Faith is the eyesight of the soul by which we believe in the certainty of invisible spiritual realities, past as recorded by scripture, the present as revealed by scripture.
Welcome to the Two Journeys podcast. This is Sanctification Monday, and my name is Andy Davis. In this podcast, we will answer the question, what is spiritual maturity? We believe that spiritual maturity can be broken into four main sections, knowledge, faith, character, and action. Today, we’re going to focus on the section of faith, and specifically, we’re going to look at faith as the eyesight of the soul and certainty of invisible spiritual realities. So, this is an exciting study as we continue to learn and grow in sanctification, to find out more and more of what it means to be sanctified and to be mature, to be Christ-like. And the second main section, after knowledge, we talked about factual knowledge two weeks ago and experiential knowledge last week.
Now, today, we’re going to talk about faith. And so, the basic concept here is that faith is something that’s dynamic, something that can grow. That as you grow in sanctification, you’re growing in faith, that your faith is getting stronger, that you can go from, as Jesus said frequently to his disciples, “O, you of little faith.” You can go from somebody who has little faith to somebody who has great faith, as Jesus said to the Syrophoenician woman, “Woman, you have great faith” (Mark 7:24-30). And so, we want to have that great faith. We want to try to understand it. Now, one of the paradigms, or the patterns of faith that I’ve seen in scriptures, the comparison between faith and sight. The apostle Paul said, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). So, he at least acknowledges that they’re very similar. They’re comparable. They’re comparable.
We see the same thing in the scriptures again and again, that faith is the ability to perceive or to see invisible spiritual realities. Ephesians 1:18 speaks of the eyes of the heart being enlightened. I find that a fascinating expression. What are the eyes of the heart? Ephesians 1 doesn’t tell us, but more and more, I’m starting to realize that the eyes of the heart that can be enlightened is faith, the ability to see invisible spiritual things. It’s interesting, too, when it comes to Christ. We are believers in Christ. And in 1 Peter 1:8, Peter says, “Though you have not seen him, you love him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with inexpressible and glorious joy for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
But then the author to Hebrews says in Hebrews 2:8-9 (paraphrase), “At present, we do not see everything subject to Jesus, but we see Christ, we see him who was, for a little while, made lower than the angels, now seated with glory and honor at the right hand of God.” It’s like, “Really? We see that?” How do we now see Christ at the right hand of God? Well, we see him by faith. As a matter of fact, the author of Hebrews will give us a whole chapter on faith, Hebrews 11. We’re going to talk about that over the next number of weeks. But in Hebrews 11, he talks about Moses. And it says that Moses was, in some way, able to see the coming of Christ. He considered suffering for Christ as of greater value than all the riches of Egypt. And then, it said he persevered as seeing him who is invisible (Hebrews 11:27).
So, here’s the thing, Peter is talking about physical eyesight. Physical eyesight. We have not seen Jesus physically. Light has not bounced off Jesus’ face and gone through our eyeballs into our brains so that we see his face. That’s never happened. We’ve never seen him, but we know him. We love him. We believe in him. However, the author of Hebrews says, we see him seated at the right hand of God. How do you do that? Well close your eyes and think about the scriptures, and you picture Jesus at the right hand of God ruling over the universe. That’s how we see him. We see him by faith. So fundamentally then, I think, it’s helpful to see faith as the eyesight of the soul. Now, what is it we see?
Well, in this podcast, we’re going to talk about seeing invisible spiritual realities, past, present, and future. So that’s the way I want to divide it up. First of all, we’re going to see invisible things. Faith has to do with things not seen. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. So, we’re dealing with invisible things. We’re dealing with things unseen. And as we look back at the first realm, the past, I’m specifically meaning not secular history. I’m a historian, I love history. But I’m really talking about biblical history, the past as recorded in Scripture. There is no religion in the world for which history is as important as Christianity. It’s vital. Much of the Old Testament is a historical record of the Jewish nation. There are kings, good and bad, there wars, both victories and defeats, their successes, their failures, their sins, the prophets that were sent to warn them, all that. There’s just so much history.
