We stepped away from our Acts series this Sunday — we'll finish Acts by the end of the year — to do something we come back to every few years at The River: return to the fundamentals. Hebrews 6:1 calls them the elementary doctrine of Christ. The kindergarten stuff. The first, second and third grade stuff that all of us need to know.
That matters because believers get into the weeds. We argue about things that don't change our walk, don't change our faith, don't change anything — while the non-negotiables sit unexamined. Hebrews lists them: repentance from dead works, faith toward God, instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, eternal judgment. Last week we took repentance. This week: faith.
Let the Bible Interpret the Bible
Here's a study habit worth keeping for life. When you read something in Scripture and think, what exactly does that mean? — look for the place Scripture defines it. Take a verse out of context and you can make it say almost anything. Read a few chapters further and you often find the definition sitting right there.
That's exactly the case here. Hebrews 6 says faith toward God is foundational. Hebrews 11:1 tells us what it is: now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Which rules a lot of things out. Faith is not manifesting — a football player recently said he was manifesting himself winning the game, and that idea is everywhere now. Faith is not positivity. Faith is not believing the best. Faith is not even faith in faith. Biblical faith says: whatever God has spoken is true, even though I don't know how it's true. Even when I can't see the path in front of me, or how God is going to get me where He told me He would get me, God is still going to do it.
Salvation Is the First Leap, Not the Last
Most of us made our first real leap of faith at salvation. The problem is that a lot of us think that's where faith stops. God does not save us and then leave us with the same amount of faith forever; He continually calls us to trust Him, obey Him and follow Him in places where we'll have to depend on Him more now than we ever have before.
A picture from Sunday: a nineteen-year-old from Wallace, Idaho — a town whose population had been in decline since 1980 — feeling called to Bible college in Dallas, Texas. He thought about not going right up until he stepped on the plane. He thought about turning the car around on the way to the airport. He went. And decades later, a trip back to Dallas holds no fear at all. Not because Dallas shrank. It's every bit as intimidating as it was then. He has history with God now.
That's the mechanism the whole chapter runs on: Faith grows when yesterday's faithfulness becomes today's testimony. Every time you take a step of faith and discover God is faithful, you carry that testimony into the very next thing.
The Verse to Take Home: Hebrews 11:6
If you get one thing, get this one — without faith it is impossible to please Him. The message tested it four ways. Make the biggest sacrifices in the world, but have no faith: does it please God? No. Be the gentlest, kindest, most generous person alive, but have no faith? No. Learn Greek, learn Hebrew, memorize chapters, know more about the Bible than anybody sitting in a church, but have no faith in it? No. Write and sing the best worship music out there with crowds around you, but have no faith? No.
That's not cruelty; it's the gospel. All of us stand condemned as sinners. There is no work we can do to earn righteousness — only faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Romans 3:22 puts it plainly: the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. Faith has always been the currency of the kingdom of God.
Abraham Didn't Start Where He Finished
Abraham obeyed and went out, not knowing where he was going — God wouldn't name the destination until he arrived. A gigantic leap. But not his last. He'd give the first recorded tithe in Scripture. He'd rescue his nephew Lot from kings who had taken him captive. He'd trust God for Ishmael after he was sent away. Called at seventy-five, dead at a hundred and seventy-five: a hundred years of stepping out.
And by Genesis 22, Hebrews says he reasoned that God was able even to raise Isaac from the dead. Could he have done that at the start? Almost certainly not. At the first call he had a promise but very little history. By the mountain he had decades of watching God prove Himself faithful. Abraham did not know how God was going to do it. But he knew who God was. That's maturity: mature faith does not need to understand everything.
So What's Your Next Step?
For everyone in the room it looks different. Maybe you've never put your faith in Jesus at all — that's the greatest decision you will ever make. Maybe it's starting to give, or starting to tithe. Maybe it's telling a coworker about Jesus even though people intimidate you. Maybe it's the missions trip, or joining Dinner Church or children's ministry — the thing that scares you a little.
Whatever it is, it should challenge your faith. It should bring you to a place where you have to rely on God more today than you ever have. If your walk with Christ has felt like it's struggling lately, that's the prayer: God, what are You asking me to step out in that I haven't done? And if you can't answer that alone, don't. We'd love to have that conversation with you.