Having faith is easier said than trying to understand how it works or why it doesn’t. In our previous studies, we concluded that true Biblical faith has nothing to do with whether or not you appear to “get” what you’ve been praying for. The heroes of the faith listed in Hebrews 11 were all commended as having great faith even though none of them received what God had promised them.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. (Hebrews 11:13 NIV)

The proof or evidence that a person has Biblical faith isn’t how many prayers God seems to answer or how prosperous they may be or how healthy they seem to be, it’s that they never give up; they never stop believing no matter what. No matter how good they have it or how awful their circumstances, people with true Biblical faith never stop believing in the promises of God. Never.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. (Hebrews 11:13, 14 NKJV)

People with faith are never afraid or ashamed to confess – not their faith – that they are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” What does that mean? How does it relate to the modern Christian?

The patriarchs

Abraham and all the patriarchs “died in faith.” They never stopped believing in the promise God gave them. In fact, we are told, they glimpsed that promise at a distance. God actually planted in their hearts a vision of that promise. In case you’ve forgotten, here is the promise:

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:1 – 3 NIV)

This was the great promise God gave to Abraham and his descendants. It’s the promise all the heroes of Hebrews 11 held to and believed. It’s the promise that would not be fulfilled until centuries after the death of the very people to whom it was given. Aged and in failing health, still believing in the promise, none of the patriarchs complained, but instead they rejoiced as they looked to the future in expectation. They didn’t run around confessing the promise to anybody that would listen. They didn’t engage in “naming it and claiming it.” Abraham’s response to his wife’s death gives us a clue as to how he confessed his faith:

Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, “I am a foreigner and stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead.” (Genesis 23:4 NIV)

Abraham never denied his circumstances, in fact he embraced them; he owned up to them. He was a foreigner; he was a stranger among the Hittites. He had no property to speak of but he needed a little bit for a grave, and he was willing to pay for It. He didn’t expect God to move on the hearts of the Hittites to suddenly give him a plot of land. He was willing to exchange some of what he had for some of what the Hittites had. It would seem that faith is, more than anything, practical.

The modern believer

A person whose only interest is in the things of this world – prosperity, health, happiness, contentment – will constantly be frustrated because more often than not those things will be elusive. If all you want is happiness, you probably won’t find much of it. If you are looking for more money, you probably won’t find more money, but only more debt. But a person who knows he is a pilgrim here and who is content with being a foreigner in the here-and-now, must have a higher goal.

For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. (Hebrews 11:14 NIV)

Ben Vaughn and Peter Case, in their song made famous by Petra, captured perfectly what the writer to the Hebrews was trying to convey:

We are pilgrims in a strange land/We are so far from our homeland\With each passing day it seems so clear/This world will never want us here/We’re not welcome in this world of wrong/We are foreigners who don’t belong

And that’s the attitude every believer should have. We are strangers here. We are pilgrims here. We don’t belong here. So why are we surprised when our beliefs are mocked or our faith disrespected? Why are we caught off guard when people outside the church don’t side with the church? Why do we work our fingers to the bone just to obtain and hold onto the things of this world? If we are “just visiting this planet,” why are trying so hard to stay here? If we’re “just passing through,” why are we trying so desperately to “fit in” and gain the world’s acceptance?

It’s very hard to live a life of faith when you are too comfortable in the world. Charles Swindoll wrote –

We live in a negative, hostile world. Face it my friend, the system that surrounds us focuses on the negatives: what is wrong, not what is right; what is missing, not what is present; what is ugly, not what is beautiful; what is destructive, not what is constructive; what cannot be done, not what can be done; what hurts, not what helps; what we lack, not what we have. The result: fear, resentment, and anger.

