Summer Blockbusters: Field of Dreams
Summer Blockbusters • Sermon • Submitted
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· 6 viewsWe find the basis of strength when we live in faith.
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“People will come Ray...”
Ray Consella’s entire life has culminated to this moment. He’s never done anything crazy in his entire life. Up to this point, Ray and his wife Annie and daughter Karen have lived in Iowa on a farm planting corn. One night while working out in the fields, Ray heard a voice say, “If you build it, he will come.” After hearing the voice several times, Ray finally conceded, plowed a majority of his corn crop and built a state of the art baseball field in the middle of Iowa spending all of their savings.
After many months of waiting, Ray’s hero Shoeless Joe Jackson comes back from the dead to play baseball on his field. Only Ray, Annie, and Karen can see Joe and the rest of the ball players. Everyone else in Ray’s life think he is crazy. Ray has no money and no idea how to make ends meet but he continues to walk in the belief that there is a reason for all of this. After listening to the voice twice more, Ray is faced with the idea of continuing his dream in hopes that things turn around or lose his farm.
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Few movies capture acts of faith like Field of Dreams. While this movie is not based on Christianity, many elements of belief ring true.
Does living out in faith make sense to others or even ourselves?
Does walking in faith mean that we must sacrifice?
Is faith in God enough or is there more?
Today, I want to introduce the concept of faith to you in the most basic form and continue this subject next week. More people miss this more than anything else in their life. Let’s read the passage today.
1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
2 For by it the men of old gained approval.
3 By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.
The writer of Hebrews does not define faith for the reader. He simply explains what faith looks like to the believer.
6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.
Faith is trusting God.
Faith is believing that God made the world.
Faith is believing that God will fulfill His plan even if we don’t see it happening in front of us.
Question of the day: “How do I explain to others what faith is all about?”
You don’t have to sound obscure. You can tell people concretely why you choose to have faith.
1. Faith is seeing what is unseen.
1. Faith is seeing what is unseen.
In verse 1, the writer claims that faith is the “assurance” or “substance” of what is unseen.
People of God live completely sure of what they are believing the more and more they place their faith in God.
The Greek translation of this word (hypostasis) means ‘fullest confidence”.
By faith, we are sure of what is eternal but by hope we are confident that we shall have them.
Conviction is better translated to “evidence”.
The evidence of faith demonstrates convincing proof to the believer. The soul is seeing what the eye cannot see.
“Things not seen”
The whole invisible and spiritual world. We aren’t stimulated to sense truth based on the testimony of God, delivered to us in the writings of the apostles and the prophets.
We don’t base our faith on the reasonableness of what has been revealed as truth. We believe not in what we see, but what we have been revealed.
By faith we place our eternal life on the bare word of God and know this is reasonable because we know God and have experienced His son Jesus.
Pay attention to children in a PreK or Kindergarten. No matter what happens in their classroom, the kids will know their teacher. The kids don’t believe they are in class because there are crayons, desks, rugs that they gather on to read, PE, Music, or any other thing. The students aren’t stimulated by the instruments of learning. Children grow because of the relationship that they have with their teacher.
What am I trying to help you understand.? A person who believes in God through Jesus is not going to Heaven because they believe in the evidence of God’s existence or have had their prayers answered. The soul is not stimulated by the carnal world.
9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;
31 They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”
13 These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.
12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,
You aren’t saved because you’ve seen anything with your eyes. You are saved when you believe.
Why do we have to believe without seeing?
Our eyes will lead us astray.
Socially, people will see one thing and another the next day and another the next day and so on and so on.
Stimulating yourself with seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting are tools of the devil. He tempted Jesus’ physical sense because he knew that he could not touch anything else.
Stimulating yourself with seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting are tools of the devil. He tempted Jesus’ physical sense because he knew that he could not touch anything else.
Believing through sight is temporary.
