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Faith to Thrive in 2025

Brian Messerli
02/02/25 - Praise and Preaching Service

Hebrews 11:6 [I realize the rhyme in the title sounds a little corny, but 1) it’s only truly corny if you don’t realize it’s corny, so it’s actually not corny anymore because I realize it and 2) Even if it is, corny is memorable.  Hebrews was written to Christians who were suffering for their faith in Jesus, and this chapter is meant to inspire them by letting them know they’re not alone; men and women for centuries have suffered for their faith, and those who kept the faith were rewarded by God] - This was the sermon I intended to preach a couple weeks ago as a New Year’s lesson, but I got sick for 10 days, so even though it’s February now, I’m hitting the reset button and declaring this the official start to the New Year.  Typically, with a new year comes New Year’s resolutions, but most people find they don’t last, and I think that’s for two main reasons: 1) they’re often self powered, it’s all about my will power, my ability to buckle down and roll up my sleeves and after a while we just run out of steam.  2) They’re often self-motivated.  I want to lose weight so I can feel good about myself, I want to learn a new skill so I can have more self confidence, I want to grow my business so I can make more money.  And I’m not saying all New Year’s resolutions are like that, but many of them are, and so this year I want to challenge us instead to aim for more faith in 2025.  Because the more faith we have, the more God-powered our life will be where we’re trusting in His strength, not our own, and the more God-motivated our life will be so that whatever changes we make, it’ll all be to please Him.  This year, let’s develop more God-confidence, not self-confidence, so any resolutions we make will be by God’s power and for God’s pleasure.

“Without faith it is impossible to please God,” so this morning, I want to examine the text here in Hebrews 11 and see how faith gives us confidence in 3 crucial areas that’ll help us thrive in 2025.