There’s a lot of history in the Old Testament and the prophets that are not primarily historical, but they’re commenting on history, they’re woven into history. So, history is vital to Christianity. It’s vital to the New Testament. It’s vital to the Gospel. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:58, “If Christ has not been raised, our faith is worthless.” That’s how important history is to us. Christ has to actually have been physically raised or Christianity does not exist. It’s not a real religion. Our sins are not forgiven. So, we believe that history is absolutely vital. There’s no sense of that type of clinging to history in Buddhism, which really seeks more an escape from this world and isn’t looking for significance in unfolding historical events. Same thing with Hinduism, Islam, even Judaism in that they do not continue with the history of God pointing toward Christ, the coming of Christ and Him being the Messiah.
Christians have a more robust and a more fulfilled history, we would say based on Old Testament Judaism, but with more to tell. And so, there is no religion for which history is so vital. So, we’re looking at the past as recorded by Scripture. And so, it starts with creation. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So, we believe that by faith. The author of Hebrews makes it plain, “By faith, we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command. So that what is formed was not made out of things that are seen” (Hebrews 11:3).
So, what came first? Think about it this way. God said, “Let there be light. And there was light” (Genesis 1:3). So, the concept of light and the word light preceded the reality of light. And so, it is with the world itself, with the universe, with earth, with every animal, every bird, with the water, with the clouds, everything. So, the universe was formed at God’s command. How do we know that? We know it by faith. We know it by faith because the scripture teaches it. So, creation is the beginning of all of that. And then, the gospel itself as you unfold it, we’ve mentioned all of the story of the Jews, the call of Abraham, the story of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all of that history that we read about, all of its pointing toward Jesus Christ. It’s pointing toward the coming of Christ. And so, we believe that the Red Sea crossing happened. We don’t need archaeological evidence to prove it. We believe the worldwide flood happened. We think there is archaeological evidence to prove a flood.
I think it’s pretty interesting, on the top of Himalayan peaks, we see seashells. I find that interesting. But whether we actually find archaeological evidence of Noah’s Ark or not, we don’t need it because the Bible reveals that God commanded Noah to make an ark out of gopher wood, and he did. And the ark saved his life. And so, we believe all of these things, the Red Sea crossing, we believe that it happened. We believe that the walls of Jericho fell down when Joshua and the Jewish nation walked around them seven times. We believe that. We believe everything that it says in the Old Testament.
We also believe that Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, that he lived a sinless life as described in the Gospels, that he grew in wisdom and knowledge and favor with God and man. And the right time, being about 30 years, he began a public ministry that involved mighty words and mighty deeds, miracles, incredible teachings that are recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and in the Epistles, as well. So, we believe in that history. And as I just said in 1 Corinthians 15, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. I would say if Christ was not incarnate of the Virgin Mary, your faith is futile. If Christ never lived, your faith is futile. So, we believe in the past as recorded by scripture. It is foundational to everything.
The second realm is the present. So, faith is the eyesight of the soul by which we believe in the certainty of invisible spiritual realities, past as recorded by scripture, the present as revealed by scripture. So, what do we mean by invisible spiritual realities of the present? Well, what we believe is that we operate, we move in what I would call a five-sense world. The five senses of sight, of sound, of taste, of smell, and of touch. Those five senses are the way we interact with the physical world.
the Bible reveals an invisible, non-physical spiritual realm that seems to operate, I guess, to some degree, alongside this physical universe.
I went to MIT as a mechanical engineer. I love science. I love the scientific process by which we observe things and make hypotheses and test them by experimentation and all that. I get all that. But the Bible reveals an invisible, non-physical spiritual realm that seems to operate, I guess, to some degree, alongside this physical universe. There are indications of how intertwined they are. For example, at Jesus’ baptism in Mark 1:10, it says when Jesus came up out of the water after being water baptized by John the Baptist, the scripture says, “Heaven was torn open,” torn open. And the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove out of that tear, that rend. So, it’s almost like there’s some membrane or some, I don’t know, some barrier between us and the spiritual realm and, generally, we don’t see it.
