-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the cafe.
00:40 Good to be here with you. Pastor Clark Covington from Heartland Community Baptist Church in Lincolnton, North Carolina, host of KJV Cafe. So good to be here today.
00:49 Today we’re talking about the most important subject I believe in the whole Bible and that is faith. What does it mean to have faith? How important is faith in your walk with the Lord? I mean think about it. If you are void of faith, then do you really have even salvation? I’m not trying to talk you out of it, but if you don’t really believe, what does that mean? Think of the sinner that’s not convicted of their sin.
01:14 Why are they not convicted of their sin? Because they don’t believe. So they’re saying, hey I can sin, I can lie, I can cheat, I can do bad things. God’s not really gonna do anything.
01:25 I don’t believe his word. I don’t believe if he’s there he’s not paying attention and blah blah blah. Right? But they may go to church.
01:30 They may be in your church. They may be around. And on the flip side of it, you could have those that face much affliction, and yet they believe, and they hold fast, and they’re patient, and they endure it.
01:44 And they believe God has a reason for it. And their faith is strong in God. And that faith is given.
01:51 We know the Bible says, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing the Word of God. The faith is given by being in the Word of God. So, we’re in Hebrews 11, also known as the Hebrews Hall of Fame, which talks about faith and those that had it.
02:07 I believe Paul wrote the book of Hebrews, and here we have it here. Hebrews 11: 1, Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report.
02:18 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous. God testifying of his gifts, and by it he being dead yet speaketh.
02:40 By faith Enoch was translated, that he should not see death, and was not found, because God had translated him. For before his translation, he had the testimony that he pleased God. Wow, in these five verses we have a lot to talk about, a lot to dive into here today.
02:56 Faith is such a big topic, as I mentioned. It’s the kind of the linchpin of everything we believe is faith, and we see the definition of what faith is in verse 1 of Hebrews 11. Now the faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
03:17 Well, what does it mean to hope for something? You know, think about this. What are you hoping for today? Are you hoping for 90 degree weather in the winter? Well maybe, but probably not, because you don’t really believe that’s gonna happen. Are you hoping to wake up and open your door and there’s a Lamborghini in the driveway, or a Porsche or something? Probably not, because you realize that’s probably not gonna happen.
03:44 But maybe you’re hoping for seeing a friend today, or having a good day, or having a good lunch, or a good dinner, or you know, having a good day at work, or a good day at school, or a good day at the retirement community, or a good day in the garden. You know, you’re hoping for things that you believe might actually happen, and faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So we have to truly have our hope in Christ, specifically number one, that he’ll be here with us, right there with us, living within us through the Comforter, through the person of the Holy Spirit.
04:18 He’ll be there, amen, and that he’ll return soon to take his church home, amen, and that when we go home to be with the Lord at the rapture, or when we when we die and we’re risen again, amen, the Bible says the dead in Christ shall rise first. When that happens, our hope is that we’ll get that resurrected body, as the Bible tells us, and that we won’t have any more pain or suffering. We won’t be in a sinful place anymore, that we’ll have all the rewards of heaven, and the biggest one being a closeness with God.
04:48 We’ll see Him as we are seen by Him. That’s what the Bible tells us, and that’s what our hope should be rooted in, and our faith is that it’s the evidence of things not seen, that we can’t actually have a clue. Yes, I too have prayed, God, come show up and show me this and show me that.
05:07 Not too often, because I know that we need to have faith, amen, but we all will pray, God, if you’re going to do something, do it now, right? But it may not be God’s sovereign will to do it now, and so inevitably, God is requiring us to just believe, to not have the evidence, and he gives us that illustration with Thomas. We call him Doubting Thomas, right? Thomas had heard from the others that Christ was risen, just like we hear from the Bible, Christ is risen. Thomas said, I won’t believe it until I can put my finger in his side, I can touch his nail scarred hands, and then what happens? A week or two later there, their disciples are meeting, Thomas is there, and Jesus appears in his resurrected body, says, hey Thomas, go ahead.
05:53 But what does Jesus say after that? He said, you know what? Blessed are those that have not seen and still believe, and so God, yeah, maybe he’s testing us, maybe he’s saying, look, I’m gonna give you a lot, I’m gonna give you my word, I’m gonna give you creation, I’m gonna give you things that are unexplainable, like the tide reacting to the moon, and gravity, and all of these things. I’m gonna give you all these things to testify to my brilliance in creation, but I’m not going to give you so much that you don’t have to have faith. I want you to have faith.
06:24 Remember, we abandon faith when we’re in heaven, we don’t need it, because we see Jesus face to face, amen? Faith is for this season, and God wants us to have it. So what is faith? It is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, and then we see here, for by it the elders obtained a good report. And so Paul here is writing about the idea that those that he is about to go into here, this list, Hebrews Hall of Fame, they had great faith in God, and they obtained a good report.
06:51 Their lives were a testimony to God, and Paul is using that in the scripture to teach us what it means to have great faith, in all seasons of life, and in all different ways of different people, to have great faith. God’s using that. And now can we say, as we endure the afflictions in our life, that God is allowed to come our way, the devil throws us all these snares, as the Bible would say.
07:15 As we go through those things, is our life a good report and a good testimony to having faith in God? Because you know what that means? Think about it. Is it easy to say, well God blessed me and I’m very comfortable, I’ve got faith. And you say, well what do you mean? You’re comfortable, you’re blessed.