1. Confident in God’s Existence

• Hebrews 11:6 - In order to please God, we must believe that He IS.  Interestingly, the proper name for God is Yahweh, which means, “I AM.”  In other words, His very name means, “God is.”  So faith means believing God is the eternal, self-existent, one true God who created all things.
• Hebrews 11:1 - Faith is the conviction of things not seen.  Some translations say “evidence or proof,” which sounds odd to our modern ears because if someone says, “Give me evidence God exists,” we wouldn’t use our faith as the evidence because that’s subjective.  Instead, we’d say, “Here’s all the evidence, and this is what my faith is based on.”  But for the Hebrew writer, he’s emphasizing the absolute CERTAINTY of our faith, that a Christian’s faith is SO strong it IS the proof of God’s existence to us.  In our modern day, we draw the distinction between knowing something for sure and having faith, but he doesn’t see it that way.  He sees faith AS knowing.
  • And of course that doesn’t mean it’s a blind faith, or that it’s totally subjective.     
  • Hebrews 11:3 - Even though we weren’t there at the beginning of creation, we can look around at all that’s been made and know there must have been a maker!
    • Hebrews 3:4 - If you’re driving with your kids through a neighborhood and you ask them, “Do you think someone built these houses or do you think they formed themselves over millions of years?”  They’re going to say, “They were built by someone,” even though they didn’t witness the houses being built and the designer is invisible to them.  Because even a child understands the difference between things that are formed naturally and things that are designed.  If you showed them a picture of this mountainside, they could accept that it was formed by natural processes over time.  But if you showed them this mountainside, they’d immediately say, “Now THAT was designed!”
      • In his book the Blind Watchmaker, the famous atheist Richard Dawkins gave this definition of biology.  “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose, but were not.”  He denies the existence of a builder, but he can’t deny things appear to have been built.  And interestingly, we don’t do that with any other area of life; when something appears built, the most logical conclusion is that there’s a builder, yet we throw that principle out the window when it comes to the Universe.  Which is astounding because the universe shows us things that appear built in a such a complex and mind-boggling way than even “fully evolved” humans can’t replicate this level of construction.
• Once a month I meet with our elementary students to talk about evidences for God’s existence, and we recently learned about bacterial flagellum.  We all have ecoli bacteria in our intestines, and we can’t see any of this with the naked eye, so it’s one of those unseen, invisible things Hebrews mentions.  But with modern technology, we’ve used electron microscopes to see that bacteria have a propulsion system called a flagellum.  It’s basically a motor with 40 separate parts that all work together in concert to propel the bacteria.  It spins anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 rpms in some systems, which is FAR beyond the capabilities of any modern man-made engines.  It can stop in one quarter of a turn, and immediately change directions, which is a marvel to scientists who struggle to understand how something like that is possible, and scientists explain the function of these motors using mechanical terms like bushings, rotor, stater, universal joint, drive shaft, particle counters, rate meters, gear boxes, and propellers.
  • I watched a TED talk by a scientist named Drew Berry and who studies what he calls the molecular machines in our bodies.  And he said these molecular machines are smaller than the wavelength of light so we have no way of seeing them.  But it inspired Dr. Berry to use computer animation to try to depict the molecular world inside of us.  And one of the clips was of the process of how DNA is constantly copied inside the body, and he said there are billions of these replicating machines performing these functions all day long in our bodies.  Here’s a clip of kinesin proteins, which is basically a cargo transport system inside of us, the logistics of which are vastly more complex than any modern package delivery system like UPS or Fedex.
    • And what I thought was so interesting is that every time he would show a clip, the audience would clap, but they were clapping for HIM, because it was a huge accomplishment just for him to design and create the computer animation to give us a picture of what’s going on inside our bodies.  And I’m fine with applauding him for that, I think it’s great that he made these so we can have some idea of what these unseen processes look like, but what the audience REALLY should be doing is applauding God, the one who created, not just the computer animation of the molecular machines, but who actually created the molecular machines themselves that are more complex than anything we’ve been able to replicate as humans.  Computer programmers know that kinesin proteins are operating based on code, but it’s so complex they have no idea how it works.  God is the one who deserves the applause!
• There are so many things in this world that are invisible to us because they’re too far away to see, in both directions.  Some things are so far we can’t see them with a microscope, and others are so far we can’t see them with a telescope.
  • There are so many things that are unseen to us, yet we know they exist because we see their effects in the world.  I can’t see wind, but I can see the trees blowing.  I can’t see love, but I can see it in every great story, I can’t see human consciousness, but we know it’s there because of our self-awareness, I can’t see gravity or oxygen or math or logic, but I know it’s there, I can’t see the 60,000 miles of blood vessels in my body, but I know it’s keeping me alive.  By the way, the earth is only 25,000 miles in circumference, so if you were to lay out all the blood vessels in your body end to end, it would stretch more than two times around the earth!  It amazes me that atheists scoff at Christians for having faith, when in reality it takes far MORE faith to think all this just happened by accident.
    • Romans 1:19-20 - We may not be able to see God or the spiritual realm, but Paul’s saying God has been seen clearly by His effects in the world!  We can see His invisible attributes in the brilliance of His creation!  And as icing on the cake, God also made Himself seen and effected the world in a dramatic and visible way by stepping into history in His dealings with Israel, and the existence of that nation can only be explained by their encounters with God, which we can also read about in the Bible, which God made sure was the most well preserved book in all of history, and then ultimately He sent Jesus who could say this…
      • John 14:8-9 - The unseen Father was seen in His Son.  If you want to thrive in 2025, be confident in God’s existence, and realize God has given us everything we need to be confident, even the blood of His Son on the cross.  When you have faith in the unseen realm, it puts everything that happens in the seen realm in proper perspective, because the seen realm is temporary, but the unseen realm is eternal.  So many resolutions are focused on the seen; but as Christians ours, by faith, should be focused on the unseen because we know with certainty that God is.
        • 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 [Paul was suffering greatly for his faith, but said this…]