There was an occasion in the Old Testament (2 Kings 6:8-23) in which the prophet Elisha was telling the king of Israel everything that the Aramean king even said in his own bedroom. And so that gave the Israelite king a tremendous advantage in warfare. And so, the Aramean king was very upset and said, “All right, which of you is on the side of the king of Israel? Somebody’s betraying me.” He said, “No, it’s not at all. The prophet Elisha in Dothan tells the king of Israel everything you say in your own bedroom.” Well, he gets an army together and they go to seize Elisha who’s staying there with his servant. And they surround the city and they’re there, this massive army.
And the next morning, Elisha goes out along with his servant, and the servant is terrified. But Elisha’s unconcerned, completely unconcerned. And the servant says, “Don’t you see all of these, they’re here to arrest you. They’re here to grab you and bring you back or kill you.” And he said, “No, there’s more on our side than there are on theirs.” And then he said, he prayed, “Lord, open his eyes.” And at that moment, the servant’s eyes were opened, and he saw chariots of fire, an angelic army that was surrounding Elisha and protecting him.
Now, look, we don’t see that invisible spiritual realm for the most part. So, realm of angels and demons. We believe, as Christians, that demons are every bit as active now as ever they were in Jesus’ day. And many of Jesus’s healings were exorcisms, dealing with demons. Demons are fallen angels. And so, we believe in the invisible spiritual realm of powers and principalities, of Satan and demons, and also of mighty angels that are serving those who are God’s people. They are protecting them, providing for them, feeding them, sometimes like they did with Elisha, just different things like angels did. So, angels and demons, we know that they exist because the Bible teaches it. But more important than that, we believe in Almighty God seated on a throne of glory ruling over heaven and earth. We can’t see him, but we believe in that throne. It’s revealed in Scripture. You remember the story in Revelation 4:1, where the apostle John was in exile on the island of Patmos, and he heard the voice of Christ saying, “Come up here and I’ll show you what must take place after this.”
And at once, he looked up and saw a door standing open in heaven. And he was in the Spirit and went through the door, and the first thing he saw was a throne with someone seated on it. That throne is the central reality of the universe, the throne of Almighty God. He’s the Ancient of days. He rules over heaven and earth. And as I mentioned, earlier in this podcast, we can see Jesus at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. That’s the central reality of the universe. And we can see, in some mysterious way, the invisible actions of the Holy Spirit because they’re taught to us in Scripture. So, the Spirit is active. We can see the triune God. So that’s the present as a present, invisible spiritual world.
We also see, by faith, we can’t see it, but we know it’s true that there are disembodied spirits. The spirits of the righteous made perfect (Hebrews 12:23). So, these are Christians who died in previous generations, previous centuries, or even yesterday, and they’re absent from the body, present with the Lord. And they are in heaven worshiping. We also believe that there are wicked people who have also died, and they are in torment. And we know that these things are happening right now. The present, invisible spiritual realities.
Thirdly, the third realm is the future as both promised and threatened by Scripture. We believe vividly that the things that are going to come in the future that the Bible has told us about will most certainly come true. And so, we believe in that. Only Christianity makes predictive prophecies. Christianity is the only religion in the world that has predictions and prophecies that come true. Cults sometimes make predictions, but they don’t come true. Like the Jehovah’s Witnesses predicted that Christ would come back in 1914, and he didn’t. Other religions, like Buddhism and Hinduism, don’t even try. That’s not what they’re about. But Christianity has a God who knows the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end. He’s an eternal God. And he has told us ahead of time what will happen.
For example, we believe in the second coming of Christ. We believe that Jesus will return in glory with the Father’s angels, and he will judge the world. He’ll gather all the nations. And all the nations will be gathered and set before him, and he’ll separate the people one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. That’s Judgment Day. We believe in that. And if we’re strong in faith, we’re mature in faith, we can see Judgment Day coming. We believe in it. We can’t see it physically, but we know it’s coming. And as Paul said, it affects the way that I live. “I believe,” he said, “that there’ll be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. So, I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man” (Acts 24:16, paraphrase).
