← Back to sermon library

I want to take a moment to introduce 
our speaker this morning, Heinz Deschenkolik. He lives currently 
in Ontario, Canada. He is the director for Sola Scriptura 
Ministries. He's out here in concert with 
the conference that we just had on Friday evening and Saturday 
morning. Over the last couple of years, 
I've had the privilege of getting to know him. He's a dear brother 
and a good friend, and I hope and pray that God will bless 
the preached word to our benefit. Well, that was one of the best 
scripture readings I've heard in a long time. It almost makes 
me feel redundant. I mean, that was a fabulous message. I think we should call a benediction. 
I'll go home after that. That was fabulous, Jim. Thank you. It's a delight to be here. Thank 
you. I emailed our church this morning and let them know. Actually, 
I emailed them last night and let them know how the conference 
went and the type of fellowship we're having here in Chilliwack, 
British Columbia. And they promised me they'd be praying. Well, they 
prayed for us three hours ago when their service concluded 
that this morning we would be blessed that the spirit would 
move amongst us mightily. So it feels like coming home, 
hearing the old great hymns, hearing a very tight liturgical 
formulation, seeing a church that is dedicated to the London 
Confession of 1689, and more importantly, to the authority 
of scripture. So I heartily congratulate you for your stand for truth. 
And you've got a good man in Jim Butler. Take care of him, 
please. Otherwise, I'll come back and I'll deal with you. I want you to put your imagination 
caps on for a moment. I want you to imagine, if you 
will, that yesterday afternoon on Parliament Hill, that the 
Canadian Parliament passed a law that outlawed the Christian faith. 
It has now become a capital crime to call oneself a Christ follower. 
That to speak of Christ, to preach of Christ, to write of Christ, 
to blog of Christ, to say anything of Christ, has become a crime 
that is punishable by death. Imagine that for a moment. All 
of us have email. Most of you are on Facebook. 
A lot of you have social media accounts, you tweet, and many 
of you have blogs, you post things about Christ and about your faith. 
Some of us have written books and articles, many of us are 
preachers and evangelists, and many of us have a public ministry. 
And all the articles and books and letters and correspondence 
that we have written about and talked about the Lord Jesus Christ 
has now become a capital offense punishable by hanging. Now imagine still that there's 
a minor miracle of technology that comes to the hands of the 
Canadian government, and somehow they're able to compile every 
word you've ever written, every email you've ever sent, every 
tweet you've ever tweeted, every social media that you ever mediated, 
all becomes evidence in a potential criminal prosecution against 
you for being a Christ follower. And imagine still for a moment 
they have targeted you, They've compiled the evidence, and you 
are summoned to appear before the magistrate for the heinous 
crime of being a Christian. And you're not simply going to 
your local court office. You've been summoned to Parliament 
Hill to appear before a joint session of the Canadian Federal 
Parliament. And imagine still that on the appointed day, you 
arrive there. And as you approach Parliament Hill, there is a media 
frenzy. The BBC is there. The CBC is 
there. CTV. There's media trucks, camera 
trucks, all the newspapers, radio stations. There's a throng of 
over 1,000 people who want nothing more to see what it looks like 
to see a Christ follower pilloried in a public court. There's a 
media frenzy. They're out for you. And as you 
walk in the door of Parliament, not only is Parliament there, 
the 300-plus parliamentarians, but The Senate is there. All 
the senators from Canada are amassed there against you in 
a joint session. And in the gallery section that's normally reserved 
for the public and the media to watch, it's filled with Canadian 
officials from the RCMP, the Ontario Provincial Police, CSIS. All the heads of Canadian military 
are in the gallery watching as you step into Parliament, this 
joint session of Parliament. Now, the front table is a table. 
that has all the writings, all the tweets, all the emails, all 
the evidence that indicts you as a Christ follower, and the 
Speaker of the House asks you the following question. Does 
this body of evidence accurately represent what you truly think, 
feel, and believe about the Lord Jesus Christ? Answer carefully, 
for if you answer yes, the next walk you're going to take is 
up 13 wooden steps to a scaffold. You'll have destiny date with 
Mr. Ellis, the Canadian hangman. How would you answer? Now, that sounds kind of far-fetched 
for Canada, doesn't it? This sort of scenario could never 
happen, could it? Well, brothers and sisters, let 
me tell you that what I've just described to you indeed did happen. It didn't happen in Canada, and 
it didn't happen yesterday. But it did take place about 500 
years ago on April 16, 1521, in a beautiful pastoral medieval 
town called Wurms. in the land of Germany. And on 
that appointed day, a lone Augustinian monk by the name of Martin Luther 
was summoned to appear before the tribunal of Pope Leo X. And on that day, there was a 
media circus as the same way there would be in our day. There 
were reporters, there were spectators, there were gawkers, there were 
camp followers. There were about 1,000 people 
amassed outside the Cathedral of the Cathedral of Worms to 
watch this man Luther walk in and get his due and get his just 
desserts. And again, inside the cathedral 
was amassed the inquisitor from the Pope, John Eck, a brilliant 
theologian in his own day. There were the nobles, and the 
nobles of Germany were there. The military was there. All the 
cardinals and bishops from Germany and Rome were there. there was 
this massive array of power that was standing in front of Luther. 
