By faith

Hebrews 11: 1 – 16

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday evening, 01 Jun, 2008

“WITHOUT FAITH it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

It is popular lately to claim that faith is irrational, that it is on a par with believing in Santa Claus.

This is a parody true Christian faith. Faith is a normal component of everyday life. We can’t live without faith.

It is the key to action, and the stuff of relationships. If we don’t believe that our actions will have results, we don’t act, whether we are thinking about faith to do as God tells us, or faith to get out of bed in the morning.

The writer of Hebrews tells us that faith is necessary if we are to please God. What he is talking about is a relationship with God.

I want to talk tonight about faith in a God who exists, and faith in a God who rewards because they are the keys to the faith which pleases God.

Before you can please God by faith, you have to believe that God exists and believe that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. So God’s existence and rewards come first.

But let’s begin with the question of why we might want to please God.

Of course, if God exists and is all–powerful, it would be unwise to be off–side with him at the judgment.

Imagine coming before God at the judgment. He says, “What have you done for me?”

You say, “I’ve been a nice person. I don't often lose my temper, I pay my debts on time, I give to charities, and I did get involved in the campaign to keep the local hospital open.”

But how much do any of us really do for God? Even our good deeds are mainly for our own benefit. We look after our own interests, and then hope God will reward our selfishness. We get our reward, and then expect another!

But I won’t go too far down that path, otherwise carping critics will claim I threatened you with hell. If I ever say anything about hell, it is so that you will run from God’s coming wrath and experience his salvation and his peace.

But another reason why we might want to please God is to experience the positive benefits, the pleasure of pleasing him.

Paul writes to the Romans that we can discover how good and perfect and pleasing God’s will really is.

What God wants is for us to be in a love–relationship with him. You know how good it is to please someone you are in love with, or even to please someone you just like.

If God exists, and if he rewards those who seek him, then it makes sense to want to please him.

But let’s look at what the Bible tells us.

Faith in God’s existence.

Does God exist? Many people demand proof before they will believe. But scientific proof can’t be done. You can’t weigh or measure God, so science can’t say one way or another whether he exists.

How could God be both measurable — which would mean he exists within the physical universe — and at the same time the Creator God who is bigger than the entire universe, the one who started it from nothing, the one who is outside everything that exists?

Did you realise that science is really about disproof, rather than about proof?

If someone says, “All cows eat grass,” that statement only stands until someone shows that some cows don’t eat grass. Scientific proof only means that a proposition hasn't yet been proved false.

Science can’t deal with a statement like, “Motherhood is good.” It is too subjective. What is motherhood? What is good? Can you measure 1000 motherhoods and see if they all come up to the “Good” mark on the Motherhood Measuring Scale? You can’t tell if the statement is true or false. So science can’t deal with it.

Similarly, science can neither prove nor disprove the statement, “God exists.”

But science also can’t weigh or measure love. It can’t weigh or measure faith or hope. Yet without these basics, people die.

We need to look at other forms of proof, like legal proof, like forensic proof.

A court deals with either proof beyond reasonable doubt, or, at least, proof on the balance of probabilities.

Last week a woman was aquitted of attempted murder charges after shooting her husband. All the scientific CSI stuff said there was no question that she had held the gun and fired it, and that a bullet from that gun had entered her husband’s body.

But she admitted that. The question was whether she feared for her life when she shot her husband — was it self–defence?

 Even if there were a tool to measure the levels of stress hormones in the woman’s body that day, it would not prove that she felt that her life was under such a threat that she had to defend herself at all costs.

The jury heard her story, heard his story, watched them both in court, heard from people who knew them both, and formed an opinion. Yes, she did fear for her life. Yes, she acted in self–defence. No, she was not guilty of attempted murder.

Is there evidence of this kind for God’s existence?

Yes, there is.

Paul writes,

 ^{ROM 1:20} For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Paul says that the created world is evidence of a Creator.

The philosopher, William Paley, said, “If you found a watch lying on the ground, you would not say it exists by chance. Its clear signs of design show that it had a designer.”

Then he said we should realise how intricate even an organ like the human eye is. Surely that suggests that there is a designer who made us the way we are.

This is not absolute proof. There are other possibilities. But it should make us think. Perhaps there is a God after all. Many things in this world look as though they were designed.

Or we can wonder what lay at the beginning of the creation. Our whole scientific way of thinking suggests that every event is caused. Things don’t just happen. But what about at the beginning of the universe? When there was nothing, what caused things to begin existing? Maybe there was no first cause. Maybe things have been happening forever, in an infinite string of causes.

On the other hand, God is a far simpler, more likely explanation.

Not total proof, but enough to make us think.

But philosophy doesn’t really take us far.

There is more evidence for God, though.

This prophecy is in Ezekiel 26:

...this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against you, O Tyre, and I will bring many nations against you, like the sea casting up its waves. ⁴ They will destroy the walls of Tyre and pull down her towers; I will scrape away her rubble and make her a bare rock. ⁵ Out in the sea she will become a place to spread fishnets, for I have spoken, declares the Sovereign LORD. She will become plunder for the nations, ⁶ and her settlements on the mainland will be ravaged by the sword. Then they will know that I am the LORD.

Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre and finally defeated it in 573BC, about 16 years after Ezekiel’s prophecy.

But Ezekiel made a mistake, which he later acknowledged. Nebuchadnezzar was not the one who would complete that prophecy.

Nebuchadnezzar defeated the mainland part of the city, but left an island city untouched, about half a mile off the coast.

300 years later, Alexander the Great built a causeway, scraping the remains of the mainland city into the sea. He used this to besiege the island part of the city, while he also blockaded it with ships.

But Alexander didn’t complete the vision, either.

Finally, when the Muslims conquered and destroyed the city about 690AD. The prophecy was completed. The island now holds a fishing village of about 16000 people.

Ezekiel was right about the future of the city, but wrong about who would fulfil the vision.

Who gave Ezekiel the vision, if not God? I can’t prove that God gave this prophecy, but it is another piece of evidence that God exists.

We could look at prophecies like the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, or like Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering servant, which points to Jesus. But I want us to think about one more: Jesus’ prophecies of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

In Mark 13, Jesus tells his disciples that not one stone of the temple will be left standing on another.

This actually happened in 70AD after an attempted anti–Roman uprising.

In fact, one cause of the breakdown between Jews and Christians was that the Christians in Jerusalem generally fled to Pella in Syria when they saw the Romans coming, because they had been warned in Jesus’ prophecies.

If Mark had written after the temple was destroyed, and put these words into Jesus’ mouth, wouldn’t he have made much more of the significance of the destruction of the temple? Jesus died. God’s perfect sacrifice had been offered. There was no need for the temple and its daily animal sacrifices. The destruction of the temple just shows that God didn’t need the sacrifices any more. Yet not one New Testament book makes that point, not even Hebrews, which argues so strongly that there is no need for the sacrifices.

Did God inspire the prophecy?

We can’t prove that God exists, but fulfilled prophecy is a pretty good clue.

Finally, there are experiences throughout history which suggest that God exists.

The resurrection of Jesus is the key one. The body was gone, it was never produced. The disciples were convinced that they had seen the risen Lord. Even some of his enemies were convinced.

But some of us have experienced miraculous healings — I’ve mentioned the things I have seen, like my brother’s overnight healing of a glandular infection, like the overnight healing of Caroline’s sister from bladder cancer, like the healing process I experienced when I had pneumonia and the church prayed for me.

Can we prove that God exists?

No.

But surely a reasonable person would have to say it makes more sense to believe that God exists than that he doesn’t.

God the rewarder

But the faith required for salvation, the faith required to please God, goes beyond mere assent to God’s existence. It makes some assumptions about God’s character and attitude.

The writer says that those who want to please God must also believe that he rewards those who dilligently seek him.

If God exists, and there is some evidence that he does, what is his character?

We have three options: the Hindu option, the Muslim option or the Judaeo–Christian option.

The Hindu option is that God’s character may be anything at all, because all the many Hindu gods and godesses are different avatars of the one God. So God may be a nurturer or a destroyer. God may be promiscuous or chaste. God may be easy–going or strict. All of those things may be true at once.

But these definitions are so contradictory that you couldn’t really describe such a God as having a character.

The Muslim option is of a God who stands aloof from the creation, who rarely interacts with it, who is the origin of justice and of vengeance, who issues laws, but is almost mechanical in what he does. Allah is almost lacking in character, a mere machine to issue rules and give rewards or punishments.

Or there is the Judaeo–Christian God, the God of Jews and Christians, who made humans in his own image, and whose character is reflected in the best aspects of human character.

Such a God is capable of rewarding not only results, but also processes. Such a God can care about how we reach a conclusion and what struggles we meet on the way. Such a God is capable of rewarding our desires and our efforts, even if they sometimes go in the wrong direction.

This is a God of compassion and understanding and love.

If God is not capable of rewarding those who diligently search for him, then God would have to be less worthy, less human than human beings are, and we would have to wonder where our capability fo reward those who seek came from. If not from God the creator, then where did it originate?

I can’t prove to you that that is what God is like, but I can encourage you to choose to believe it, based on the logic of what an all–powerful creator–God must be like.

The God who is pleased by faith

The big problem with pleasing God is that we have nothing to bring to God which is really likely to please him.

Most people, even many Christians, have a pagan way of thinking about God. They might know the words of the Bible, but they still think that they can bring a big enough gift to please God, or they can do some great deed to please him.

In the 8th Century BC, the prophet Micah asked the question,

^{MIC 6:6} With what shall I come before the LORD
  and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
  with calves a year old?

^{MIC 6:7} Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
  with ten thousand rivers of oil?

He concluded that none of these would please the God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and the wealth in every mine.

In the end, the only thing any of us can give God that has any value is our trust — trust enough to do justice when it hurts us, trust enough to love mercy when we want revenge, trust enough to walk humbly with our God even through the darkest valley.

God says,

Choose today whom you will serve...

I can’t compel faith. I can only encourage it. The choice is yours.

Jesus offers to take the hand of anyone who reaches out to him in faith — that is, who trusts him to lead and guide safely to the end.

Today is the day to choose to trust him.

© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)