Christians, more than anything, we’re looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.
Someday, I’m going to have to give Jesus an account for everything done in the body, whether good or bad. For every careless word I’ve spoken, I have to give him an account. And so, if somebody’s strong in faith, has a strong sense of that future as promised and as threatened in scripture. So, for us as Christians, more than anything, we’re looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. We’re looking forward to a radiantly beautiful city, the new Jerusalem. It’s the home of righteousness, Peter calls it. It’s the place where there’ll be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain. That should fill you with hope. We’re going to talk about that faith being the assurance of things hoped for, the future hope, and we’ll talk about that, God willing, next time. But we believe it’s going to happen. That future world is certain and absolute.
We also believe in the future from now until the day we die. We believe there are promises from God saying, I’ll never leave you, I’ll never forsake you. You’ll not be tempted beyond what you can bear. That there are good works that I’ve gone ahead of you preparing for you. And so, the rest of my life is about doing good works. God will never leave me. He will continue to sanctify me and prepare me and use me. So that’s the future as promised. But there’s also a future threatened. There are warnings in the Bible, warning, ultimately, about Judgment Day in hell, and a place of eternal torment, eternal conscious torment. And we are motivated by that. It motivates us to share with lost loved ones, neighbors and friends, family members. And we’re motivated by a fear that they should have, but don’t. But we fear on their behalf, and we can see the reality of the coming hell and the lake of fire. And it causes us to tremble and to act powerfully in missions.
So, faith is the eyesight of the soul by which we see invisible spiritual realities: past, present, and future. We believe that as you grow, this eyesight of the soul will get more and more vivid. You’ll more and more see the invisible holy God seeing you all the time, and it will cause you to want to be holy in all you do. So, as we conclude today, go into your week knowing that God has gone ahead of you and will be using everything you experience this week to sanctify you and bring you more and more into conformity to Christ.
Welcome to the Two Journeys podcast. This is Sanctification Monday, and my name is Andy Davis. In this podcast, we will answer the question, what is spiritual maturity? We believe that spiritual maturity can be broken into four main sections, knowledge, faith, character, and action. Today, we’re going to focus on the section of faith, and specifically, we’re going to look at faith as the eyesight of the soul and certainty of invisible spiritual realities. So, this is an exciting study as we continue to learn and grow in sanctification, to find out more and more of what it means to be sanctified and to be mature, to be Christ-like. And the second main section, after knowledge, we talked about factual knowledge two weeks ago and experiential knowledge last week.
Now, today, we’re going to talk about faith. And so, the basic concept here is that faith is something that’s dynamic, something that can grow. That as you grow in sanctification, you’re growing in faith, that your faith is getting stronger, that you can go from, as Jesus said frequently to his disciples, “O, you of little faith.” You can go from somebody who has little faith to somebody who has great faith, as Jesus said to the Syrophoenician woman, “Woman, you have great faith” (Mark 7:24-30). And so, we want to have that great faith. We want to try to understand it. Now, one of the paradigms, or the patterns of faith that I’ve seen in scriptures, the comparison between faith and sight. The apostle Paul said, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). So, he at least acknowledges that they’re very similar. They’re comparable. They’re comparable.