And he was asked, does this table of books and writings and tracts 
accurately represent what you think and feel about the Lord 
Jesus Christ? And in that day, they had no 
qualm about putting people to death by burning them at the 
stake for having the heinous crime of heresy. Well, you would 
think that, well, The question that comes before us then is, 
why was Luther summoned? What did he do that was so awful? 
Well, three and a half years earlier, on October 31st, 1517, 
Luther nailed a document to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral 
called the 95 Theses. I assume most of you have heard 
of that. It was written in Latin, not 
in German. It was intended to be an in-house debate amongst 
German Lutheran scholars, I'm sorry, not German Lutheran scholars, 
but German Roman scholars, about certain practices that he had 
witnessed in the church. He had never, ever wanted to start a 
reformation, that was not his goal in life. He simply wanted 
to try to understand how is it some practices that the Roman 
church were doing did not accord with scripture. He wanted a theological, 
historical, a debate. Within days, those 95 theses 
were all over Europe. And three of the things that 
stand out prominently in the 95 Theses, there are other ones, 
but three big ones that Luther called into question was the 
sale of indulgences. How many of you have heard of 
the term indulgences? How many of you have never heard 
that term before? Never, at all. Three people have heard of it 
and the rest of you haven't. Okay, I'll assume you haven't. Indulgences is what 
I call a spiritual get out of jail free card. It's a way you 
can buy work and weasel your way into heaven. And it was concoctioned 
by the medieval church in order to extort money out of its parishioners 
to build the great cathedrals of Europe. And the way indulgences 
worked, according to Roman Catholic theology, was you didn't have 
heaven and hell. You had heaven, hell, according 
to scripture, but you also had a holding tank called purgatory. 
And if you were a good Catholic that committed a mortal sin or 
a venial sin, and you lost your salvation from your infant baptism 
days, you were consigned to purgatory because you weren't the Lord 
Jesus, you weren't an apostle, and you weren't a venerated saint. 
You were just a normal pew sitter. And normal pew sitters go to 
purgatory, a spiritual holding tank, for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10 
million years. Pick a number. Toss a coin. Pick 
a number. That's how long you'd sit in purgatory. Along comes 
your local Roman Catholic priest that says, if you want to buy 
out a purgatory or reduce your time in purgatory, which was 
not a pleasant place, give me $10,000. I'll knock off one million 
years. That's spiritual extortion. And not only did they do that 
to the parishioners that were living, but they'd walk up to 
you and say, Jim, You lost a brother, cousin, sister, aunt, grandfather 
last year. She's a good Catholic, and she's 
sitting in purgatory, and she's going to rot there for five million 
years before her sins are atoned for, and she is able to jump 
into heaven. Wouldn't you like to knock off half a million years? 
Well, give me $10,000. We'll just give you a piece of paper. 
Done with. Her sins are atoned for. If I haven't got $10,000, 
well, give me $1,000. We'll knock back 100,000 years. It's spiritual extortion. And 
this is what Luther had called into question. How can you possibly, 
by human decree, by buying a piece of paper, by giving cash, going 
on crusade, going on a pilgrimage, counting the rosary beads, work 
your way back into the kingdom of God? Indulgences. That was number one. Number two 
was sola scriptura, the doctrine that says that we take our marching 
orders from the pages of scripture. Canons may be useful. Confessions 
may be useful. Systematic theology may have 
a certain degree of merit to a certain point, but ultimately 
everything has to fall under the scrutiny of Scripture. If 
it doesn't square, you've got to reject it. Sola Scriptura. Simple thing. And then justification 
by faith, which is something we're going to look at in a little 
bit more detail a little bit later on, but how is a man to be saved? 