Swindoll isn’t wrong in what he wrote. When our focus is on this world, we become like this world. We become just as negative, just as depressing, and just as faithless as the world in which we live. That’s why our focus needs to be on our homeland, our TRUE, eternal homeland. That’s why John wrote this –

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. (1 John 2:15 NIV)

Look back at Abraham. He and his family were pilgrims in every sense of the word. They lived in tents and were always on the move. Yet he gave up a lot to live that nomadic life. Ur, the Sumerian city he and his family lived in, had for a century been a hub of commerce and cultural activities. It had schools and temples, there were libraries, and Ur boasted a thriving community of artists and artisans who made and sold beautiful art and fine jewelry. Yet the patriarch chose to give all that up. What if God asked you to give up your comfortable lifestyle to follow Him. Could you? Corrie Ten Boom’s words are hard to read because they hit a little too close to home –

I’ve learned that we must hold everything loosely, because when I grip it tightly, it hurts when the Father pries my fingers loose and takes it from me!

Abraham and the patriarchs traveled on and never looked back, and they never looked at what they couldn’t have.

If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. (Hebrews 11:15 NIV)

In a very real sense, the life of faith begins between your ears. Abraham and his family left the greatest urban center of his day and chose to stay away from all of them. They always stayed on the fringes of civilization. How could they live this way? For them, it was simple:

Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. (Hebrews 11:16 NIV)

Literally that verse reads: “the stretched themselves out.” Their devotion was that intense. These ancient people, with no Bible to read or sermons to listen to, somehow had a concept of heaven, a glorious life after life. And it was that belief, not merely the promise of an earthly home, that drove them.

This is the kind of faith that impresses God. In fact, the remainder of verse 16 gives us an idea of how much the faith of the patriarchs meant to God –

Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. (Hebrews 11:16b NIV)

Can you imagine? God was not ashamed to be known as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” His people became His means of identification in the world. Can we say that about us? Does our faith impress God that much? Or do we disappoint Him to the point where we He is actually ashamed of us? There are many who profess belief in God and faith in Christ who are, by their attachment to the things of this world, an embarrassment to God and a discredit to His character.

In Christ, God has prepared a “a city,” an eternal dwelling place for His people. These pilgrims of faith, because they looked forward in faith, will benefit from the work of Christ just as we will, as we also look forward in faith. We modern Christians with our numerous translations of the Bible, books about the Bible, books and TV shows about how to live the Christian life, and churches all over the place have no excuse for missing that eternal city.

We can learn a lot about how we should live by looking at how these ancient nomads lived so long ago. God made a stunning promise to Abraham, and that promise involved an earthly blessing, the blessing of land. Abraham knew, though, there was more to this promise than just Canaan. Canaan was nice, but it didn’t come close to fulfilling the great inner revelation that God had also given him; that there is life and a land beyond this one. They never felt completely “at home” anywhere on earth because they knew they didn’t belong here. It’s very unfortunate that their descendants lost the vision, as the recipients of the letter to the Hebrews had, and eventually settled in a land that they fiercely cling to this very day. But pilgrims aren’t really attached to anything of this world. They don’t cling to either their possessions or their lives. C.S. Lewis put it this way –

Many a man thinks that he is finding his place in the world, when in reality it is finding its place in him.

Hopefully that isn’t happening to you.

When you say the word “faith” to people, it conjures up different images in people’s heads. For example, for some people, “faith” is believing with your whole heart that you are able to do something really difficult. For others, “faith” is trying to believe in something unbelievable. Still others think “faith” is a word related to another word, “impossible,” as in: When you’ve done all you can do and it still won’t start, what you need is faith! In our self-centered culture, we tend to associate “faith” with ourselves – it’s that certain “something,” that je ne sais quoi, that kicks in when all else has failed. But any definition of “faith” that excludes what the Bible teaches is inadequate at best, and wrong at worst. And in the Bible there are several aspects to the word “faith.”

In Galatians 1:23, we read about what some Judean Christians said when they spoke of Saul, whom he tried to destroy:

The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy. (NIV)

“Faith,” then can be a confession, like the Apostle’s Creed, the simple articles of our Christian faith.