We see the same thing in the scriptures again and again, that faith is the ability to perceive or to see invisible spiritual realities. Ephesians 1:18 speaks of the eyes of the heart being enlightened. I find that a fascinating expression. What are the eyes of the heart? Ephesians 1 doesn’t tell us, but more and more, I’m starting to realize that the eyes of the heart that can be enlightened is faith, the ability to see invisible spiritual things. It’s interesting, too, when it comes to Christ. We are believers in Christ. And in 1 Peter 1:8, Peter says, “Though you have not seen him, you love him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with inexpressible and glorious joy for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
But then the author to Hebrews says in Hebrews 2:8-9 (paraphrase), “At present, we do not see everything subject to Jesus, but we see Christ, we see him who was, for a little while, made lower than the angels, now seated with glory and honor at the right hand of God.” It’s like, “Really? We see that?” How do we now see Christ at the right hand of God? Well, we see him by faith. As a matter of fact, the author of Hebrews will give us a whole chapter on faith, Hebrews 11. We’re going to talk about that over the next number of weeks. But in Hebrews 11, he talks about Moses. And it says that Moses was, in some way, able to see the coming of Christ. He considered suffering for Christ as of greater value than all the riches of Egypt. And then, it said he persevered as seeing him who is invisible (Hebrews 11:27).
So, here’s the thing, Peter is talking about physical eyesight. Physical eyesight. We have not seen Jesus physically. Light has not bounced off Jesus’ face and gone through our eyeballs into our brains so that we see his face. That’s never happened. We’ve never seen him, but we know him. We love him. We believe in him. However, the author of Hebrews says, we see him seated at the right hand of God. How do you do that? Well close your eyes and think about the scriptures, and you picture Jesus at the right hand of God ruling over the universe. That’s how we see him. We see him by faith. So fundamentally then, I think, it’s helpful to see faith as the eyesight of the soul. Now, what is it we see?
Well, in this podcast, we’re going to talk about seeing invisible spiritual realities, past, present, and future. So that’s the way I want to divide it up. First of all, we’re going to see invisible things. Faith has to do with things not seen. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. So, we’re dealing with invisible things. We’re dealing with things unseen. And as we look back at the first realm, the past, I’m specifically meaning not secular history. I’m a historian, I love history. But I’m really talking about biblical history, the past as recorded in Scripture. There is no religion in the world for which history is as important as Christianity. It’s vital. Much of the Old Testament is a historical record of the Jewish nation. There are kings, good and bad, there wars, both victories and defeats, their successes, their failures, their sins, the prophets that were sent to warn them, all that. There’s just so much history.
There’s a lot of history in the Old Testament and the prophets that are not primarily historical, but they’re commenting on history, they’re woven into history. So, history is vital to Christianity. It’s vital to the New Testament. It’s vital to the Gospel. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:58, “If Christ has not been raised, our faith is worthless.” That’s how important history is to us. Christ has to actually have been physically raised or Christianity does not exist. It’s not a real religion. Our sins are not forgiven. So, we believe that history is absolutely vital. There’s no sense of that type of clinging to history in Buddhism, which really seeks more an escape from this world and isn’t looking for significance in unfolding historical events. Same thing with Hinduism, Islam, even Judaism in that they do not continue with the history of God pointing toward Christ, the coming of Christ and Him being the Messiah.
Christians have a more robust and a more fulfilled history, we would say based on Old Testament Judaism, but with more to tell. And so, there is no religion for which history is so vital. So, we’re looking at the past as recorded by Scripture. And so, it starts with creation. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So, we believe that by faith. The author of Hebrews makes it plain, “By faith, we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command. So that what is formed was not made out of things that are seen” (Hebrews 11:3).
So, what came first? Think about it this way. God said, “Let there be light. And there was light” (Genesis 1:3). So, the concept of light and the word light preceded the reality of light. And so, it is with the world itself, with the universe, with earth, with every animal, every bird, with the water, with the clouds, everything. So, the universe was formed at God’s command. How do we know that? We know it by faith. We know it by faith because the scripture teaches it. So, creation is the beginning of all of that. And then, the gospel itself as you unfold it, we’ve mentioned all of the story of the Jews, the call of Abraham, the story of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all of that history that we read about, all of its pointing toward Jesus Christ. It’s pointing toward the coming of Christ. And so, we believe that the Red Sea crossing happened. We don’t need archaeological evidence to prove it. We believe the worldwide flood happened. We think there is archaeological evidence to prove a flood.
