…
It’s like chair/seat…. Stomach/belly…. Husband/Lord! (Ha!)
Truth is, in the Bible, faith and hope are not at all the same
thing. Two very distinct words that are sometimes used together, but
not to say the exact same thing.
The Love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, uses both words together:
1 Corinthians 13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of
angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a
clanging cymbal…. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and
love. But the greatest of these is love.
Obviously not meant to be the same word: In fact in modern language
we don’t even attach the same significance to them…or at least we
shouldn’t…
When we speak of faith it is usually a positive word meaning we are
trusting that something good is going to happen. When we use the word
hope we often mean exactly the opposite.
Are you going to keep your job?... I hope so! Hope, in modern
language has a ring of uncertainty to it. Is your favorite party
going to win the election?... All we can do is hope. “Don’t get
your hopes up” Hope and disappointment are often linked
in our minds.
Hope = maybe it will happen…maybe it won’t!
There something really wrong with that definition of hope when you
look at the Bible. The Bible does not link hope with the possibility
of disappointment. In fact Paul, in Romans 5 clearly says:
Romans 5:3-5 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings,
because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4
perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope
does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love
into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (NIV)
If you are hoping for something in your life and you’ve come
up disappointed, you must have been exercising something other then
Biblical hope because God says Biblical
hope will not leave you disappointed!
>>>>In fact; hope, Biblical hope, is something the Bible says
you have to have present, in your life, for the substance
of faith to build on!
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for….
II. Here’s Hoping!.....
If Hebrews 11:1 it saying exactly what it seems to be saying then
your faith can’t get anywhere without hope. Your faith is the substance
that forms around your hopes. Faith won’t do any good unless it starts
with hope. Without hope as a starting point faith has nothing to do.
Watch these statements carefully:
Hope serves as a blueprint for our faith!
Hope is the plan that faith carries out!
The Holy Spirit takes the Word of God and burns an image
inside your mind (hope) that faith then adds the substance to.
Faith without hope gets nowhere…. The substance of faith has to
build on the image of hope in order for anything to happen in your life
circumstances…..And just as certainly hope without faith goes nowhere
either. An inner image placed in your mind without the substance of
faith… “catching a glimpse over the hill of what is… and
grasping a picture in our spiritual mind of what God wants to do…
until… Into our minds come the assurance of what is not as if it
already were!
You must have first hope… then build on that with the substance of
faith.
Let me illustrate:
14 years ago my wife and I thought we should build a house.
Looking back now…we were broke… our life was a scheduling
nightmare… I was running a business …we were trying to get this
church off the ground…we had three kids who (unlike me when I was a
kid) consumed a lot of energy.
There’s a long story connecting how it all came about… how we
got financing through impossible odds, then Hurricane Andrew blew
down the building our paperwork was in and we had to start over..
When our paperwork finally came through, the second time, interest
hit it’s lowest point in many years… but that’s not the point of
this story:
I went to a, builder, friend of mine and for 500$ he drew up a
set of blueprints around what Sue and I said we wanted. I still
remember picking them up…taking them home and spreading them out
for the first time.
The blueprint was the hope! Was their a house a 1218
SW Mancuso Ave? Not yet…. Would there ever be a house without
the blueprint? No! Everything that came after was the substance
added to the blueprint!
If I had taken the blueprints out to the lot and spread them
on the ground could we have moved the family in? No!
If I had delivered a load of lumber to the lot without
having any blueprints could I have moved the family in? No!
Let’s work here….. with my suggestion that in order to have biblical
faith, “to see over the hill to what God is going to do and embrace
that truth back to yourselves as if it were already done even though
the circumstances have not changed”…..
You first have to start with a mental image that forms the
blueprint for what you are sure God is going to do in your life.
Where does the blueprint come from? Whatever it is…it’s
obviously more than you just squinting your eyes, furrowing your
brow and coming up with an idea of what you would like to see
happen. We do that all the time and it doesn’t result in Biblical
faith.
This is not a matter of setting high personal goals
This is not “visualization”
This has nothing to do with “whatever you can conceive….”
I’m talking about God giving you a divine image deep in your
soul that implants
itself in your spiritual mind. It creates a spiritual
expectancy inside you that grows to be stronger that what you
actually see going on around you in your life.