For the Gospel writers, “faith” had as its object Jesus Christ; “faith” is synonymous with believing in Jesus Christ:

But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:31 NIV)

And another aspect of “faith” is the idea of having to appropriate it, or “claiming” salvation in Jesus Christ. God saves a sinner through faith.

This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. (Romans 3:21 NIV)

So defining “faith” is a little more complicated than we thought.

The simple nature of faith

Fortunately for us, the writer to the Hebrews demonstrated sheer genius when he wrote about the essence of faith. For him, the easiest way to understand “faith” was to define it within the context of certain people – “the ancients,” he called them, but we call them “heroes” – who exhibited faith. These people lived a life defined by Hebrews 11:1 –

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1 NIV)

J.B. Phillips in his translation put it like this:

Now faith means putting our full confidence in the things we hope for, it means being certain of things we cannot see. (Hebrews 11:1 JBP)

But Hebrews is not talking about a selfish hope, like having faith that dear old Dad will buy you a new car because you graduated from college. Faith shouldn’t be confused with presumption; that God must do what we want Him to do. There are plenty of Christians who live very disillusioned lives because God won’t conform to their wills. Indeed, faith takes God at HIS word, it does not demand that He listen to ours.

Both in the NIV and JBP, the word “confidence” was sometimes translated as “title deed” in apostolic times. Faith, then, is like a “title deed” to what God has promised. It is the firm assurance and conviction that God will do what He has said He would.

Many of the Hebrew Christians to whom this letter was written were becoming discouraged and restless because it seemed like God was ignoring their prayers; that He was unaware of their trials. This is very common among Christians, who like things done quickly. When it seems like God isn’t hopping to it to answer our prayers, we bemoan that God has forgotten us or that He doesn’t really love us. But the very fact that we pray – and continue to pray in the face of terrible situations and circumstances – is proof that God is at work even when we can’t see it or even doubt it sometimes.

“Faith” is not a shadow or a feeling, but EVIDENCE of things not seen; of promises yet to be fulfilled.

Knowledge of faith

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (Hebrews 11:3 NIV)

The world may say, “Seeing is believing,” but the Word of God says the exact opposite: “Believe and you will see.” An example of this “title deed” aspect of faith is verse 3: the creation of the universe. Nobody was there to see it happen, but believers in God “understand” or “have knowledge” that God created it out of nothing. We believe it happened this way because our faith tells us it happened this way.

The metaphysical part of this verse, “what is seen was not made out of what was visible,” is not an insignificant add-on but a major thought of great theological import. What seems real to our senses is actually a product of that which our senses tell us is unreal! So faith, then, is not believing in fairy tales and in a make-believe world, but the opposite. The knowledge acquired by way of our faith has shown us the real truth: there exists an invisible world and our world came out of it. That’s a deep well!  True faith is not a kindergarten-level religion, but so deep and profound that the so-called wizards of smart can’t even grasp it. But you can, because you have faith.

Worship of faith

By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead. (Hebrews 11:4 NIV)

It’s interesting that Hebrews 11 and its “heroes of faith” list begins with a martyr: Abel. Abel came to God “by faith.” Not only to we acquire knowledge by faith, but faith is the only means of approaching God and of receiving God’s approval.  Cain brought God some fruit from his fields as his offering and Abel took his offering to God from among the firstborn of his flock. Both offerings had to do with the externals of religion but God only accepted one: the one offered “by faith.” Abel’s offering was made in accord with the revealed Word of God but Cain reasoned that his would be “just as good.” There was no faith involved in Cain’s offering, just effort. He thought he was doing his best, but God doesn’t just want our best, He demands that all of our worship be done according to His revealed will.

Oddly enough, while God accepted Abel’s offering, He didn’t stop Cain from killing him. If you’re looking for your rewards in this life, you’ll be disappointed. Abel was a martyr, yet he showed us the way and still speaks to us this very day. Living a life of faith may not always be easy; it may be rugged life indeed, but pleasing God is what matters.