I think it’s pretty interesting, on the top of Himalayan peaks, we see seashells. I find that interesting. But whether we actually find archaeological evidence of Noah’s Ark or not, we don’t need it because the Bible reveals that God commanded Noah to make an ark out of gopher wood, and he did. And the ark saved his life. And so, we believe all of these things, the Red Sea crossing, we believe that it happened. We believe that the walls of Jericho fell down when Joshua and the Jewish nation walked around them seven times. We believe that. We believe everything that it says in the Old Testament.
We also believe that Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, that he lived a sinless life as described in the Gospels, that he grew in wisdom and knowledge and favor with God and man. And the right time, being about 30 years, he began a public ministry that involved mighty words and mighty deeds, miracles, incredible teachings that are recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and in the Epistles, as well. So, we believe in that history. And as I just said in 1 Corinthians 15, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. I would say if Christ was not incarnate of the Virgin Mary, your faith is futile. If Christ never lived, your faith is futile. So, we believe in the past as recorded by scripture. It is foundational to everything.
The second realm is the present. So, faith is the eyesight of the soul by which we believe in the certainty of invisible spiritual realities, past as recorded by scripture, the present as revealed by scripture. So, what do we mean by invisible spiritual realities of the present? Well, what we believe is that we operate, we move in what I would call a five-sense world. The five senses of sight, of sound, of taste, of smell, and of touch. Those five senses are the way we interact with the physical world.
the Bible reveals an invisible, non-physical spiritual realm that seems to operate, I guess, to some degree, alongside this physical universe.
I went to MIT as a mechanical engineer. I love science. I love the scientific process by which we observe things and make hypotheses and test them by experimentation and all that. I get all that. But the Bible reveals an invisible, non-physical spiritual realm that seems to operate, I guess, to some degree, alongside this physical universe. There are indications of how intertwined they are. For example, at Jesus’ baptism in Mark 1:10, it says when Jesus came up out of the water after being water baptized by John the Baptist, the scripture says, “Heaven was torn open,” torn open. And the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove out of that tear, that rend. So, it’s almost like there’s some membrane or some, I don’t know, some barrier between us and the spiritual realm and, generally, we don’t see it.
There was an occasion in the Old Testament (2 Kings 6:8-23) in which the prophet Elisha was telling the king of Israel everything that the Aramean king even said in his own bedroom. And so that gave the Israelite king a tremendous advantage in warfare. And so, the Aramean king was very upset and said, “All right, which of you is on the side of the king of Israel? Somebody’s betraying me.” He said, “No, it’s not at all. The prophet Elisha in Dothan tells the king of Israel everything you say in your own bedroom.” Well, he gets an army together and they go to seize Elisha who’s staying there with his servant. And they surround the city and they’re there, this massive army.
And the next morning, Elisha goes out along with his servant, and the servant is terrified. But Elisha’s unconcerned, completely unconcerned. And the servant says, “Don’t you see all of these, they’re here to arrest you. They’re here to grab you and bring you back or kill you.” And he said, “No, there’s more on our side than there are on theirs.” And then he said, he prayed, “Lord, open his eyes.” And at that moment, the servant’s eyes were opened, and he saw chariots of fire, an angelic army that was surrounding Elisha and protecting him.
Now, look, we don’t see that invisible spiritual realm for the most part. So, realm of angels and demons. We believe, as Christians, that demons are every bit as active now as ever they were in Jesus’ day. And many of Jesus’s healings were exorcisms, dealing with demons. Demons are fallen angels. And so, we believe in the invisible spiritual realm of powers and principalities, of Satan and demons, and also of mighty angels that are serving those who are God’s people. They are protecting them, providing for them, feeding them, sometimes like they did with Elisha, just different things like angels did. So, angels and demons, we know that they exist because the Bible teaches it. But more important than that, we believe in Almighty God seated on a throne of glory ruling over heaven and earth. We can’t see him, but we believe in that throne. It’s revealed in Scripture. You remember the story in Revelation 4:1, where the apostle John was in exile on the island of Patmos, and he heard the voice of Christ saying, “Come up here and I’ll show you what must take place after this.”