Do you work your way in? Is it by faith alone, in Christ 
alone, through grace alone, or is it faith plus works? Faith 
plus indulgence is faith plus something else. Can you work 
or buy your way in? And so he wanted an honest debate 
about these various issues. That's all he wanted to do. Well, 
Pope Leo X would have nothing of this. And what he did was, 
in June 1520, he issued a document called, it was a papal bull, 
entitled, Exsurge Domine, translated, which means, Arise, O Lord. And 
here's what Leo X said about Luther. Arise, O Lord, and judge 
your own cause. Remember your reproaches to those 
who are filled with foolishness all through the day. Listen to 
our prayers, for foxes have arisen seeking to destroy the vineyard 
whose winepress you alone have trod. When you were about to 
ascend to your father, you committed the care, rule, and administration 
of the vineyard and image of the triumphant church to Peter 
as the head and vicar and his successors. Now, here's where 
he refers to Luther. He calls him the wild boar from 
the forest. seeks to destroy it, and every 
wild beast feeds upon it. Lying teachers are rising," that's 
Luther and other reformers, introducing ruinous sects and drawing upon 
themselves speedy doom. Their tongues are a fire, a restless 
evil full of deadly poison. They have bitter zeal, contention 
in their hearts, and boast and lie against the truth. So much 
for a friendly theological discussion. Luther was summoned to appear 
before the Pope, and the date of the examination was April 
16, 1521, and the castle at Worms, Germany, was chosen as the appointed 
place for disputation. Remember, Luther's coming into 
a room. There's a media circus outside that wants his head. 
You've got the full array of military regalia from Germany 
arrayed in the room. You've got all the bishops and 
cardinals in the room. You have the chief inquisitor 
of Rome comes in the room, and he's asked the question, do these 
writings truly represent what you believe about the Bible and 
about the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, Luther's reaction was, 
like probably what most of us would be, he gets knock-kneed. 
He gets scared. He has a moment of doubt. Fear 
grabs a hold of him. And rightly so, because you're 
one man in a room who's read scripture by himself, come to 
certain convictions, and you've got this whole battery of people 
who are standing there against you. And they're saying you're 
wrong. And so Luther has this moment 
of doubt where he goes, am I really right? Have I truly understood 
scripture? Is this worth laying my life 
down? Because he knew full well that 
what he says next could very well end his life. They didn't 
mess around in those days with people. If they wanted you dead, 
you were dead. There was no court of appeal. 
You couldn't call the media. You couldn't call Amnesty International. 
You couldn't have courts of appeal stand up for human rights advocacy. 
If they wanted you dead, you were dead. He knew that. This 
is costly. They weren't playing games here. So Luther asks and is granted 
a 24-hour recess where he can prayerfully examine scripture, 
prayerfully examine his own heart and mind, and ask the question 
of himself, have I actually got it right? Is this worth dying 
for? The theologian R.C. Sproul calls this Luther's Gethsemane 
moment, his garden moment. And he goes up into the room, 
to his private room, and he begins a prayer session. And we are 
thankful that Luther had some faithful attendants, a valet 
with him, a scribe. couple of scribes, and the scribe 
diligently recorded the prayer that night that Luther prayed. 
I'll read it to you. Luther writes, oh God, almighty 
God everlasting, how dreadful is the world Behold how its mouth 
opens to swallow me up, and how small is my faith in thee. Oh, 
the weakness of the flesh and the power of Satan. If I am to 
depend upon any strength of this world, all is over. The knell 
is struck. Sentence is gone forth. Oh, God. 
Oh, God. Oh, thou, my God. Help me against 
the wisdom of this world. Do this, I beseech thee. Thou 
shouldst do this by thy own mighty power. The work is not mine, 
but thine. I have no business here. I have 
nothing to contend for with these great men of the world. I would 
gladly pass my days in happiness and peace. But the cause is thine, 
and it is righteous and everlasting. O Lord, help me. O faithful and 
unchangeable God, I lean not upon man. It were vain. Whatever 
is of man is tottering. Whatever proceeds from him must 
fail. My God, my God, dost thou not hear? My God, art thou no 
longer living? Nay, thou canst not die. Thou 
dost but hide thyself. Thou hast chosen me for this 
work. I know it. Therefore, O God, accomplish 
thine own will. Forsake me not. For the sake of thy well-beloved 
Son, Jesus Christ, my defense, my buckler, and my stronghold, 
Lord, where art thou? My God, where art thou? Come, 
I pray thee, I am ready. Behold me prepared to lay down 
my life for thy truth, suffering like a lamb, for the cause is 
holy. It is thine own will. I will not let thee go, nor yet 
for all eternity. And though the world should be 
thronged with devils, and this body which is the work of thine 
hands should be cast forth, trodden underfoot, cut in pieces, consumed 
to ashes, my soul is thine. Yes, I have thine own word to 
assure me of it. My soul belongs to thee and will 
abide with thee forever. Amen, oh God, send help, amen. What do you think of that prayer? That's the prayer of a tortured 
mind, a troubled mind, a troubled soul, and yet a soul that has 
absolute confidence in the finished work of Jesus Christ. This moment, this prayer, this 
evening, this day, is a day that forever marks Luther's footsteps. He went into Worms one man. He came out the back end of a 
totally different transformed individual. Forever from this 
day forth, he would be a reformer of the church, an enemy of the 
pope, an enemy of Roman Catholic theology from this day. He was 
a marked man for life because of this. And I also want you 
to listen. If you were listening very carefully 
to the words, these were written 1521. Perhaps the greatest hymn 
of the church came by Luther's pen seven years later in 1528. It's called Ein Fest der Burg 
in German, which means a mighty fortress is our God. He says 
here, and though this world be thronged with devils, and though 
this world with devils filled, sure threatened to undo us, this 
prayer becomes a template and the formula for what would eventually 
become, in my opinion, the greatest hymn of the church in the last 
2,000 years. It's his Gethsemane moment. Well, Luther returns to the assembly 
the next morning. What Luther wants to do is get 
into a debate with John Eck. He really wants to challenge 
him on his doctrine. But John Eck is a clever manipulator. 
