Faith's Beginnings

I began a series of teachings at New Life on the topic:  "The Journey of Faith".  My goal is to look at Faith in its many faceted forms by looking at the lives of those listed in Hebrews 11 and the stories in the Old Testament.

Hebrews 11 is known as the faith chapter…and that’s because it begins with this BIG PICTURE statement about what Faith is…

Hebrews 11:1 (ESV)
¹  Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

·        

     Faith is NOT a set of religious beliefs, and I’ll add to it, Faith is NOT being religious.

Hebrews 11:3 (ESV)
³  By faith we understand ….

·       

     Faith is not just hoping that what we believe is correct? 

·        Faith creates knowledge, understanding, reason.

·        Our Faith is what gives us the ability to THINK, To REASON, To UNDERSTAND…

A lot of people think that to have Faith means we suspend our reason, our doubts, or questions, and we simply “Believe”…  We all know that doesn’t work.

·       

    Faith is in a Real Person, and the knowledge that this Person is Trustworthy.

SO, That’s why in this passage, the writer of Hebrews says,

Hebrews 11:6 (ESV)
⁶  And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

·        

    Faith starts with KNOWING God is real, and then having absolute confidence in what he says he’ll do.

That’s CRUCIAL…

·       

          Faith is not an intellectual belief system, it is confidence, trust in a Person.

Hebrews 11:1 (ESV)
¹  Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Faith is what I as a believer “stand upon”.  BUT to do that, we need the confidence that what we see in Scripture is truth, and this is the real issue  that we need to start with… AND, it’s not without controversy.

 Faith’s Beginning

Hebrews 11:3 (ESV)
³  By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

Hebrews 11 begins with a statement about Creation…

·        Faith Creates Understanding...that

• ·        The Universe Was Created
• ·        The Means of that Creation was the Word of God – ex nihilo – from God’s  Word alone
• ·         What we see didn’t come from things we see visibly.

There’s no doubt that the first Faith Statement goes back to the very beginning of Scripture and the story of Creation.

The Creation Story is found in Genesis 1, and is perhaps one of the most attacked portions of scripture by skeptics...SO,

The first question that I want to ask is “Why is it important to our Faith that creation be understood?

Hebrews 11:3 (ESV)
³  By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God...

For a lot of people the story of Creation doesn’t seem to stand the test of Science.

"The most popular naturalistic explanation about the origin of the universe is the big bang hypothesis. At its simplest, this view suggests that the universe emerged rapidly from a hot, dense state several billions of years ago from a source that involved an explosion that kept going through billions and billions of years with life evolving from that single cell to the complexity we see today…" 

This view, or some variation of it, is widely held as the most logical scientific view.

Stand in a science classroom at most modern universities and this is what you will hear.

If you proclaim your belief in the creation story – that God created the universe and everything in it, and you will find yourself mocked and ridiculed…at best.

YET…The key words in this controversy are “Theory”, “Hypothesis”

Theories or Hypotheses are the work of science.  They propose possible explanations for various observable issues.

HERE’S where WE must begin with the controversy of Creation vs Evolution.

The Big Bang is a theory about how the universe came into being, and so is the argument for an Intelligent Designer – God created.

These exist because the postulate an idea on how something might have happened, without being able to say it was observed.

Obviously, there are lots of people who do not believe the Creation account in Genesis 1.  They say it’s nothing more than Religious teaching.

And the argument is that the Big Bang is a “Scientific Theory”. 

Once someone makes the distinction between Science and Faith, they can seek to alienate without having to deal with differing Theories.

The quote I put up there before had a different ending.

“there are several differing versions of the big bang idea, with disagreement among the versions. As one scientist has pointed out, there are many problems with this view.”

“Big bang cosmology is probably as widely believed as has been any theory of the universe in the history of Western civilization. It rests, however, on many untested, and in some cases untestable, assumptions. Indeed, big bang cosmology has become a bandwagon of thought that reflects faith as much as objective truth.” (G. Burbidge, “Why only one big bang?” Scientific American 266:2, 1992, p. 96.)

The Biblical account of Genesis 1 makes it clear:  God created everything by his word alone.

The Creation Story in Genesis made into a video using the Bible Version, “the Message” as the Text.

Tomorrow we'll come back to the topic and finish this out...

Peace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ean_aMNkAgM