And at once, he looked up and saw a door standing open in heaven. And he was in the Spirit and went through the door, and the first thing he saw was a throne with someone seated on it. That throne is the central reality of the universe, the throne of Almighty God. He’s the Ancient of days. He rules over heaven and earth. And as I mentioned, earlier in this podcast, we can see Jesus at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. That’s the central reality of the universe. And we can see, in some mysterious way, the invisible actions of the Holy Spirit because they’re taught to us in Scripture. So, the Spirit is active. We can see the triune God. So that’s the present as a present, invisible spiritual world.
We also see, by faith, we can’t see it, but we know it’s true that there are disembodied spirits. The spirits of the righteous made perfect (Hebrews 12:23). So, these are Christians who died in previous generations, previous centuries, or even yesterday, and they’re absent from the body, present with the Lord. And they are in heaven worshiping. We also believe that there are wicked people who have also died, and they are in torment. And we know that these things are happening right now. The present, invisible spiritual realities.
Thirdly, the third realm is the future as both promised and threatened by Scripture. We believe vividly that the things that are going to come in the future that the Bible has told us about will most certainly come true. And so, we believe in that. Only Christianity makes predictive prophecies. Christianity is the only religion in the world that has predictions and prophecies that come true. Cults sometimes make predictions, but they don’t come true. Like the Jehovah’s Witnesses predicted that Christ would come back in 1914, and he didn’t. Other religions, like Buddhism and Hinduism, don’t even try. That’s not what they’re about. But Christianity has a God who knows the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end. He’s an eternal God. And he has told us ahead of time what will happen.
For example, we believe in the second coming of Christ. We believe that Jesus will return in glory with the Father’s angels, and he will judge the world. He’ll gather all the nations. And all the nations will be gathered and set before him, and he’ll separate the people one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. That’s Judgment Day. We believe in that. And if we’re strong in faith, we’re mature in faith, we can see Judgment Day coming. We believe in it. We can’t see it physically, but we know it’s coming. And as Paul said, it affects the way that I live. “I believe,” he said, “that there’ll be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. So, I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man” (Acts 24:16, paraphrase).
Christians, more than anything, we’re looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.
Someday, I’m going to have to give Jesus an account for everything done in the body, whether good or bad. For every careless word I’ve spoken, I have to give him an account. And so, if somebody’s strong in faith, has a strong sense of that future as promised and as threatened in scripture. So, for us as Christians, more than anything, we’re looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. We’re looking forward to a radiantly beautiful city, the new Jerusalem. It’s the home of righteousness, Peter calls it. It’s the place where there’ll be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain. That should fill you with hope. We’re going to talk about that faith being the assurance of things hoped for, the future hope, and we’ll talk about that, God willing, next time. But we believe it’s going to happen. That future world is certain and absolute.
We also believe in the future from now until the day we die. We believe there are promises from God saying, I’ll never leave you, I’ll never forsake you. You’ll not be tempted beyond what you can bear. That there are good works that I’ve gone ahead of you preparing for you. And so, the rest of my life is about doing good works. God will never leave me. He will continue to sanctify me and prepare me and use me. So that’s the future as promised. But there’s also a future threatened. There are warnings in the Bible, warning, ultimately, about Judgment Day in hell, and a place of eternal torment, eternal conscious torment. And we are motivated by that. It motivates us to share with lost loved ones, neighbors and friends, family members. And we’re motivated by a fear that they should have, but don’t. But we fear on their behalf, and we can see the reality of the coming hell and the lake of fire. And it causes us to tremble and to act powerfully in missions.
So, faith is the eyesight of the soul by which we see invisible spiritual realities: past, present, and future. We believe that as you grow, this eyesight of the soul will get more and more vivid. You’ll more and more see the invisible holy God seeing you all the time, and it will cause you to want to be holy in all you do. So, as we conclude today, go into your week knowing that God has gone ahead of you and will be using everything you experience this week to sanctify you and bring you more and more into conformity to Christ.