All he wanted Luther was to give an up and down statement, yes 
or no. They would not engage Luther in a public discourse. 
They wanted to shut him down at this point. And they got him 
to the point where he said, do you recant yes or no? Is this 
what you truly believe, yes or no? And then Luther says perhaps 
the most often quoted phrase in church history. He says, unless 
I am convinced by scripture and sound reason, my conscience is 
held captive to the word of God. For to go against conscience 
is neither useful nor profitable. Here I stand. God help me. I 
can do no other. And the rest, as they say, is 
history. And we stand in that tradition 
today because of some of the work that he did. Now, I realize 
that is an extended, historical introduction and illustration. 
I wanted to hammer that illustration home from two different points 
for a very specific reason, because I want you to walk away, understand 
what it is the writer of Hebrews chapter one had in mind when 
he penned these words. I'm sorry, Hebrews chapter one, 
Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11, one to three. Hebrews chapter 11, verses 1 
to 3, where the writer says, now faith 
is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not 
seen. For by it, the elders obtained 
a good testimony. By faith, we understand that 
the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things 
which are seen were made by things of which are visible. Well, let's 
make a couple. We'll be talking about justification 
by faith, or sola fide, as the reformers called it in Latin. 
Just a couple of comments about faith in general. While we hold that people are 
saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, 
and I think that's right, and it's accurate, and it's biblical, 
faith is not a brand new concept that was suddenly invented by 
God in the New Testament era. Justification by faith, sola 
fide, has been the way God has saved his saints from the beginning 
of time forward. He saves people the same way 
today as he did in the time of Moses and the time of Abraham. 
It's by faith and faith alone. By the time we get up to the 
New Testament era, the time of Jesus, we have 1,400 years have 
passed since the day of Moses, and the law was given on Sinai. 
And what was given as a simple, divine, supernaturally revealed 
revelation on how God works through his covenant people had been 
perverted into a cult of works. And that's what Judaism was in 
the first century. It was nothing more than a cult of works. They 
had built layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of man-made 
regulation on top of the simple words that were given in Torah. 
And those words, those man-made laws are given in a book called 
the Talmud, or actually not a book, it's a series of, it's a massive 
multi-volume set like this called the Talmud, which incorporates 
the thinking of the rabbinic scholars down through the ages. 
And I think they started off well, trying to understand how 
do we apply some of the implications of Torah. But as time evolved, 
they had added layer upon layer of stuff that God had never intended 
man to do. So when God condemns them for the works of the law, 
it's not that he's condemning them so much for works of the 
law as enshrined in the Old Testament, but works of the law that had 
been added on top of what God had decreed already. I'll give 
you one example, the Sabbath. How many verses in the Old Testament 
are there with respect to Sabbath keeping? I don't know the exact 
number, but it's not more than a couple of dozen verses at best. 
There is not a lot of detail that's been given to us about 
how to keep or how to not keep the Sabbath. We have some general 
principles and some general guidelines. By the time we come up to the 
first century, the laws regarding Sabbath keeping comprised two 
volumes of the Talmud and represented about 670 regulations. that defined you as either being 
a good Jew or a bad Jew. For example, if you were a doctor 
and you got sick on the Sabbath and you went to see your local 
Jewish doctor, according to Talmud, you could only give as much first 
aid as was necessary to stabilize the patient. That's all you could 
do. That was permissible. If the patient got better, that 
was considered to be work and you were a covenant breaker and 
a Sabbath breaker. You were a bad Jew, you're going to hell. It's perverse. Or if you were 
a tailor, you were a tailor. You sew tunics together, right? 
If you were to walk out of your home on the Sabbath to go to 
synagogue and you forgot to take a needle out of your pocket, 
You're considered to be a Sabbath breaker and a covenant breaker 
because with that needle in your pocket represents a temptation 
that you might, you might do something that could be constituted 
as work. You were a bad Jew. You're going to hell. Or you 
weren't allowed to walk more than a thousand feet on the Sabbath. 
That's all you could do. At mile marker 999, if you put 
a post in the ground that had a line from your house to the 
post, that was considered to be an extension of your home. 
