Why do we believe?

[AI translation] Dear Brothers and Sisters! In this service today, I would like to talk simply about why we who believe actually believe. Have you ever wondered why we believe? In fact, what is faith for us - is it something like a bill of exchange that we submit once in eternity and get something in return? Or is it something like the cane in the teacher's hand in the old days, that is, a disciplinary tool so that we can still live relatively decently and honestly? Or is faith something that is only there to give us peace of mind when something goes wrong in our lives? Or is it a human construct, because man always needs something, someone to believe in? Some ideal? Or an escape from the bitter reality of life?I think this Word brings us closer to shedding light on these questions. It begins, "We therefore, who are surrounded by this great cloud of witness..." Let me tell you that this image is taken by the writer of Hebrews - who we don't know exactly who he was, but never mind - from the stadium of the ancient Olympic Games as an analogy for the little detail just given. He lists a whole bunch of people in the passage who all lived, struggled and died in faith. The writer says: they are all sitting in the stands, while we are here in the stadium running our own race, competing, struggling. This invisible stadium is full to capacity. In a beautiful poetic image, he says that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses - the spectators. That is how we run, that is how we run the arena before us.
So, why do we believe? The writer of the letter to the Hebrews says first: Because we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses. Because for centuries, for thousands of years before us, many people believed. For it was through them that Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Balak, Samson, David, and so on, came to us. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Gábor Bethlen, Zsuzsanna Lorántffy, Huguenots, the Gallicans, our ancestors, our fathers - perhaps our parents. Yes, they are all sitting in that invisible tribune watching us. So, anyone who says 'I believe' is not saying it as someone who stands alone in his or her beliefs, but because for centuries there have been many people who have lived, fought, suffered and died for the same beliefs. So, whoever says "I believe" is saying it with the Church of centuries, of millennia, as one who is carried in this faith by the Church of all times. The faith of the Apostle Paul, the faith of St. Francis of Assisi, and perhaps the faith of your father or your believing grandmother also carries you, surrounds you. No one is alone with his faith, but everyone is part of the great, great community of many, many believers, of all believers of all times. "Such a great cloud of witness surrounds us", what a great cloud surrounds those who bear witness to God, to Jesus, when we believe, when we walk by faith, and are looked upon.
Let me immediately add a correction to the foregoing: Let us very well note that we do not believe in the people who are sitting in the stands. We would be very wrong, we would be wrong, because in these people, in these believers, the letter also mentions people who could be safely disciplined today. For example, Jacob, who vulgarly and despicably deceived his own father and brother, or Samson, who led a very turbulent life indeed, or Rahab, who was a common prostitute. And if we look even further at these souls, who came to the tribune even later, we would be quite amazed at this mixed company that is there watching us. And if we look at a congregation of believers living today, do we not see this, what a strange company, what strange assemblies they are! Of any of them one could say something bad, something ugly. Well, let us never believe in believers, not even in the most model believer! Let us never say that this or that professor of ours is a really great skull, yet he believed - if he believes, I believe! Let us never say such a thing, we do not believe in believers, we believe with believers, believers of all times. With the endless long line of people who, despite all their wickedness, despite all their weakness, despite all their human sinfulness, put their faith in Jesus, confessed Jesus as their Lord. Whether they have written it down in beautiful creeds for centuries, or whether they have given it in their deathbed testimonies.
Well, I know very well that there are obstacles to faith. This is precisely what this expression of the writer of the letter refers to, 'putting aside all obstacles and besetting sin'. These obstacles are mostly intellectual obstacles, intellectual obstacles. Let us think of someone who says, for example, that he cannot believe because there are such fantastic stories in the Bible. I can't believe that Jesus walked on water, that he calmed the raging sea and that the wind died at his word. Or something like that. The other says: not because I can't reconcile the amount of suffering in the world with the concept of a loving God. Well, my brethren, I have already discovered that such intellectual excuses and obstacles conceal something else: some secret sin deep down in the soul, over which the person concerned has power. Something that he doesn't want to be aware of because he knows he can't get rid of it and he knows that if he were to make a sincere and genuine decision of faith, he would have to put an end to this sin. Instead, he says, "I cannot believe". Of course not, who can run on a race track with a nail sticking out of their shoe and stabbing their foot with every step?! Or who can fight on a race track carrying a heavy backpack? Of course, such a racer cannot run, cannot fight, cannot fight! He usually sits on the side of the track, criticises the other runners, his faith is shipwrecked. Why? Because he doesn't accept the rules of the race, which the Word says: "Leaving aside every obstacle and the sin that encompasses..." run! Ignore the obstacles, run!
Or another great burden that often hinders one's calling very strongly is the dear, cherished "I" of oneself. Many people are hindered in their calling either by feeling very bad, worthless, last, unworthy, or very good, impeccable. Either they despair of themselves, or they are very pleased with themselves. Or he feels too evil or too good to believe. Let me tell you a very short little story: I read a short story in one of those Dutch books. The short story is that a man of good age, about 35-40 years old, who had a rather troubled life, his life was up and down, like all men in general, had a strange habit: he wrote down everything he did in a book, precisely and precisely. This book was all he had. To this book he gave the title: My Life. It happened once that he had to cross a small river on a rather rickety bridge. He lost his balance and fell into the water. He could not swim. He was almost drowning. He was rescued by fishermen in a boat. When he first woke up, his first words were: where is my book? - in which he recorded the few good deeds and the many bad ones. To his great joy, this too was rescued by the fishermen. He was greedy, and began to turn the pages, turning and turning - but the water in which he fell washed every page clean. He searched in vain for his good deeds and his bad deeds, but the water washed them all away, and found nothing. There were only clean, white pages. On the cover page, in neat letters, was the inscription, "My life."