Listen to the Apostle Paul expressing this idea, using two Greek
words for hope… and he uses them both in the same sentence for
emphases…
Philippians 1:19 For I know that this will turn out for my
deliverance through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of
Jesus Christ, 20 according to my earnest expectation and hope
that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as
always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by
life or by death. (NIV)
In more modern English the NLT says it this way; watch what happens
in you mind when you hear it:
Philippians 1:19-20 For I know that as you pray for me and the
Spirit of Jesus Christ helps me, this will lead to my deliverance.
20 For I fully expect and hope that I will never be ashamed,
but that I will continue to be bold for Christ, as I have been in
the past. And I trust that my life will bring honor to Christ,
whether I live or die. (NLT)
I fully expect and hope..
I fully expect…at least I hope? No! That’s not what
the words mean
Fully expect- earnest expectation- the intense anticipation of
good
Hope- a joyful, confident, expectancy… oblivious to anything
else that might engage my attention.
Biblical hope is what locks you in to what God is getting ready
to do inside you.
Biblical hope is what clears the fog and brings God’s will for
your life into crisp sharp focus.
Biblical hope provides the divine blueprint that God will wrap
your faith around so you can believe in the results even before you
see them.
III. Moving into Divine Hope:
Abraham…we have brought him up so much in this study…
Abraham shows us this distinction between mere human hope and a
divine hope directly from heaven.
He’s 100 years old, his wife is 90…their working on a 25 year old
promise from God that, from out of him and Sarah his wife, a whole new
race of people would be born. Watch this…
Romans 4:18 who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so
that he became the father of many nations, according to what was
spoken, “So shall your descendants be.” (NKJV)
Romans 4:18 Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed
and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been
said to him, "So shall your offspring be." (NIV)
In spite of a lack of human hope… Abe exercised divine hope…
Romans 4:19-21 Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact
that his body was as good as dead-since he was about a hundred
years old-and that Sarah's womb was also dead. 20 Yet he did not
waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was
strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21 being fully
persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. (NIV)
Being fully persuaded…. He locked in to a divinely implanted
mental image of himself holding his son and the substance of faith
built all around that until he was absolutely sure of the coming event
even though each passing year left his body a little more “dead”.
In the process of giving Abram that mental image, God even changed
his name to Abraham- “Father of a multitude”. I’m sure when anyone ask
him what his name was, he never answered Abram…he always answered “I’m
Abraham.. father of a multitude.”
That’s a strange name, Abraham…I don’t see a bunch of kids
running around???
Just wait…you will!
How can you be so sure…Abraham… that your going to live up to your
name?
“God planted the blueprint right here in my mind! My hope is not
an earthly hope.. my hope is a heavenly hope.”
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So if you are looking for divinely implanted hope in your
life right now…where do you go to sign up for it?
How does Biblical hope get from God to you?
We’ve explored this passage a lot of times but let’s do it again
based on what I have been saying:
Romans 10:17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing
by the word of God.
Faith comes by hearing… what? What are you listening for?
I’m saying to us all today that we are to be listening for God to
implant within us the hope… the blueprint, on which our faith will
build in each needy area of our life.
So if you are listening for the blueprint…in what context will you
hear it?
…. faith comes by hearing, and hearing (comes) by the
word of God.
You remember that the word “word” there is not “logos” (living
eternal word) but is the word “Reema” which means the truth of God
internalized. The logos can lay on a table and not ever affect you….
Reema happens when the logos gets off the written page and you begin to
own the truth in your heart! There is literally a different Greek word
to describe that process….. So:
True biblical hope comes when you truly begin to hear
God’s blueprint for your particular situation. That process is
always connected to your absorbing God’s truth into your life until
it becomes Reema. If you are trying to lock in on God’s blueprint
for your life but are ignoring God’s Word in your daily life you
are missing the basic building block that God uses to bring you to
faith.
Conclusion:
1) Absorbing the Word leads to:
2) Reema , internalizing the Word,
constitutes:
3) Hearing : brings our thought to laser
beam clarity which constitutes
4) Hope….. is the blueprint through which we build:
5) Faith!!! Causes to happen what could
not humanly take place!
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