Your Daily Bread

➡ Paul, the voiceover for a ministry called Your Daily Bread, discusses the concept of faith in his latest devotion. He explains that the New Covenant, represented by Jesus, is superior to the Old Covenant, and encourages listeners to embrace it. He emphasizes that salvation is not earned through works, but granted through faith, a principle that has always been true in God’s economy. He concludes by reminding listeners that faith, not works, was the basis of the Old Covenant as well, and that the heroes of Israel’s history lived by faith.
➡ Faith is described as the certainty of things we hope for and the proof of things we can’t see. It’s not just a wishful longing, but a strong belief that gives reality to our hopes. This was demonstrated by people in the Old Testament who, despite not seeing God’s promises fulfilled in their time, lived their lives based on these promises. This exploration of faith encourages us to keep believing, stay strong, and shine our light in the world.

Hello. My name is Paul, and I’m the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God Is Government called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focused discussion will be on what is faith. Hebrews chapter 11 has been called the Hall of Fame, the chapter of the heroes of faith, the honor roll of the Old Testament saints, the Westminster Abbey of Scripture, the faith chapter, and it goes on and on.

All different kinds of names and titles have been given to this most wonderful chapter. The 11th chapter of Hebrews deals with the excellency of faith, the excellency of faith. The subject then is faith. Now, as always, in the mind of the Spirit of God, Scripture fits into the context, and here, no different. This 11th chapter fits most perfectly into the flow of the epistle to the Hebrews. In the first 10 chapters of the book of Hebrews, the writer has been laboring to prove one major point, and that one major point is this.

The New Testament, or the New Covenant, in Jesus’ blood, is in every way superior to the Old Covenant. That is the theme of 10 chapters. Christ is a better priest, with a better sacrifice, by which he sealed a better covenant. And the whole theme of the 10 chapters is to prove Christ better than everything connected with the Old Covenant, and he’s writing to Jews to prove to them that the New Covenant is the best. He says Christ is better than angels, prophets, Moses, Aaron, Joshua. He’s better than everything and anything connected to the Old Covenant.

And periodically, through those 10 chapters, four times already, he has warned the Jews who know this to respond to the New Covenant, while their hearts are still sensitive. Because within the community of Hebrews to which he wrote, there were some intellectually convinced Jews who knew this was true but never had received Christ. And so, four times already, he has warned them to come to Christ, not to turn around and go back to Judaism and thus become apostate. Those who fall away from the truth and are lost forever, he tells them appropriately the New Covenant.

Appropriate the New Covenant. And the 10th chapter closes with a warning to appropriate the New Covenant. To make the New Covenant yours. To step away from Judaism and the temple and the priesthood and all that and come to the New Covenant. Now this brings up this question. How? How do I come to the New Covenant? What do I do? The Jew was so used to a work system, and this was a whole grace system. Works weren’t even involved. How then was he to come to the New Covenant? I mean, there weren’t any sacrifices to make.

There weren’t any particular feasts to observe. There weren’t any ritual washings to go through. There wasn’t any ceremony. There was no circumcision. There wasn’t any memorization of ethics, the law. How then does a man oriented to a work system come to the New Covenant, which is of grace? That’s the question. And the first century Jews saw everything as a matter of works. And even after the writer has shown them this New Covenant, it would have been very easy for them to attempt to merit it or to earn it. You know there are people who do that today, still working very hard to earn salvation under the New Covenant? And they were.

This would have been their natural response. The only method the Jews knew was works. A simple study of the Gospels, for example, makes us realize that the Judaism of the first century was not the supernatural system that had been given by God in the beginning. It was a system that had been twisted into a works system. They had added all kinds of legalistic things to the real system that God gave, which was a faith system. They had come up with the Judaism of the first century, which was a works-righteousness, self-glorification process.

In fact, if you want to know the truth, and here’s a good definition of Judaism in the time of Christ and afterwards, it was nothing but a religious cult built on ethics. It had lost its concept of faith in God. It was a system of ethics. It was a religious cult of an ethical nature. It taught salvation by work. Now such a works system is despised by God. God does not redeem men by works. He didn’t do it in the Old Testament. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.

Works was only a byproduct. God has always redeemed men by faith, and nothing is more offensive to God than people trying to earn their way to heaven. When Jesus died on the cross, the last words he said, It is. What? Finished. There’s nothing to do. No man by his own self-imposed code of ethics ever pleases God. In Ephesians chapter 2, you remember the passage. It’s obvious to us. For by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.

No man is ever redeemed by works, no matter how good you are. In Romans chapter 3, listen to this, verse 20, Therefore, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight. The only thing the law does for you, it says, is give you the knowledge of sin. Righteousness comes apart from the law through Jesus Christ, verses 21 and 22. Verse 27, Where is boasting, then? It is excluded. A man is justified by faith, verse 28, apart from the deeds of the law. God never justified a man on the basis of his works.