And therefore, your 1,000 feet began at that point again. So 
you draw another 999 feet, draw another line out to it. And so 
you have this infinite number of postings that allows you to 
break the Sabbath while still trying to keep it. I mean, it 
was that perverse. And so when Jesus comes in the 
first century, what he condemns is all this perverse additions 
of scripture that had never been intended. It was faith plus works 
of these man-made laws that Jesus had in mind. It was no longer 
a supernatural system of faith and religion given by God. It 
was a twisted, perverted, a perverse, legalistic institution where 
you could ethically work your way into heaven, maybe. But the 
laws were so odious, nobody could keep it. And one of the ways he condemns 
the Pharisees in his own day was the fact they had this outward, 
perfect persona. They were spot on, they were 
perfect, but inside were dry men's bones. They were dead in 
their sins and trespasses. And the one thing the Bible teaches 
clear front to back is that he detests any way, any manner of 
trying to work your way into heaven, even if you do it by 
God-appointed means and laws. How many times, just think about 
your Old Testament prophetic passages where God condemns leaders 
of Israel for new moon Sabbaths, for your wine festivals, for 
all your sacrifices and offerings, even though they were prescribed 
by law, if they were done by the wrong motive, he says, your 
sacrifices are stench in my nostrils. You could be doing all the right 
things, but for all the wrong reasons. If you do it for all 
the wrong reasons, God will spit you out of his mouth. That's 
clear from scripture. You cannot work by or ethically 
manage your way into heaven. That's clear. And there's never 
been a time in redemptive history where God has saved people otherwise. 
The beauty of chapter 11. The intro to chapter 11 and the 
balance of chapter 11 is that the writer gives us a history, 
snapshot biographies, little snippets of great men and women 
of God who saw through the eyes of faith, who believed what they 
had heard, who although they had only that much revelation 
in their hands, they didn't have full disclosure. We have the 
glory of the resurrection. We have the glory of the ascension. 
We have the glorious promise of Christ's return. We have all 
these glorious fulfillments at our hands. These people didn't 
have it. They had this much. And yet, through the lens of 
faith, they saw there was something bigger, there's something better, 
there's something greater than themselves. And with the eyes 
of faith, they were able to obey, they were able to trust, they 
were able to march forward in the faith and testimony of God's 
promises. Because they saw through the eyes of faith, there's something 
bigger out there. And you didn't get there through human effort, 
through human will, through human achievement. It's only through 
the grace of God. Romans chapter 4 is a chapter 
that talks about Abraham as being the father of faith to all the 
Gentiles. Why? Because he believed and it was 
reckoned to him as righteousness. He didn't get the honor because 
he went to the Ur of the Chaldees. He didn't follow a prescribed 
checklist. If one thing, Abraham is an example 
of how not to do religion in many ways. He stumbled, he fell, 
he did a number of stupid things. It wasn't until Genesis chapter 
20 where he suddenly sees the glorious hand of God pulling 
back Isaac after he gave away Sarah, the means of covenant 
fulfillment. He's able to go in Genesis 22 
up to the Mount of Moriah with his son and say to his servants, 
wait till the boy and I return, for the Lord will provide the 
sacrifice on that day. You can't do that through human 
reason. It's only through the eyes of faith. And God grants 
that by his Holy Spirit. The good works that we do, anything 
that we do that has any merit can't get us into heaven. It's 
always a byproduct of faith. It is a consequence of faith. 
It is a result of faith. It is an outflowing of faith. 
It is our response to God in love and adoration for what he 
has done through us through Jesus Christ. We can't help but be 
transformed in how we live and how we act and the things that 
we do. This is why the social gospel is no gospel at all, as far as 
I'm concerned. All the good works that you can 
do, all the blessings that you can pour out in society, all 
the money you can give to charity, all the work you can do with 
widows and orphans, as commendable as those works are, and I think 
as Christians we need to do those things. However, they cannot 
atone for your sin, only Christ can. And when we understand that 
Christ has atoned for our sin once for all, never to be duplicated, 
we understand that we worship Him, we live for Him, we do things 
for Him out of adoration and worship and love, not to get 
us into heaven. Works has always been a byproduct 
of faith, never the result of faith, never the cause of faith. 
Well, the writer of this magnificent epistle is a Hebrew scholar of 
the first order, and he is writing to a Jewish set of believers 
about Jesus Christ. Now, we know it's a Jewish set 
of believers because the book is heavily laced with Old Testament 
symbolism, and he doesn't take the time to explain what those 
symbols mean. If you're writing to a Gentile 
audience that have never encountered this Old Testament language, 
you've got to take the time to explain what it all means. There 
is an inherent assumption that the people who read this document 
understand what it is. So it's a Jewish set of believers 
who have walked away from Pharisees. They've walked away from the 
religion of the Talmud and have embraced Christ the Savior. And 
the church is being turned upside down by the pressures of the 
state. Remember the illustration of Luther? Remember the opening 
illustration I said about Canadian law? The state and the religious 
authorities are pressing it upon these Jewish converts. And they 
are confiscating property. These people are being jailed. 