A life of faith

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. (Hebrews 11:5 NIV)

The word “taken” is literally “transposed,” as in from a lower key to a higher one. We don’t know anything about this person, Enoch, except that he “pleased God.” His whole life is only four verses long (Genesis 5:21 – 24) and ended with his being “taken” away. Whether or not he accomplished anything of note is, apparently, unimportant. The important thing was that he walked with God. A couple of verses in the New Testament gives us a little more information:

Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” (Jude 14, 15 NIV)

So while Enoch was some kind of prophet, the writer to the Hebrews doesn’t mention that. The most important thing that could be said about Enoch was that he “pleased God.”

It seems as though Enoch left this world in a way like no others: God took him home but he didn’t experience death. One day this man of faith simply couldn’t be found. It’s a difficult thing to understand, but as the writer to the Hebrews might say, we need to have faith. Speaking of faith, the part faith played in Enoch’s life and translation was indirect. Faith itself doesn’t translate any of us into Heaven. It was Enoch’s walk with God that was by faith; his reward was not experiencing death.

Yet, in a way all believers who are walking with God by faith have been translated!

For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:13 NIV)

And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:6 NIV)

Faith is indispensable

And 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. (Hebrews 11:6 NIV)

This is a principle for the ages. If Enoch had not kept on believing, he would not have kept on pleasing God. The inescapable law of God’s Kingdom is simply this: His subjects must have complete and unwavering confidence in Him – in His goodness, His wisdom, His mercy and grace, His power. All other offerings are of no value to God if this kind of faith is lacking.

How indispensable is faith? Richard Taylor said it best:

We are not kept by feeling but by faith, because only by believing God can we be pleasing to God.

So Christians, then, must believe that He is real and believe that He is what He says He is: a rewarder. God is not a distant deity. He is involved in the lives of His people to the point where He sees how you live and He rewards you accordingly.

Live in faith

Noah was guy who had boat-loads of faith. Seriously!

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 is in keeping with faith. (Hebrews 11:7 NIV)

What was it that kept Noah going? Why did he keep on building a boat for 120 years, preaching doom all that time and receiving only ridicule in return? It was his faith that caused Noah to act. In keeping with the theme of this chapter: Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1 NIV), Noah’s faith is emphasized because the warning he received from God was “of things not yet seen.” Noah didn’t have NOAA. He didn’t have the Old Farmer’s Almanac. All he had was a Word from God. And that was enough to motivate him to do what God had told him to do.

Faith leads to obedience

Like Noah, Abraham stands out as one of the greatest examples of a man of faith. He did what you probably wouldn’t. In answer to the call of God, he left his home and set out on a journey that would last a lifetime.

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. 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. (Hebrews 11:8, 9 NIV)

Today, we’d call a man who did what Abraham did crazy. But Abraham showed us something very important: Faith does, it does not question. Faith follows the Word of God, not the opinions of man. Abraham wasn’t crazy, he was simply doing what God had told him to do. Abraham was promised a land; a home of his own and for his descendants,  yet he himself never lived to see it. Even when his wife, Sarah, died, Abraham had to buy a burial plot from some Hittite settler.

The man was promised a land – a nation – yet he lived in tents until the day he died. From the moment he left Ur, Abraham did not have a permanent home, but he kept on looking for it. His faith proved God’s Word to be true. Onlookers might have wondered about Abraham’s sanity after all the years of wandering around looking for the land God had promised him, but Abraham was a man of faith, not sight. His spiritual sight took him far beyond the land of Canaan to the celestial city.

Like Abraham, we are only pilgrims on earth. Like Abraham, we are citizens of the great City of God. And like Abraham, living here below requires faith. To the Israelites, God said, “Go forward.” They did and the waters parted before them. God always makes a way for the faithful. Jesus called Peter to walk on stormy seas, and he took a few steps – Peter did what no man had ever done: he walked on water. But more importantly, he took Jesus at His word. The obedient follow Jesus anywhere.

And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19 NIV)