2.  Confident in God’s Approval

• Hebrews 11:6 - The fact that it’s impossible to please God without faith means that with faith, it’s possible TO please God.
• Hebrews 11:2 - The phrase “men of old” just means the ancients, so it includes women too, and it says by faith they gained approval from God.  Other translations read that they were commended or that they obtained a good testimony, which means good things were written about them in Scripture.  This whole chapter is filled with the good testimony written about them because they pleased God and gained His approval!
  • Hebrews 11:5 - I just have to say, the idea that we can please God is one of the most astounding concepts in the world, and it can actually be a sensitive subject because another one of those invisible things in life we can’t see, but we all know is real, is that we all have a deep inner longing for the approval of our parents, especially our fathers.  And some people grow up with fathers who can never be pleased, and no matter what they do, it’s never good enough, and it crushes their heart.
    • The movie October Sky was based on a true story.  Homer Hickam was a young man in a coal mining town with a passion for becoming a rocket scientist, but throughout the film, his father is so hard on him because he thinks his dream is ridiculous and that he should be a coal miner like his old man.  Every time Homer achieved something in science, his father gave him the cold shoulder and it crushed his heart because he knew his Dad was embarrassed by him.  But Homer sticks with it and starts entering science fairs, and he became so well recognized for his achievements he was awarded with a scholarship to Virginia Tech, and was invited to meet with a representative from NASA.  And in the final scene of the movie, the whole town is gathered to watch Homer launch a rocket, and when he looks into the crowd, he sees his Dad there.  He invites his dad to be the one to push the launch button, they launch it together, and then his father slowly reaches up, puts his arm around his son, and gives him the look of pride and approval he had longed for his whole life.    
• This is what all of us long for, and if it’s true that sometimes earthly fathers are hard to please, how much harder should it be to please our Heavenly Father who is absolutely perfect, sinless, and holy?  It’s hard enough to feel like we’re living up to the expectations of our parents, but how in the world are we supposed to live up to God’s expectations?
  • Well, the Bible tells us there are only two ways to please God.
    • 1) Moral perfection.
      • If we want to please God using this method, we must never sin.  We must never say, do, or THINK anything wrong at any point in our life.  In the Bible, this is called righteousness according to law, and the only way to achieve it is to never break any of God’s laws ever.
        • And truthfully that’s what God deserves.  He should have every right to expect moral perfection from us, He is worthy of that kind of obedience.  But the reality is, none of us have lived up to that standard.  None of us are pleasing to God or have God’s approval based on moral perfection or righteousness according to law.   
        • Romans 3:23 - And sadly, some Christians try to use this failed method to gain God’s approval, and either they’re miserable because they constantly feel like nothing they ever do is good enough to please God.  Or they’re prideful like the Pharisees and think, “I’m not perfect, but I’m better than others because I keep more laws than most.”
          • No, there’s only ever been one person who pleased God with His moral perfection, and that was God’s Son Jesus.
          • John 8:29 - None of us can say this, and God knew that, so in His grace He gave us the gift of another method to gain His approval.
      • 2) Faith
        • Instead of demanding moral perfection of us, He simply asks for our trust. Jesus died on a cross to pay the penalty we owed God for our lawbreaking, and He also fulfilled the requirement of righteousness according to law on our behalf by living a morally perfect life, and now because of it, we don’t have to in order to please God.  Jesus made pleasing God actually possible for us.
          • “Faith is living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times.” - Martin Luther
            • We can’t stake our life on our law-keeping ability, that’s for sure.  But we can stake our life a thousand times on God’s grace and know because of it, we can be pleasing to God by faith.  One writer observed that the problem with Adam and Eve in the Garden wasn’t just a lack of moral perfection, but a lack of faith in God.  They didn’t trust Him.  And so God’s solution was to send Jesus to handle the moral perfection part that we could not, and then leave us with the part we CAN handle which is to let Jesus’ sacrifice restore our faith and trust in God once again.  Now, of course our faith has to be active because real trust must be demonstrated.  Faith without demonstration is fake!
            • James 2:18 - Imagine someone wants to do one of those trust falls with you, and they ask, “Do you trust me?”  And you say, “Oh yea of course I trust you.”  But when they say, “Okay, fall back,” you go, “Nuh uh.”  That’s fake trust.  It’s not real trust unless you’re willing to put yourself in a position where you have to trust them.  And the same is true with God.  That’s what pleases God most, is when we’re willing to follow His ways and step out in faith that He’ll catch us and take care of us, even when we can’t always see where the path is leading.  Which is why Hebrews 11 is filled with action words!
              • v. 4 - Abel offered a sacrifice.  v. 7 - Noah built an ark.  v. 8 - Abraham obeyed and went out.  Etc. None of the men and women in this list were morally perfect, but they were willing to say, “I trust God and I’m going to spend my life demonstrating my trust in Him.”  That is what pleases God.
        • So Jesus shares with us an October Sky-like ending we can all experience if we live by faith in God.  In the Parable of the Talents, the master leaves his servant in charge of his funds, and while he wasn’t morally perfect, he was faithful and did his best with what he had, and so…
          • • • Matthew 25:21 - One of the best ways to thrive this year is to know your Heavenly Father is proud of you and pleased with you for your faith, and for resolving to grow even more in faith this year.
                • Psalm 149:4

