001: Assurance of Things Hoped For

Greetings and salutations friends. Here’s the latest…

In an attempt to get back into writing about theology, Christianity, and culture I've decided to embark on a little project. Every day the Bible App chooses, how or why I don't know, a 'Verse of the Day'. I've been getting an alert on my phone recently with this verse as a way to remind myself to think about God's word and engage with it more regularly. Most of my thoughts pertaining to faith and culture get shared on The Master Class podcast but I miss writing, so much.

So I had an idea, what if I used the 'Verse of the Day' as a writing prompt. What if I read it and then pondered about it throughout my day, I wrote down what I was thinking, and at the end of the day compiled those thoughts into something unfinished but at least semi-coherent? That could be a thing right?

And so here we are. Entry number 001 in this new project.

PS. I know there is a ‘Verse of the Day’ every day…I’d like to say ‘yea, I’ll do this every day’ but I can’t promise that. Which is a bit of a segue into today’s topic. Happy reading.

PPS. I’ll put recommended listening at the end of these posts as much as possible because music is wonderful.

Assurance of things hoped for

”Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11.1

Assurance means ‘a positive declaration intended to give confidence or certainty’ or ‘a promise’. So we could read this verse as “now faith is the confident declaration of things hoped for, the certainty of things not seen.” When we have faith, when we say we believe in something, we are exercising our ability to hold on to the promises that God has made to us through the Bible.

This may seem like hocus-pocus to some, perhaps even a little bit of a ‘name it and claim it’ sort of vibe. Admittedly, the idea ‘that if we believe something hard enough, for long enough, it will come true’ is indeed ludicrous. Luckily, this is not the sort of self-belief, positive-thinking, ‘if you can dream it, you can do it’ attitude that the writer of Hebrews is talking about here.

If we dig back into the context of this passage and what the writer was discussing just before this verse, we can see that the opposite is in fact true. The writer details the repetitive ineffectiveness of the Jewish sacrificial system over the centuries it was instituted. People across generations made the same sacrifices, the same offerings, engaged in the same ritualistic cleansing, and partook in the same festivals, meals, and celebrations all to land at the exact same spot…no matter what they did, how well they did it, or how hard they tried to do it correctly, every single one of them fell short of the perfection that God demanded by his Law.

Which was the whole point.

The Law was given as a way to force us to recognize our individual and collective state of depravity. It was meant to serve as a constant reminder that we can’t climb that mountain on our own. In fact, the act of trying to climb that mountain on our own is proof that we haven’t understood our true position before God. (This illustration comes from JI Packer in his book "Rediscovering Holiness", which I highly recommend.) We can’t get there on our own. We are at the mercy of God.

God, as it turns out, happens to be full of mercy.

Which is one of the many factors that lead him to send Jesus to earth, to live, die, and rise from the dead. In this way, God was able to fulfill the requirements of the Law that proved impossible for mankind to adhere to and offer humanity a second chance at being with him for eternity.

“For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” Hebrews 10.14

So what does any of this have to do with the original premise of Hebrews 11.1? How does our certainty that God will fulfill his promises differ from people who ‘have faith’ that their favorite sports team will mount the miraculous comeback and win the game in the dying moments? How do we differentiate faith from wishful thinking?

Well, we can start with history. God’s track record is impeccable. Seriously, look it up. What he promises he will do, he does. What he promises he won’t do, he doesn’t do. He is so consistent in his character and integrity that later in Hebrews it says "Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever"(Hebrews 13.8). The hymn ‘Great is Thy Faithfulness’ puts it this way:

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father; There is no shadow of turning with Thee, Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not, As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.

God just doesn’t know how to not follow through. Or put in positive language, God always follows through and because he is eternal, ‘always’ takes on its truest meaning here…always, forever, consistently, never wavering…you get the idea I think.

My earlier question about comparing faith in God and his promises to a sport’s teams ability to miraculously win a game was tongue-in-cheek but let’s take a look at it nonetheless. The differences here are staggering. First we must look at the idea of a promise being made and who is making that promise.

I have faith that I will be with God for eternity because I trust God and what he says. Our history is long enough and deep enough for me to believe Him and his word, even when the world says “You’re an idiot”. My track record with the world says the definition of what an idiot is will change in the next 2-5 years, so I’m not so worried about what the world thinks.

I don’t have faith in sports teams because even saying the phrase “I believe in this team” makes me laugh out loud. A sports team is an organization that exists to make money. They want to sell you tickets, merchandise, and over-priced beer. Teams are made up of fallible people, with varying motivations, skill levels, and competencies. They may make promises, “We’re going to win it all this year!”, but can’t do so with any real conviction because it isn’t in their control. Injuries happen, bad teams beat good teams, people make mistakes, sometimes you don’t run the ball from the 1 yard line with Marshawn Lynch and you lose the Super Bowl because of it.

Comparing faith in God and his promises with those of human beings and their sports organization is a bit like comparing…God with anything else I suppose. Nothing else matches up. He is the only thing capable of withstanding any sort of serious scrutiny when it comes to reliability, honesty, consistency, and letting his yes be his yes and his no be his no. He means what he says and he says what he means. So, as the writer of Hebrews says:

“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” Hebrews 10.23

If God is faithful, if we trust him, if his track record is true, if he is in control of all things, then we can certainly be assured that the things he promises will come true. We can have faith in things not yet seen. We can live with hope that God will work all things together for his good and that ultimately we will be with him forever if we believe.

Recommended Listening

Great is Thy Faithfulness - Shane and Shane

This I Believe (The Creed) - Hillsong Worship