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Epistle to the Hebrews was a warning to the Jewish Christians against backsliding
to Judaism. It was also a call to persevere in their faith in Christ to the
end. We said earlier that the author mentioned three things in his exhortation:
(1) Faith; (2) Hope and (3) Love. In chapter 11, the author would deal with the
whole subject of faith. Many Old Testament saints were brought up to encourage
the believers to emulate their faith as they pursued God. Verse 1 appears to
restate what the author had said in Hebrews 10:22, “let us draw near with a
sincere heart in full assurance of faith …” He was in fact saying, real faith in God will result in full assurance concerning the
promises of God.
In Hebrews 11:1-2, he dealt with the nature and the significant features of faith.
Two words that must be highlighted are: assurance and conviction. The word
“assurance” has to do with being confident. Hence, the first basic nature of
faith is assurance. Faith gives assurance to the believers’ hope. It is being
confident that future things that are yet unseen will truly happen as God had
said.
Secondly,
it is about a conviction. Faith is the basis and the foundation on which the
believers’ hope rests on. Faith convinces the believers and provides the
ability to perceive and accept the invisible realities of life. And God
approved of such faith. How do we know? We see in verse 2 that the Old
Testament saints found their approval with God because of their faith.
In
verse 3, the author dealt with faith and creation. Here, the author pointed out
that faith enables believers to accept and understand that God brought the
world into existence by His Word. Faith gives us the ability to believe that
the visible world was brought into existence by the invisible thing, the Word
of God. Let’s exercise faith for it’s our assurance of things hoped for and the
conviction of things unseen. Let’s go for it!
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