Verse 2 of chapter 4 says, If Abraham were justified by works, he hath something of which to glory, but not before God. For what saith the scripture, Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Salvation has always been in God’s economy by faith, not by works. Works always follow legitimate faith. James said, faith without works is his, what, dead. Works are a byproduct of true faith, and so we find that God does not tolerate a self-imposed ethical system as a means to reaching him. Now, if you can’t count on your works, how are you going to reach God? It’s simple, it’s by faith, and that’s exactly what he introduces in verse 38 of chapter 10.

Having established the necessity and the superiority of the new covenant, he says, here’s how to get in on it. And what does he do? Beautiful. He quotes from the book of Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 4. So he quotes their own testament. Verse 38, Now the just shall live, what? By faith. He establishes therefore the principle of apprehension of the new covenant. It is by believing it, simply believing it. Faith is the key, not works. The just shall live by faith. But here comes the warning. If any man draws back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.

We are not of them that draw back unto perdition, but of them that do what? Believe to the saving of the soul. Salvation is a matter of faith or belief. Those two words mean the same thing. Salvation is always by faith. Now we are aware of this. Now, if salvation is by faith, it’s important that they understand what faith is. Do you realise that they were so messed up in works that it was hard for them to even understand their faith? And their first argument would have been, wait a minute, why all of our forefathers used to operate on works? They did the sacrifices, they did the washings, they carried out the ceremonies, they observed the sabbaticals, they went through all of the processes that were Judaism, they got it right down to the nitty-gritty of the law, and they were obedient, etc, etc.

And so in chapter 11 he just lists all the heroes of the history of Israel and starts out every one of them by saying this. By faith. By faith so-and-so did this, by faith so-and-so did that, by faith. And he goes right down the line, Abraham, Sarah, Noah, right on down, Moses, Joshua, Jacob, all of them lived by faith. And you see what he’s saying to them is this, the only way to apprehend the New Covenant is by faith. But don’t get shocked about that. That’s nothing new. That’s the way you apprehended God in the Old Covenant too.

And so it’s important then that he expand on this idea of faith, because they’re so locked into a work system that they can’t see the legitimacy of faith, or the definition of it either, for that matter. And they certainly wouldn’t relate it to the Old Covenant, since they were so locked up in the concept that the Old Covenant was a matter of work. So he wants to expose them to the fact that God has always operated on the basis of faith. Now to begin with, let’s look at the nature of faith, then we’ll see the testimony of faith, then we’ll see the first illustration of faith.

The nature of faith is in verse 1. It says this, Now faith. Here he’s going to define it for them so they will understand what this means. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Now there are two aspects of faith there that are so closely wed that it’s almost impossible to divide them. Those phrases are almost identical, the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. Now that is not, in the purest sense, really a definition of faith. It is more a sharing of some of the characteristics of faith.

It’s more of just a view of what faith is like, rather than an explicit theological definition. Now the word faith is a simple word in the Greek. The word means belief, trust, confidence, faith. And he says, now let’s look at it. This is really simply, oh it’s exciting. He says, faith first of all is the substance of things hoped for. That’s the first thing he says about the nature of faith. It is the substance of things hoped for. You say, but things hoped for don’t have any substance, they’re just hoped for. But faith makes them real.

Now watch that, watch that. The matters of belief are hoped for. What we believe in is what we hope for, and yet faith gives them a present substance. As this chapter shows, in Old Testament times there were many men and women who had nothing but the promises of God to rest on. God said there’s coming a messiah. There’s coming one who will finally take away sin. God said there’s coming a day when Israel shall have its own kingdom, when messiah shall reign, and when the land shall be restored to Israel. God said through Ezekiel that I will sprinkle clean water upon you, make you clean.

I’ll take away the stony heart of flesh. I’ll put within you a heart of flesh. I’ll give you my spirit, God said. I’ll gather you in the land, you’ll have peace and safety. God promised all of that, and they never saw any of that. But they hoped for it. And it is said that every Jewish mother longed to be the mother of messiah. They hoped for that. They hoped for the restoration of Jerusalem when Jerusalem was sacked. And now they’re hoping for greater freedom and liberty in Israel. When Israel is being bombarded by all of the outside pressure of the Arab world, they’re still living in hope.

Now that is what faith is. Faith is living in a hope that is so real, it gives substance to the hope in the present tense. The promises that came to the Old Testament people were so real that even though they never saw them, they based their life on them, sight unseen. All of the Old Testament promises related to the future, but those people acted as if they were in the present tense. They simply took God at his word and lived on the basis of that. They were people of faith, and faith gave substance to what was yet in the future.

Now we say then that faith is not sort of a wistful longing, hoping that something’s going to come to pass in a nebulous tomorrow. Faith is an absolute, utter certainty. And it’s an interesting thing because, you see, it defies everything that is normal. For example, Christian hope, that which we hope for, is belief in God against the world. If we follow the world’s standards, the world’s things which are readily visible to us, we can get some measure of comfort, some measure of prosperity. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of what is faith.

Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].