They're facing torture. No one's died yet. That's one 
thing that's clear from the text. No one has died yet. But they're 
facing enormous pressure. And some of these folks, if you 
look at the front side of chapter 10, some of these folks are beginning 
to walk away. They're beginning to turn away from the faith. 
The letter is written as a means to encourage them to keep pressing 
on because the hope they have is far more certain than anything 
they ever had before. It's a motivational document 
is what it is. In fact, there are five references 
to persecution inside the epistle. And two of them take place right 
here, just before chapter 11 begins and right after chapter 
11 ends. And there are two verses that 
talk about carrying out their persecution. And chapter 11 is 
designed to say, Here's the example you need to hold before you, 
why you need to press on. For example, 1032 begins by saying, 
but recall the former days in which after you were illuminated, 
you endured a great struggle with sufferings. Partly while 
you were made a spectacle both by reproaches and tribulations, 
and partly while you became companions of those who were so treated. 
For you had compassion on me and my chains, and joyfully accepted 
the plundering of your goods. knowing that you have a better 
and enduring possession for yourselves in heaven. Therefore, do not 
cast away your confidence, which has great reward." I mean, this 
is persecution. These people are going through 
real pressure. In those days, the religious authorities didn't 
mess around. Rome did not mess around with you if you were a 
troublemaker. If you were a troublemaker, they had no compulsion about 
putting you to death. Life was cheap. So the pressure is real. Well, so, now faith is the substance 
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it 
the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the 
worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things which 
are seen were not made of things which are visible. In verse 1, 
of chapter 11, the writer uses a technique called parallelism. That's a 10-gallon word, which 
simply means that he's saying the same thing two different 
ways. He's not saying two different things in verse one. He's saying 
the same thing, but using two different sets of symbols to 
accomplish the goal of communicating what he needs to communicate. 
He's also not giving us a full definition of faith, but he's 
giving us certain characteristics and attributes that he deems 
most important to this audience for this hour to get them through 
their trials. He says about something called the assurance of things 
hoped for. In the Old Testament era, men rested on the promises 
of God with whatever little revelation they had at the time. Some of 
those promises included the future promise of a savior who would 
one day undo the fall. That's the seat of the woman 
promise in Genesis 3.16. We note in the Old Testament 
we are promised a redeemer who would take away the sin of the 
world. We are promised a Davidic monarch whose kingdom would have 
no end. We are told about the suffering servant, and we are 
promised the resurrection of the dead. Oftentimes, when we 
speak of Old Testament revelation, we speak of it in terms of progressiveness. We have a little today. The next 
era, we've got a bit more. And as time goes on, we have 
a fullness of revelation which comes to the Lord Jesus. And 
the highest pinnacle, the writer of Hebrews says in chapter 1, 
is that God has spoken in these current days by the Lord Jesus 
himself. Whatever the era, the men and 
women of old responded in faith to what little information they 
had. But faith for these folks was an absolute assurance, an 
absolute certainty, living in a hope that is real and substantive. Hope for them was not wishful 
thinking, not a we pray, we keep our fingers crossed. We hope. We sure darn wish there's something 
good there at the end of the day. There's no certainty there. 
I've heard certain Christian scholars and certain so-called 
Christian pastors describe faith and hope as merely stepping off 
a cliff with your eyes closed, and you pray and trust that maybe 
something, somewhere, somehow, there'll be a trampoline at the 
bottom to catch you before you hit rock bottom. You're stepping 
into abyss without a certainty that somebody's going to catch 
you at the bottom. That's not what biblical faith is all about. 
It's absolute certainty, rock-solid certainty. It's a foundation 
that's built on granite, on rock, not on sand. It's not wishful 
thinking about uncertain future. They believed it to the point 
that they put their lives and their hopes and their dreams 
together based on all these future promises. Some of these future 
promises, many of these folks never saw. They saw them from 
a distance, but never realized the fulfillment in their own 
day. But the certainty of these future promises was so real that 
they changed the way they lived today. They were so rock solid 
in the promises of God, the fulfillment of God, the redemption of God, 
it altered the way they conducted their lives today. The way government 
was managed was changed under the Davidic monarchy. The way 
people managed their money, the way they managed their lives, 
the way they managed their marriages, the way they managed their relationships 
with each other, the way they managed their fellowship, the 
way they managed their worship, where it's all transformed because 
if you understand there is a better day coming, there's a judgment 
forth hence, there is a great and certain hope of redemption 
that awaits in the future where God will reclaim his people. 
You cannot help but live with that priority in view. You can't. 