07:32 Remember the devil told God, oh Job is just, he’s your servant, he loves you because he’s so blessed. And God said, okay, take everything but his life, right? Let me see that, see how that worked out. Well in a way, isn’t that how our faith is proven? In the fire, Amen When we go through affliction, when things go wrong, do we really believe that God is who he says he is? He’s a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him? We should, Amen.
07:58 I don’t have a time, I don’t have time to go through the whole bit here, but Voice of the Martyrs, great organization. If you’re not familiar with Voice of the Martyrs, they have a great multimedia arm to them, but they also, their primary goal, I believe, is to help those facing persecution around the world, especially it seems in poor countries. They help provide Bibles and materials, but beyond that, even living necessities to those that are facing persecution.
08:25 And by virtue of their role in that, they are able to give reports. They have a great podcast, radio program, and they have a magazine that I get. And this month was on Laos, and there was a story there.
08:36 My wife is, her background, she’s half Laotian and half Thai, Amen She was born in a refugee camp, but she came to America when she was young, so she’s very Americanized. But her culture is partly Laotian, and this article, this magazine here this month, I just got it, was on Laos, and there was great, three or four great testimonies in there. And I read several of them to our church last night, because the elders obtained a good report.
09:02 There was two elder, older ladies, their names are Sun and Vee, and one of them had been sick, and all of the false pagan gods couldn’t heal her, and controversial as it was, she went to the Christians and prayed with the Christians, and God healed her, Amen And she praised God and gave Him the glory and became a Christian, Amen I believe it to be true, I have no reason to doubt it. And then a neighbor who was a little bit younger than her, who had been married seven times, like that lady at the well, married a bunch of times, and she’d been abused, almost killed by one of her ex-husbands, beaten, and she was just struggling so much with life. She saw this lady living so happily now, and having a new joy and new peace in Christ, and she got saved.
09:50 And long story short, again you can read it in the Voice of the Martyrs magazine, long story short, these two women were persecuted in their village. They were threatened, they were talked to, they were actually asked to leave, and they were forced to leave. And that’s a huge deal, because in many third world countries like Laos, you eat what you grow, and so if you don’t have anything growing on your land, if you don’t have land, you don’t have your food, Amen And so they don’t have food in that way.
10:18 They had to go live with a church member, church leader, excuse me, and they’re depending on others to be provided for. And all they were being asked to do was renounce their faith. All they were being asked to do is be less Christian, be less on fire for God, stop talking about Jesus around here, because that’s disrupting things in the village.
10:35 That’s what they were being asked to do, and they refused to do that, Amen These older ladies of God, Amen, stood firm on the faith, and it cost them everything. And they said, so what? You’re gonna take our lives, take our lives. We’re not gonna recant.
10:48 We are not going to make something up. We’re gonna speak the truth, and they’re gonna testify that God is good, amen? And that’ll preach, you know, I’ve told our congregation, we need to be fired up for God like these folks. The elders obtained a good report by their faith, and so I know Paul’s referring to the elders of that time of the Bible times, but we can take that verse and apply it to today, and look around and see the older saints of God standing firm in the face of persecution.
11:13 What a blessing. What a testimony to having faith in Christ, not being able to see that reward, you understand? Living in a punished state, in an afflicted state, and having faith. That’s a testimony to God, not being comfortable, but saying, look, I got my stuff taken.
11:28 My food source is threatened. My material source is threatened. I don’t have the same bed anymore.
11:32 I’ve been threatened, but I will not recant. I will not bow down. I will stand up, Amen Glory to God.
11:40 Thank God for Son and V. Continue to pray for them, Amen And continue to support the voice of the martyrs. Check them out. Thirdly here, through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
11:55 Paul, here’s tackling evolution, if you can believe it. I know I don’t have too much time left, but the idea here is that God made everything, and we keep thinking that things made things. We keep thinking that things evolved out of things, and apparently some blob out of nothing created one thing that evolved into another thing, and that’s how we all got here.
12:15 And that, to me, is ludicrous. Another great ministry answers in Genesis. They continue to fight this fight every day for many decades, and have great resources that are rooted in science.
12:26 There’s nothing wrong with science. They’re using science to prove that Genesis is true, that God’s Word is true. Imagine that.
12:33 It takes faith to believe. Nobody was here, whatever it was, 200 million years ago when they say this happened, amen? And just like we weren’t here 2,000 years ago when Christ died on the cross, we still believe, amen? It all comes down to faith, and Paul’s tackling that topic right there, because I’m sure people at that time had theories about how everything happened, and how things got there, and how how things evolved, and we need to stand fast on the faith, Amen That Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, that as John 1 tells us, that He was there in the beginning, and that everything was created by what? By His Word, Amen And without Him, nothing came to being. And so we give God all the glory for creation, and we have faith that He did it.
13:13 And again, there’s so many things that point to it. As I mentioned earlier, I mean, gravity. If you look at the precision in which the planets and the stars all align, that’s when I truly just gave it to God and I believe the freshman year astronomy class, I saw all the charts and how everything all flowed so precisely, so that we could live on this earth.
13:34 I said, enough said, that’s God, Amen He ordered it. That testifies to God. But many will try to absolve themselves.
13:40 Why would they do that? Because if they don’t have to report to God, they don’t have to acknowledge their sin, and you get the idea, amen? They can live as the captain of their own ship. It’s sad, but it’s true. So to wrap up here, we have to have faith in God.
13:52 We have to believe. We have to thank God for all the saints of God that have given us that good report. We have to realize that God’s Word inspires and educates and edifies, and we must stay in His Word, Amen, and continue to fight the good fight, to have faith in Jesus Christ until He returns to take us home.
14:11 Thank you so much for listening. Take care. God bless. Amen.