Faith has been cynically described as the ability to believe something we know is not true. The Bible definition is much different. In Hebrews we read that faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”, and we are also informed that “without faith, it is impossible to please God.” It is not sufficient to go through the motions of religion so that we will be safe in case it might be true. Nor is it a satisfactory condition to be simply credulous and accept what we are told blindly, without inquiring into the truth or falsity of the matter. A large proportion of the people who attend church today fall into one or the other of these categories. The studying and deciding on the truth of all matters is left up to the priest or minister and the singing of praise, to the choir. The only real participation many people have, beside their physical presence, is their monetary contribution.
From earliest times, the people who pleased God were those who had faith in His promises. Romans 4: 3 explains that “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto Him for righteousness”. It took great faith for Abraham to leave his country and travel to an unknown destination with all his possessions, and his action would, no doubt, be considered foolish by the moon worshipers of Ur. His faith had to endure through the long years while he waited for the son that God had promised him. He was seventy-five years of age when God promised to make of him a great nation and one hundred years old when Isaac, the child of promise, was born.
Abraham was as far away from the time of Christ as we are — only he was looking forward, while we look backward, but we have the words of Jesus in John that “Abraham rejoiced to see my day and saw it and was glad.
What faith Abraham must have had when, after all the long years of waiting, he was told to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. God had told Abraham that in Isaac should his seed be called. At that time when men had never seen or heard of a person raised from the dead, Abraham trusted God, “accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead.”
Noah had real Faith
The kind of faith that caused Noah to spend a sizeable portion of his life building an ark on dry ground, and that decided Moses to renounce the wealth and prestige that could have been his in Egypt and to identify himself with a slave people, was based on solid conviction. They both “endured as seeing the invisible” and no doubt the best that was said of them at the time was that they were throwing away the substance for the shadow. Their contemporaries, who found pleasure in the esteem of the great men of their day, have all sunk into the oblivion of the past. while they are still shining lights in the great purpose of God.
An abiding faith rests on a solid foundation of belief, and that belief, in turn, must be based on facts. When we know our Bible well, we find ample reason to have complete faith in God, and the more we know of His purpose and the way it has been carried out, the stronger our faith becomes.
There is nothing we can give to God to show our appreciation of the many things He has bestowed on us, except thanksgiving, obedience, love and faith. It is pleasing to God if we give some of our material possessions to help our fellow man but God is not “worshipped with men’s hands as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things”.
During His ministry, when Jesus was going about healing the sick, making the blind to see and the deaf to hear, and raising the dead, He constantly demanded faith as a prior requisite to the miracle.
Cast away his garment
In Mark 10: 46-52 we have the record of blind Bartimeus who was so anxious to get near to Jesus in order that he might receive his sight that he cast away his garment. That, in itself, was an act of faith. Had he not been sure that he would be able to see, he would certainly have hung on to his garment, since he would not have been able to locate it again. Jesus confirmed this when he said, “Go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole.” He used this same expression on a number of occasions. Mark 5: 34, 10:52, Luke 8: 48, 17: 19.
Luke 5: 17-20 tells of the man who was sick of the palsy and was lowered through a hole in the roof so that he might come before Jesus and be healed. Though the crowd was so dense they could not reach Jesus in the regular way, they were determined to do so, even though it meant making a hole in the roof and gaining an entrance in that manner. “And when He saw their faith, He said unto him, Man thy sins are forgiven thee”.
Without faith, the two blind men who came to Jesus crying “Thou son of David, have mercy on us” would never have regained their sight. Jesus asked them point blank, “Believe ye that I am able to do this?” and they replied, “yea, Lord”. If their answer had not been true, they would have remained blind, for Jesus touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith, be it unto you”.
A natural result of true faith is action. Those who believed Jesus could heal them and desired to be healed, sought Him out and begged for mercy. When we realize that we are blind to the opportunity for salvation, deaf to the promises of God and dead in trespasses and sins, and that our only hope is to come to Jesus and beg for mercy, then He will heal us if we have faith in Him. At such a time it behooves us to have a full measure of faith so that if He says “According to your faith be it unto you,” we will receive healing in its fullest measure.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One