Biblical study of Faith

[johnorth]

This study is to introduce you to the realm of biblical faith. Whether you fully realize it or not, you and I when we accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior of our life, we did so by faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God ( Heb. 11:6 ). An Excellent definition for faith is given by T.L. Osborn in his book The Best of Life, “ Faith is seeing the un-seeable and acting upon it as though it already existed in tangible form”. In this study we will be looking into the realm of faith as the patriarchs of the bible walked in it. We will begin to see how they pleased God by their faith in what He said, how they acted upon it and we accounted righteous in the eyes of God, by their faith in Him.

Hebrews 11: 1-7

1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
2 For by it the elders obtained a good report.
3 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.
4 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.
5 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 this testimony, that he pleased God.
6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
7 By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.

In the first verse of this chapter we find a bible definition of faith. As we study we are going to start to see what faith is and what faith is not. In the first half of the verse we see when faith is, what faith is, and what faith is for. Then in the next half we see that it is the evidence or proof of the things that are not seen. Lets take a closer look.
1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

The first thing we see is this – Now faith is. Faith is always now, not later. The second thing that we see, is that faith is the substance. The Amplified bible say's it this way--

Now faith is the assurance ( the confirmation, the title deed ) of the things [ we] hope for, being the proof of things [ we ] do not see and the conviction of their reality – faith perciving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses. ( Heb. 11:1 Amp.)

So then faith is the substance, the ground, the assurances, the confirmation, the titles deed of things hoped for. Faith say's that we have it now, not later, that we own it now, that it is ours now. Faith say's that we have what God say's we have, that we are what God say's we are, and that we can do what God say's we can do. In other words if the Bible say's that all the promises of God are in Him, yes and in Him, amen, then we can take that to the bank even though it may not seem like it at that particular moment in time. When God say's that all His promises are for all who believe in Christ then that is what He means.
At the moment you and I believed and accepted Jesus as our Savior and were born again, every promise that God has made became yours and mine. Every promise that God has ever made is yours and mine all we need do is believe it and act on those promises in faith.
Faith in now, not later, but right here, right now. It is the ground, the title deed, the assurance and the confidence of things hoped for. That word hope means the earnest expectation of. So then faith is the ownership of the things we earnestly expect from God. If we need a bill paid we have a right to expect God to make good His promise that say's that He will supply all our need ( Phil. 4:19). If you or a family member are sick, then you have a right to expect God to fulfill His promise of “ I am the Lord who heals you” ( Ex. 15:26) and many others in His word.
You and I along with every other believer as children of God, have a right to expect God to make good His promise. He is the one who said that He would hasten His word to perform it. When we promise our children something they have a right to expect us to make good on the word that we spoke, so in the same manner we have the right as the children of God to do the same.
The bible say's to “ Let God be true and every man a liar ( Rom. 3:4) and that God is not a man that He should lie. When we believe that we have received it comes to pass. In other words we earnestly expect God to do what He said He will do.
Faith is the ownership pf the things that we earnestly expect from God. It is the proof, the absolute conviction of their reality, that God will do what God said He would do. It is the absolute conviction that we are what God say's we are, the we can do what He say's we can do, and that we have what He say's we have.

Heb. 11:2
2 For by it the elders obtained a good report.
The elders, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and the rest, all had faith and by their faith obtained a good report or testimony. They all had faith in Him who created the world. They all pleased God by their faith. Every single one of them had faitht hat pleased God and acted on that faith, even though what they seen in the natural, may have been contrary to what God said.

Heb. 11:3
3 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.

When God made the worlds, when He framed them, He spoke and created something out of nothing. We have all heard the expression “ to make something out of nothing”, that is exactly what God did in the beginning. The visible things that you and I see today, the light, trees, stars, rivers, ect., were not made of things that we can see and feel.