When men and women love each other with their eyes and nothing else, they are unable to continue to marriage when their eyes aren’t stimulated anymore. It’s simple logic. When we fall in love with cars because of how pretty they are, we will not be able to continue that love over time. The same thing happens with homes.
God is not interested in being your flavor of the month. He wants to be your whole life.
Faith without sight is the most logical way that a person can live according to scripture. Quit using earthly tools to understand Heavenly truths. Faith is the only way to get there.
2. Our faith is commended and grounded on God’s word.
2. Our faith is commended and grounded on God’s word.
In verses 2 and 3, we learn an amazing truth.
“For by it” - Faith has the power to see and realize the unseen, for the experience of the fathers proves it. ()
“The elders obtained a good report” - The saints of the OT, many of whose name appear in this chapter bore witness in the victory of their faith over all obstacles, and their characters and deeds as people of faith were recorded in Scripture.
“good report” means “were testified of”. Not only did men give testimony, but God gave testimony to their faith.
The earlier elders had their patience exercised for a long period of life: those later, in sharper afflictions. Many things that they hoped for and did not see came to pass but not during their lifetime.
I don’t know if there is a Hall of Fame in Heaven but I know for a fact that God knows every act of sacrifice done in His name and testifies about it!
With spiritual intelligence, Christians understand the fact of the worlds creation by God, though it was not seen.
The natural world is not able to teach this truth but it confirms the truth when sought out by faith.
“Worlds” - literally “ages”; all that exists in time and space, visible and invisible, present and eternal.
“framed” - “fitly formed and consolidated”
Small and large was put together.
“by the word of God” - Not the personal word “logos” spoken of in , but the spoken word (rhema)
God literally spoke everything into existence with materials not made by human hands.
Not as in the case of all things which we see reproduced from previously existing and visible materials.
I have always dreamed of being a “Mr. Fix It” but sadly I’m more of a “Mr. Breaks It” or a “Mr. Doesn’t Know What He’s Doing”. There are people who can build or fix anything and have the ability to see something that others can’t see. What about Artists who can take different materials and turn it into something beautiful?
What about the Artist who took nothing and made something? Does anyone have that ability? Who wants to rival the master of the universe who place the mountains in place as His footstool? The God who put the oceans together? The God who invented music, the quadratic formula, the sunrise/sunset, the blue whale, and 7 continents?
God used materials that we can’t buy at Home Depot. He said it out loud and it existed. He’s creative and alive to say what He wants into existence which is why we must take Him seriously when He declared the church as the bride of Christ.
There is no plan B with God. Theres only His plan every time.
Quit trying to understand Him. He’s unexplainable. Just believe in Him and follow!
3. Faith is the avenue to pleasing God.
3. Faith is the avenue to pleasing God.
6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.
“without” - “apart from faith”
“to please” - “It is impossible to please God at all”.
Works done to please God without faith have no purpose. They are actually considered sin.
Worshippers must believe “once for all”:
That God is the true self-existing Jehovah, the source of all being, though he sees Him not as being “invisible”.
This passage implies that Enoch (4-5) had not been favored with visible appearances of God, yet he believed in God’s being and in God’s moral government.
God rewards those who earnestly seek (strive in agony) Him in faith by walking with them and providing a covering forever.
Faith is what places the person in God’s presence.
I know too many people that think that they are too far gone to make God smile. Instead of simply sitting with Him, they will try to impress Him by serving the poor and taking care of the widowed in their community.
- Or they do the opposite. They just quit trying and do whatever they want.
In my opinion, there is nothing worse for a believer to fall into than this behavior. They determine their relationship with God based on a hope to be noticed in their deeds when all God wants is their heart.
38 Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home.
39 She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word.
40 But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me.”
41 But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things;
42 but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
Jesus is satisfied when we are with Him and not simply just trying to do things for Him.
Do you spend too much time trying to impress Him when He wants you to simply sit with Him?
Do you spend too much time trying to impress Him when He wants you to simply sit with Him?