Brothers and sisters! This is what the apostolic letter says: "Looking unto the Prince and Finisher of faith." To believe, of course, is to be immersed by faith in the Spirit of Jesus, in that sea of the Spirit of Jesus which washes away everything: the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, your virtues and your sins. To be immersed in this spirit and then to live again - but now as one whose life-book has been completely wiped clean by the blood of Jesus, which is said to "cleanse our souls from all sin". That is why, if we want to believe, we must look to Jesus. Therefore, whoever wants to believe must never look to other believers, for he will lose faith; never to obstacles, for he will fall back; nor to himself, for he will inevitably fall, but to Jesus alone. He who suffered on the cross and sits on the throne of God. Is not this a wonderful thing? The author of the letter to the Hebrews invites us to look to Jesus, to look to Jesus, whoever wants to believe, whoever wants to face life in faith, look to Jesus! He does not say to look to God - let anyone who tries to look to God but does not see Him, look to Jesus! It is as if the Word were trying to save us from some spiritual disaster.
But many times it happens that someone thinks he believes in God, but it turns out that he does not believe in God, but puts his trust in an idol, he is grasping at faith! Most people imagine God as He is, as He should be. You imagine something like "God is love" - yes, but if he is love, how can he allow this or that to happen to me? The other person imagines that "God is omnipotent". Yes, but if he is omnipotent, why doesn't he stop all the bloodshed and evil that is on this earth? Very logical looking reasoning, yet let me say that this is a typical example of someone clinging to their faith not in the living God, but in an idol god of their own making, imagination. Let us remember one thing very well, which I have been proclaiming in this pulpit for 30 years, that you cannot even talk about God without Jesus! Because He reveals Himself in Jesus! God does not love this world by sparing His living sons in it from all suffering, but by putting His only begotten Son directly into the greatest physical and spiritual suffering so that we may not perish but have eternal life!
God's omnipotence is not a power like human power on the "n" power, God's omnipotence can be seen and felt only in the cross and resurrection of Christ. God is so powerful that He can relinquish all power when He crucifies Jesus. God is so powerful that Jesus is able not to deliver Himself from the shame and agony of the cross. In this total surrender is the omnipotence of God. And in the resurrection of Christ on Easter, in which faith is immersed, there is the certainty of the ultimate divine victory over sin, death and all evil. Let me put it this way, if you understand: anticipation, anticipated certainty. So, in our running on the racecourse, woe betide us, lest we hope in some image of God of our own making, lest we look to it, for it fails us in the depths, even in the heights, of life! But let us look to Jesus as the Father, the Prince and Finisher of our faith - or, more clearly, to Jesus, through Whom we see into the heart of God! The Jesus of whom the clouds of testimony bear witness, in whom even those who sat in the tribune believed and hoped.
You know, it is somehow the case that if Jesus had not walked among us, if he had not taken upon himself all the misery that hinders us in our walk of faith, in our running, if Jesus had not walked among us in such a way that we could look at him with our faith uninterrupted, then it would not be worth believing, it would not have the possibility, it would not be worth anything. But Jesus has gone before us and is going before us. With our eyes of faith fixed on him, we can now run with perseverance the arena of struggle ahead of us, because life is a struggle, not an easy thing... It is very difficult to struggle with the external world around us and to struggle with our own inner world. The writer says it so beautifully, "The struggle ahead of us". In a more accurate translation of the original Greek text, it could be said to be the struggle set before us, the struggle measured out for us, the struggle laid out for us. So we don't choose the course or this section of the course that we have to run, individually for each of us. It's set for all of us - one course is shorter, one is longer. One runs on harder terrain, the other on easier terrain, one's route is through mountains and valleys, the other through almost flat countryside. It's not worth dwelling on this - it's made to measure. Someone, Who wants to run you to your eternal destination, has measured exactly the width, length, depth and height, beginning and end of your course, and all dimensions are exactly what is absolutely necessary and sufficient for your sure arrival at your destination!
So, your course is set, precisely, exactly the arena of struggle that will unfold your potentialities, that will ennoble you for eternity. Don't try to stray from it: you must take it, you must run it. We want to win this race. Not from somebody else, because it's not like other races, who comes first: it doesn't matter who comes first. Everyone has to win individually. Why do we believe? So that we can run the race ahead of us victoriously! Again, the only way to win is to look with faith to Jesus, the Prince and Finisher of our faith. Try, Brother, to struggle and live looking only to Jesus alone! That is the message of the Word of God to you today, to LOOK TO JESUS!
When you are burdened with the weight of various sins - look to Jesus crucified! When temptations surround you - look to Jesus who has already triumphed over the tempter! When you are hurt - look to the mocked Jesus! When you are weary, or sad or fallen, look to Jesus in heaven pleading for you! If your soul aches because of all the evil in the world, look to Jesus who is coming back in judgment! If the imminence of death casts a shadow over you, look to the risen Jesus! If you are serious, if you want to commit yourself, if you want to be successful in the life of Christ, if you want to run the race well, look to Jesus! On the track, let us look to Jesus!
And even if you forget everything that was said here today in an hour, remember this one thing: Jesus says: WATCH! WATCH! KEEP LOOKING TO JESUS!
Let the coming week be our weekly song:
My faith now looks to you,
My Saviour, my God,
On Calvary:
Hear my prayer,
And take away my sin;
From now on let me be
Yours only.
(Canto 466, verse 1)
Amen.
Date: 11 February 1968.