Gen. 1:1-4

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Look at verse 3. God spoke and said “ Let there be light” and there was light. One can see that God means what He say's and say's what He means. So when God speaks His word always accomplishes that for which it was sent. We can start to see what Jesus was meaning in the 22 verse of Mark 11, when He said have faith in God or translated literally the faith of God or the God kind of faith.
The word that God spoke was actually Jesus ( see John 1:1-4). He spoke the Word and it became what you and I know as light. I have heard a very good explanation of what happened here said like this - “ God spoke, Jesus ( the Word) carried Gods plan, and the Holy Spirit performed the action.
God is a God of faith. He has one language and that is the language of faith. The only thing that pleases God is faith. Everything else that you and I do must be done in faith. I know of three places in the bible where is say's “ the just shall live by faith”. There are many more that lead you to that conclusion, such as “ man shall not live by bread alone”. There is only one way to please God and that is by faith. In Heb. 11:6 it say's that without faith its impossible to please God.
In the last part of Mark 11:22 we find this statement or more specifically its a command, “ Have faith in God”. We have said a little about this already but there is more to be said. He said this after the astonishment of the disciples at the fig tree that was dried up after Jesus cursed it. He told them on replying to them to “ Have faith in God”. As previously stated a more literal translation of this statement would be to – have the faith of God- or – the God kind of faith. Then after He said this, He explained to them how faith works and how to have this kind of faith ( see Mark 11: 22-24). This we will get into in a later part of this study.
Now in light of what we have just learned lets go back to Gen. 1:3 and take a little closer look.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
So we see here that God spoke and it came to pass. The question that must be asked did He doubt what He said? The answer is simply a resounding NO! Of course God didn't doubt when He spoke. Someone might well say, that God is God and when He speaks it happens. After all God cannot fail.
I would then have to agree and say that they were correct. If that is the case, then why is it so hard to believe that God will let His word fail. This is the exact reason the Jesus spoke to the disciples and made the statement of “ have faith in God”. He wants you and I to be able to speak and not to doubt. After all we are made in His image and in His likeness. We are His children, adopted and ingrafted into His Holy family. God doesn't doubt, and He doesn't want you to either. God knows when He speaks it happens. He wants us to believe it, so we will be able to believe Him and prosper in everything that we do. To further His kingdom. If He didn't want us to know all of this He would have never put it in His Holy written word. He would have never said such a thing in Marks Gospel, through the unction of the Holy Ghost. He would not have ever have spoken so much on the subject of faith.
To further illustrate what we are speaking about here, lets look at us, when we received Jesus as our Lord and Savior of our life. After hearing about Him, we accepted what He has done for us, and confessed Him out loud. When we did this, we received and accepted it by faith. In other words we took ownership of the redemption He has provided for us and our place in heaven that He paid so much to obtain for us. We knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that He suffered and died in our place, for us, and that He rose again from the dead, by the power of God. He did this all for you and me and everyone who would believe onHim, even the whole world. We knew that He saved us from the wrath to come.
To some people this is what they would call saving faith. That is true, but in reality it takes just as much faith to be saved and accept the salvation that is offered as it does, for you and I to accept any other blessing of God. The difference is that while it is realitively easy to accept Christ and what He has done for us. It can be a bit more difficult to grasp the fact that God wants to take care of you. That He wants you well, not sick. That He wants your bills paid, that He doesn't want you broke and struggling to make it, with almost no hope to catch up. Its hard in this country atleast to realize the fact that God wants to bless humanity and will if only we ( as humans ) would only let Him. He wants to bless us, not only because He loves us, but also so we can be a blessing to others and show forth His goodness.
Its more difficult to grasp the fact that God wants to bless us in this country and in cuntries similar to ours, for the reason that, we as a whole have been taught to look towards currcumstances and not toward Him. God wants us to look at Him in all things. I will be the first to admit that when everything seems to be falling apart, and what ever it is that I need from God at that moment won't happen, that, the particular scripture or part of Gods word doesn't mean me, that it is hard to hang on to that and thank Him for it. Its hard to hold on to the promises of God when the world, the devil and everthing else is staring at you and laughing, saying, “ It ain't gonna work this time” or “ thats not true, thats not for you”. Its hard to look at the promises of God when everything looks the opposite of what He say's, but we need to hold on anyway. We need to choose to believe Him no matter what, no matter if the sky is falling in on our head and no one elses. We must simply choose to believe God no matter what, over everything else. We need to labor to enter that rest of God, that place of quiet knowing, that we have ceased from our works and have begun to let Him work, and know that He is gonna work on our behalf, not because we have done anything very good, but because He loves us.
You see somewhere, someplace you and I heard about Jesus and what He has done for us. As we heard this word, you and I started to believe it, and then acted on that belief. How ever the word came we heard it and it began to take root in us, as it took root in us we believed it. We just didn't think to ourselves one day, that maybe this thing I choose to call God, has sent His Son here to die in my place. I don't know why He would do that or if He has a Son, but maybe? None of us didn't do that, we heard the word of God. We heard the word of God concerning Jesus and Salvation and it produced in us the desire to ask forgivess and turn around and face God and do things His way.
Basically speaking, we heard the word of God and acted on that word. We trusted that it was true, and acted like it was so even though it didn't seem like it from where we stood. So as Rom. 10:17 say's “ So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God”. This scripture not only applies to salvation, but also to all the promises of God. A person cannot have faith for what God has for them, unless he or she have read or heard a promise that He has given us from His word.