If you don't, if that doesn't change the way you live, I got 
to question whether or not you're a redeemed believer. You really 
understand what the gospel is all about. It has to. It must. It should. It has to 
change the way you live. Your priorities need to be completely 
rearranged. And that's part of the hallmark 
of faith in Hebrews chapter 11. These people went to their deaths. 
These people were martyred. These people underwent persecution. Moses left home. Moses gave up, 
the writer says, the pleasures of the palace for a short season 
in order to endure the blessings of God. It has to change the 
way you live. And if it doesn't, I think there's 
a problem in paradise. One writer said that true faith 
is an absolute certainty, often of things the world considers 
unreal and impossible. Christian hope is belief in God 
against the world, not belief in the improbable against chance. 
If we follow a God whose audible voice we have never heard and 
believe in a Christ whose face we have never seen, we do so 
because our faith has a reality, a substance, and an assurance 
that is unshakable. In doing so, Jesus said, we are 
especially blessed, John 20, 29. Assurance refers to the real 
content, the real essence, the foundation, the bedrock, the 
reality upon which we stand, and not merely outward appearance. 
We don't have a philosophy. We don't simply have a way of 
life. We don't simply have a lifestyle preference over a host of lifestyle 
preferences that our culture affords us. We do so because 
we understand who Jesus is, how he lived, how he died, how he 
rose, and how he promised to bring his church back to himself 
someday. We stand on the shoulders of the saints in Hebrews chapter 
11, understanding, like they did, that we await fulfillment 
of God's future redemption. Faith is the present essence 
of a future reality. It says that these folks died 
in 1113. These folks died in faith, not 
having received these promises, but simply have witnessed them 
from afar. We, like them, need to cling to this as the basis 
of our day-to-day existence. Well, the writer goes on to say 
that it is also the conviction of things not seen. Well, it 
means exactly the same thing as the assurance of things hoped 
for, but has a slightly different emphasis. For the true person 
of faith, faith is not merely an intellectual, doctrinal, philosophical 
exercise. It's not merely about knowing 
and believing the right facts. It's not merely subscribing to 
the London Confession of 1689 or the Westminster Confession 
of Faith. It's not merely about that. as important as those things 
are. In light of faith, you have to translate the light of faith 
into action and words and a reality that reflects what has transformed 
the way you live today. There's got to be action. Something's 
got to take place. Something's got to give. You 
cannot go on living the way you were before. That's what the 
conviction of things not seen refers to, is that, okay, you 
believe, great. Now, let's do. Go out and do. To me, the greatest 
person of faith is Noah. I love Noah. Because Noah is 
approached by God and he said, Noah, it's going to rain. What's rain? Noah, it's going 
to rain because there's going to be a flood. What's a flood? 
Because it's going to rain, there's going to be a flood, Noah. I 
want you to build a boat. What's a boat? No idea what God was 
talking about because these things have never happened before. You 
didn't need a boat. There was no rain. There was 
no flood. This is a natural disaster that had never occurred before. 
And yet, for 120 years, Noah built, Noah prayed, Noah worshiped, 
and then the floodwaters came. Well, the Reformers understood 
this doctrine, and the Bible teaches this doctrine, sola fide, 
justification by faith alone. And what the Bible says, and 
what the Reformers understood, that there are a number of components 
that comprise saving faith. The first component is what they 
called in Latin the word notitia. That simply means facts, knowledge, 
content, the story of Scripture, the story of the redemptive story 
of God's work through the pages of Scripture. There's content. 
There are facts. There are things happen. And 
you have to understand, in order to understand the gospel, you 
need to know the facts of the gospel. That's why we send missionaries 
and preachers and teachers and evangelists to tell people about 
the good news of Jesus Christ. There are facts. There's a database. He doesn't simply ask us to believe 
in a vacuum. There is a storyline that needs to be told. Those 
are the facts of the gospel. That's the first thing you need. 
The second thing you need is what they call assensus. And that means assent. That means 
agreement. You have to have agreement. Not only do you know the storyline, 
but you have to believe that, yes, there was a historical Jesus. 
There was a historical resurrection. There was a historical atonement. 
There was a historical flood. There was a historical Moses. 
There was a historical Exodus. There was a historical creation 
ex nihilo. All these things happen. These are the facts that not 
only do you have to know, but you have to agree with. There 
has to be an agreement on these facts. The question to you is, 
is that enough to consist of saving faith? You know the story. You agree with the story. Are 
you saved? Does that save you? I got sad news for you. If that's 
what you understand Christianity is all about, what you have is 
the equivalent of demonic faith. That's all you have. That's the 
best thing to be said of you. You have the same faith that the 
demons have. Because James chapter 2 is very clear. It says, you 
believe in one God? You got the facts straight? You know the 
storyline? You know the facts? You believe 
there's one God? Good for you. So do the demons, and they shudder 
at the word. You know, there's no such thing 
as a liberal demon. They're all conservative. They're 
all orthodox. They're all Calvinistic, by the 
way. There's no such thing as an Arminian demon. They understand 
the sovereignty of God. They understand the final judgment. 
