Faith Is Based On What Is Not Seen

I ask you this, what's not seen? Well, as he develops this, one of the things that's not seen is creation. You do recognize that is so often an issue. Have you, I would challenge you to do this sometime. Just simply read your Bible from Genesis to Revelation with a pen in hand and mark every single place in your Bible where it talks about God being the creator. You will be inundated. There are so many, it is mind boggling. Why do we believe that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing? Because God's word says so, and it says so over and over and over and over again. And were you there and did you see it? No, you did not. What is not seen? I'll tell you what's not seen. You didn't see the flood. I'll tell you what else is not seen. You didn't see Sodom and Gomorrah. You weren't there when that big fish swallowed Jonah. You weren't there when Mary conceived a child by the Holy Spirit. You were not there when Christ was miraculously conceived. You were not there when he was born. You didn't see the angels. You didn't see the star in the sky. You didn't see that. You didn't see him die. You didn't see him rise from the dead. You don't see him now. You don't see God the Father. You don't see the Spirit. You don't see the Son. I doubt any of you have seen angels, and if you have, you didn't know it. The fact is there is a kingdom. There is a city. There is a country, and you haven't seen it. Neither did Abraham. That flood, Noah hadn't seen it. And you know what? Even though it's already come, we haven't seen it. This is just a fact. What haven't we seen? You haven't seen God's ledger that says that your sins are forgiven. You have never seen or audibly heard from God that you yourself specifically are pardoned and in the favor of God. You haven't had that. We've never visibly or audibly been able to confirm the forgiveness of our sins. The fact is faith embraces what is not seen, the unseen, realities, fullest conviction of the truth and the reality and the certainty of these things, the truth of all the salvation blessings. Listen, what are the salvation blessings? You ever seen heaven? You ever seen paradise? Have you ever seen hell? How do you know hell's real? A lot of people deny hell. A lot of people deny that the creation happened through God, creating out of nothing. A lot of people really doubt there was ever a worldwide flood. All you have to do is go down to the streets. You will be in a discussion about that. Somebody will come up to you and say, if God's real, where is he? Folks, faith is based on what is not seen. We recognize that reality unseen by the eye, but the truth of all of this, the truth of our salvation, the truth of what we hope for, the truth of a new body, the truth that we are going to behold God face to face, you haven't received that yet. You haven't seen it. You haven't been shown, and this is it. This is it. Which of us have seen a body raised from the grave? Up from the grave, he arose. Who saw that? Do you see that? And you know what? Even though some people did see some of these things that we talk about, that we read about, some people did see him. We didn't see him. We didn't see the tomb sealed, and we didn't see the seal unsealed, and we didn't see the risen Jesus walk on the beach and cook some fish or appear in the room and say peace. We didn't stick our fingers in the wounds. None of us did that. Isn't this amazing? You're here today, and you keep coming back to this place. Why is that? That's a very odd thing, don't you think? It's because you are basically being motivated, and you are being moved by unseen realities. You know what faith is? It's the evidence satisfactory to the mind that God has declared certain things to be true in his word, and we read those things by faith. God's declarations in this book are, to my mind, a more convincing proof than some science book that shows a bunch of ape. You know, the little ape growing into the bigger ape, and then somehow he gets hairy, and well, the hair drops off, and then all of a sudden, it's a man. You see, what God has written in this book, that's where our faith is based. By faith, I feel, and it's not just, I say I believe these things. The reality is that faith obeys, faith moves. Faith is prompted by what it says it believes. There is a convincing, there is a conviction that moves us, our actions, our words, and we feel and act the reality of what's not seen. That's what faith is, so think about it. Let's take 1038, which is basically what's quoted from Habakkuk. Let's take the definition in 11.1 and transpose it over to 10.38. You see what I'm saying. My righteous one shall live by faith. Well, let's put the definition of faith in there that we find in 11.1. My righteous one shall live by a conviction of things not seen. And if he shrinks back from living like someone convinced and convicted of what is not seen, if he shrinks back from that, God has no pleasure in such a person. Brethren, do you feel this? That's really what this is saying to us. God sees us when we are confident. God sees us when we make decisions in this life based on what we know about him, what he has said in his word, what his promises are. He sees when we see what this world can't see and we act on it. And you know what? God is pleased when we do that and he is displeased when we do not do that. You know what God expects us to do? He expects us to take him on his word. That's precisely what he does. And he really does take pleasure when people live with a confidence in things that they cannot see. He takes pleasure when they embrace and live their lives based on things that are found in the word of God. Though we really can't see that reality with our eyes, yet we live with confidence that what we read in God's word is true. This is faith. I make decisions in my life, not just based on what I can see. I make decisions based on what God has said in that word and I cannot see the God who says these words and I cannot see coming to fruition the promises. There are many promises he gives in this book that I do not see the fulfillment of yet. I don't see it. And so they're promised, but I don't see it. And I live in light of it. See, this is faith, a confidence, a conviction about things hoped for and about things not seen. So, let me just say this. Faith puts God to the test. The unseen God, that's what faith does. Now listen, you know what? We have minds. God has given us the ability to think. We have developed things like statistics, mathematical probability. We can think about things logically and God never wants us to shut down. Faith is not mindless. But listen, faith comes into play oftentimes where human logic fails. God often tells us to believe him for things that logically speaking, when it just comes to science, science has to do with the scientific method. It has to do with observation. God is often asking us to believe him for things that science never observes because it just simply isn't humanly observable. Nobody has observed, nobody alive today has observed the flood. Nobody alive today has observed creation. That's a fact. Folks, faith takes us to places where the fact is statistics and probability and all of it break down, where human observation break down, where science fails, experience. We can say in our experience, I never experienced that, but God still says it's true. My experience is not the end all. Where that fails, where my experience fails, where statistics fail. Faith takes this unseen God at his word. It believes promises though unfulfilled. It relies on trust in who God is.