3.  Confident in God’s Promises

• Hebrews 11:6 - Faith means trusting God rewards the faithful.  And honestly, it’s rewarding enough just to know we can please God and have His approval, but God goes above and beyond and gives us what Peter will later call, “precious and magnificent promises.”  And Hebrews 11 is a list of people who were rewarded by the promises of God.
  • Hebrews 11:33 - There are 7,487 promises in the Bible!  There are about 31,000 verses in the Bible, which means 1 quarter of the Bible is just promises God makes to mankind.  It would take us the rest of our lives to go through them all, so let me just break them into three basic categories.
    • A) Healing from the past.
      • Hebrews 11:21 - Jacob a born deceiver.  He spent a great deal of his life conniving and stealing the blessings of God by his own cleverness, yet over time God broke Jacob down and taught him how to prevail by God’s strength, and by the end of his life, he had left his deceiving past behind and found forgiveness and healing by faith in God.
      • Hebrews 11:31 - When we first met Rahab, she was a prostitute, but when she came to know the God of Israel, by faith in God’s promises she left that life behind.
    • B) Help in the present
      • Hebrews 11:33 - When it says, “Shut the mouths of lions,” one of the people this refers to was Daniel, who was thrown into a den of lions, yet God helped him and kept him safe.
      • The truth is, everyone in Hebrews 11 endured incredible amounts of suffering.  They were hated, mocked, persecuted, and many of them even KILLED for their faith.
        • Hebrews 11:36-38 - Yet the truth is, God was with them the whole time because He promises no matter what we’re going through…
          • Hebrews 13:5-6 - God promises to be there with us through every fear and every pain and every trial, and what’s more, He promises us…
    • C) Hope for the future
      • Hebrews 11:35 - These men and women were willing to be killed because they had so much faith in the future resurrection!
      • Hebrews 11:1 - “Assurance of things hoped for!”  The substance of things not seen.  It’s as if the future is so clear and certain, it’s substantive and real.
      • Hebrews 11:7 - Noah spent 120 years building a massive ark because he believed God would save Him from the future flood.
        • Hebrews 11:9-10, 13 - The point is, they didn’t receive ALL of God’s promises in this present life, but they were living by faith in His future promises of a Heavenly city, and that’s what gave them the hope to keep going when all hope seemed lost.
          • Augustine once said, “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward is to finally see what you believe.”
          • One way to define faith is trusting in God so much it’s as if you’ve seen the future.  We saw that back in 11:13, “Welcomed them from a distance.”  If you’ve ever seen a movie or read a book where the main character sees the future, it makes them act differently than everyone else around them, and other people think they’re crazy!  If they know it’s going to rain, they bring an umbrella when no one else has one, or they build an ark like Noah, and people say, “What a weirdo, why do you have an umbrella and why are you building an ark?”  If they’ve seen that the president’s going to be assassinated, they’re calling the authorities and trying to warn them, but the authorities don’t believe them and they think it’s just some lunatic, then when the president gets shot, everyone realizes he was right!  When it starts raining, everyone realizes they were right!That’s what it’s like to be Christians.  We have insider information by the promises of God, we have SO much faith in the future hope of Heaven, we act different from the rest of the world!  We’re not filled with worry and anxiety, we obey God and live counter-culturally even when His way is kind of weird compared to the way everyone else lives, and even in death, we’re not overcome with panic or despair, because we have so much God-confidence that He’ll fulfill everyone of His promises.  And if the world looks at us like we’re crazy, and even hates us for it and persecutes us, then we can know we’re not alone because we’re joining the list of the ancients in Hebrews 11 who pleased God by faith and who became inheritors of His promises.
• One final quote I saw the other day:  “Faith and fear both demand we believe in something we cannot see.  The choice is ours.”  The future is another one of those invisible things we cannot see.  We have no idea what’s going to happen for the rest of 2025, and we can either let fear of the unseen future paralyze us, or faith in the unseen God propel us forward in confident hope that God exists, that He can be pleased, and that He’ll take care of us like He promised.  If we can start off the year with a firm commitment to increase our faith, we will thrive in 2025, no matter what comes our way.