They understand their doom is secured. There's no way they 
can get out of it. They're all Calvinists. So the best that can be said 
for a human being who knows the storyline and has got the storyline 
correct is that your faith is that of the demons. Good for 
you. There's yet one item missing. 
The Bible teaches this. The Reformers understood this. 
Back in 1982, when I was young, trim, and single, I had oodles 
of money. I wasn't a believer. I wanted to learn to fly. I had 
a bucket list before the bucket list became a popular notion 
in culture. And one of the items in my bucket 
list was I wanted to learn to fly. I wanted a pilot's license. 
Not to become an airline pilot. I just wanted to be kind of cool. 
To be able to rent a plane, fly places, and do things like that. 
So I began the process of studying and training to become a private 
pilot. And when they start you off in 
pilots training, you get to fly what's called a Cessna 172, or 
C-172. That's basically a golf cart 
with wings, is what it is. It kind of gets off the ground, 
sort of. But it can get you high enough to kill you, let me trust 
you. It'll get you up to 7,000 feet, and if you get the controls 
wrong, you're dead in 37 seconds. Anyway, so we're flying, got 
about 35 hours under my belt, and when they first teach you 
how to fly, they teach you something called IFR. It's called instrument 
flight rules. And instrument flight rules basically 
are such that you learn to fly by trusting what you see out 
your windscreen, out your canopy. So you make sure that when you're 
flying that the horizon is relative, is flat and level to the canopy 
in front of you. You make sure your wings are 
level to the horizon and to the canopy. And that becomes your 
lifeline to make sure you fly safe and steady and straight. 
That's the first level of training. The second level of training 
is what's called IFR, instrument flight rules, where you have 
to forget what's out here for a little while. That becomes 
secondary. What becomes primary is your dashboard, the instrumentation 
right in front of you in the cockpit. And you have to stop 
trusting what you see with your eyes. You have to trust what 
the dials say in front of you. That becomes your lifeline, which 
is rather handy if you're flying at night or if you're flying 
into a fog bank or into a cloud or into a rainstorm. If you can't 
see the ground, how high up do you know where you are? You have 
to be able to trust the instruments that are in front of you. Now, 
the elite pilots, like the Canadian Snowbirds, the Blue Angels, the 
US Air Force Thunderbirds, they have to unlearn everything that 
they've learned in order to fly 500 miles an hour in tight formation 
of five planes, nine feet wingtip to wingtip. There's a whole different 
set of rules they have to learn for that. And what they do is 
no longer do they go by their instruments, no longer do they 
go by the land references outside the canopy. You focus your eyes 
on the wing commander. who is usually the most seasoned, 
the most experienced, the best pilot in the group. As the wing 
commander ascends, you ascend. He banks, you bank. He does a 
barrel roll, you do a barrel roll. All your cues come from 
your wing commander. Now, it's not enough to know 
how to fly the plane. It's not enough to agree, yes, 
the wing commander is the best pilot in the group, and I'm going 
to follow him. You have to actually strap yourself 
into the cockpit, project yourself as a human missile at over 500 
miles an hour. On January 18th, 1982, in Indian 
Springs, Nevada, that's out in the desert of Nevada, five members 
of the U.S. elite Thunderbirds flew upside 
down into the floor of the desert at over 500 miles an hour. When 
they did the autopsy of the wing commander, what they discovered 
is on the last bank, he had suffered a massive coronary. It killed 
him instantly. So he could not communicate his 
distress to his wingmates to let them know to pull up. And 
they flew, they followed him right into the ground to their 
deaths. It's not enough to know. It's not enough to believe. It 
is sufficient to trust. And that is the third element 
of what the Reformers knew, what the Bible teaches about what 
faith happens to be. And the question I have to you 
this morning is, who are you trusting? Today, this morning, 
in that pew, for your eternal security. Have you lived your 
Christian life in such a way that you understand their storyline, 
that you agree with the basic facts of the storyline, but you 
have never given your trust, your eternal security, over to 
the Lord Jesus Christ? who has made atonement possible, 
who has paved the way to paradise, who has secured a room, who has 
said that someday I will come back to reclaim my own. And so 
in the quietness of your thoughts this morning, as the service 
ends, as we enter into the final hymn, as we engage for activities 
of the rest of the day, I want you to examine your hearts. Who 
do you trust? If you're visiting and you want 
to know more about the Christian faith, what does it mean? Is 
there a heaven? Is there a hell? What happens 
to me when I die? Well, Christ has answered that question for 
you. He says, trust in me. Trust in me and I will set you 
free. Amen.