4 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.
In the first four verses of Gen. 4 we find the story of Cain and Abel. We find their birth and the offerings that they both made to God.
Gen. 4:1-7

1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.
2 And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.
4 And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering:
5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
6 And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?
7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.
Cain and Abel both brought an offering to the Lord. And we can see from scripture that God was pleased with Abel's offering, but that He wasn't with Cain's. The reason for this is that Abel brought his to Him in faith, while his brother Cain did not. We know this from reading the scriptures. You see Abel came to God in faith, with the firstlings or first born of the flock. Did you happen to notice that firstlings is plural, meaning more than one.
Abel, in faith, as an act of worship and honor to God, took the first born of all his flock and offered them up to God, gave them back to Him. I want to state that more can be seen here than we are going to go into at this time. He ( Abel) came to God in faith ( without faith it is impossible to please God), knowing that even though he was giving so much, that God was going to take care of him.
If one is to look close, they will see that in the last clause of verse 4, you see that Abel also offered the fat. This is important, though it doesn't look like any really big deal. You see under the law, the people were required to givve the fat as a part of their offering. We see this in the book of Lev. 3:3-5. I used thes scriptures to illustrate the point but there are many other places you may study this out.
I have included, for the purpose of explanation of this, both the Smith's Bible Dictionary and the Easton's Dictionary expository definitions of what the fat was used for in offerings.

Smith's Bible Dictionary,
Fat-- The Hebrews distinguished between the suet or pure fat of an animal and the fat which was intermixed with the lean. Nehe.8:10 – Certain restrictions were imposed upon then inn reference to the former; some parts of the suet, viz., about the stomach, the entrails, the kidneys, and the tail of a sheep, which grows to an excessive size in many eastern countries, and produces a large quantity of rich fat, were forbinden to be eaten in the case of animals offered to Jehovah in sacrifice. Levit. 3:3,9,17;7:3,23- The ground of the prohibiton was that the fat was the richest part of the animal, and therfore belonged to Him. Lev. 3:16 – The burning of the fat of sacrifices was particularly specified in each kind of offering.

Eaton's Illustrated Bible Dictionary
fat – ( Heb. Heleb) denotes the richest part of the animal, or the fattest of the flock, in the account of Abel's sacrifice ( Gen. 4:4). It sometimes denotes the best of any production ( Gen. 45:18, Num. 18:12; Ps. 81:16;Ps.147:14). The fat of sacrifices was to be burned ( Lev. 3:9-11; Lev. 4:8; Lev. 7:3; Num. 18:17; Compare Ex. 29:13-22; Lev. 3:3-5).
You can see here that the fat was the best and Abel knew that. So not only did he give God the best out of the flock, but also the best out of the individual animals. The fat belongs to the Lord, Abel knew this and we see from this action that he knew something about the subject of faith. Please remember that this was many hundreds of years before the Law came through Moses. Abel knew something of faith, he knew something of worship and what pleased God. He knew something about how God works.

Gen. 4:5-7
5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
6 And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?
7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.
Here we see that Cain's offering was not respected of God, because he did not offer it in faith. In Romans we find that “ whatever is not of faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23).
So basically what God is saying to Cain is, if he would have gave his offering in faith, it would have been accepted. Even after God dealt with him of this fact, Cain still couldn't accept it and ended up killing his brother. If he would have believed God then he woud have ruled over the sin that was waiting for him. If we look in Gen. 3:1-6 we can see how satan decieved Eve first through manipulation of the word and that caused unbelief and lust, resulting in the treason that happened so long ago.

Heb. 11:5

5 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 this testimony, that he pleased God.
Unfortunately, we know very little of Enoch, but what we do know speaks volumes about his character and his relationship with God. We know that the bible say's that he walked with God and was not for God took him ( Gen. 5:24). In Heb. 11:5 we see that he didn't die, but was taken and didn't see death and that he pleased God. Then over in Jude 14 we see that he prophesied and that in itself takes faith to do.

Enoch is one of two men in the bible to not see death. The other is Elijah. Both of these men knew the Lord so well and intimately that they did not see death. They had tremendous faith in Him who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all we can ask or think. Both of these men of faith pleased God. The bible say's that before Enoch was taken, he had this testimony, that he pleased God.

God wants all of His children to believe Him and act on, and live by His word. Thus, the word's “ man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”. He wants us to put our full assurance and confidence in Him. To trust Him in all things so completely that we have the victory alway's in this life. To look to Him and Him only in all things. To lovingly believe Him. The Bible say's to “let God be true and every man a liar” ( Rom. 3:4). He wants us to stop looking to and believing the currcumstances, and life and look to Him, who is the Rock we stand on, the air we breath, the one who in His great love for us, gave us His Son, to be our punishment, and ransom price. Most of our problems lie in unbelief of Gods ability and willingness to deliver us from our currcumstances and problems. That is most of the time. We receive the word with joy, but at the first sign of things getting tough we drop the word and run. After we do that we usually end up in a huge mess of some kind or other. We need to believe God at all costs.

I challenge you today, to find a problem in your life. It can be anything. Then pray and ask God to show you a scripture or scriptures that cover that problem. Then with all reverence pray and tell your problems about what God has to say. Its okay to remind God of what He has said. Its okay, to tell the devil that Gods word say's this and you have to go and leave me alone. This is the challenge and it will not fail. Even if things don't look like its gonna change or they seem to get worse, don't let up. Stand in faith, and keep thanking God for whatever it is that you have asked for.