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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Ryan Dolinsky

A Faith Prepared for Eternity

Father in heaven, I come before you a broken vessel.

Lord, I am not worthy to be called your son, but Father Jesus has made me worthy and made everyone in this room worthy.

Father, the only way we can obtain this, Lord, is through faith.

So this morning I just pray that you will speak through me, that I will not have the words but that you will, and Lord, that you may speak to each 1 of our hearts individually.

So this morning I want to talk about something in particular, and it's a topic that we talk about a lot.

We talk about nominally, we talk about in depth, and that's the topic of faith.

And what does it, really, what does it mean to live faith?

And so I want us to all take a fresh look at the Bible this morning, on what this actually means for our lives.

And I believe we will find something very powerful and interesting to see.

And so, to start off, I would like to say just 1 thing.

So I saw like 2 hands like go up and like go back down.

So I'd like to welcome you guys here and I just want to share that Advent Hope really has a special place in my heart and it's kind of inspired this message this morning.

God has brought me on a journey that I will not share this morning.

It is on AudioVerse I think and brought me and my wife Christy on this journey And I believe God brought me to Advent Hope specifically in this part of my journey to learn something.

And that's what I'm going to share this morning, and it's about faith.

So I just pray that Advent Hope can be a place for you if you decide to come back regularly.

I want you guys to understand what Abba Hope's goal is and what we're all about.

So again, we're gonna take a look at faith.

And so there is a chapter in the Bible that many of us know that is typically called, if we have this name for it, they call it the Hall of Faith.

How many of you guys know what chapter that is?

Many of you have heard this verse before, but I want us to all take a fresh look at it.

Let's pretend you haven't read it before.

So faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

So faith is something that is evidence and it's substance.

Faith is not something that is abstract, let's say.

So it says that faith is substance, evidence of things hoped for and things not yet seen.

So faith you can see is what this verse in essence is saying.

And so let's say, okay, so what does this look like?

The chapter proceeds to give us lots of examples of what faith looks like through some of the men and women in the Bible.

And so we don't have time to go through all of them this morning, but I do wanna tackle a couple, just to give you some examples of what this is really saying.

So jump down to verse 7 of Hebrews chapter 11, and we see Noah.

How many of you are familiar with the story of Noah?

We believe that there was a flood that covered this whole earth.

So many years ago, Noah was given a message by God.

So the verse says, by faith, Noah being warned of God of things not yet seen, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world and became the heir of righteousness, which is by faith.

So Noah was warned of something to come, but Noah did not actually see what was coming.

He was told what was coming, But he could not see it.

So God came to Noah and told him, I'm going to destroy the earth with a flood.

Noah did not say, OK, let me see some rain clouds come.

He didn't wait for the water to start coming up on the earth and then build the ark.

In fact, he waited 120 years before the rain actually came, but he built the ark at the word of God.

This was not just something that Noah believed God to be true.

He didn't say, oh yeah, I know that's true, God.

There was an evidence, if you will, a substance.

Another example that I find quite interesting, and I think many of you will as well, if you actually look at this 1, is the birth of Isaac.

If you're not familiar with the story of Abraham and Sarah and their son Isaac, do go read it this afternoon.

But for the purpose of this, I'm just going to read what the act of faith was here in this story.

Jump down to verse 11, Hebrews 11, verse 11.

Through faith, also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.

Abraham and Sarah were offered, excuse me, promised a son.

They were promised to have a very large multitude and many generations to come.

And the problem was is that they didn't have a son.

This was saying your family's gonna be large, but you don't have a son.

How can your seed continue if you don't have a son?

But he promised them a son when Abraham and Sarah were past childbearing age.

Sarah was 90, Abraham was 100 when this promise was given.

And the Bible says that Sarah's womb was dead.

But the Lord said, you will bear a child.

So, you don't have to be an OBGYN to understand this, right?

There is a time where women stop bearing children.

But the Lord was faithful to his word, and he opened Sarah's womb, and they had a child.

Realize that there had to be an act of faith, if you catch my drift.

In other words, Sarah and Abraham still had to act on faith.

But the womb was open and they acted in faith and a son was born.

I think it's really interesting when you look at that.

They still had to act out what they believed the Word of God to say.

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A Faith Prepared for Eternity

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