Faith Sermon

When You Cannot See The Whole Road

There is a particular kind of tension that most of us know well, even if we rarely name it out loud. It is the tension of being asked to move forward when you cannot see where the road ends. It is the tension of being asked to trust someone you cannot physically see, on the basis of promises you have not yet watched come true. That tension has a name in Scripture, and the name is faith.

Today we are going to sit with two passages that approach this subject from very different angles. Hebrews 11 gives us a sweeping, panoramic view of faith across centuries of God's dealings with his people. Mark 9 drops us into a single desperate moment, a father standing in a crowd with a sick child and an honest confession trembling on his lips. Together these two passages do not flatten faith into something easy or sentimental. They show us what faith actually looks like when it is lived out in real human experience, and they show us the God in whom that faith is placed.

What Faith Is And Is Not

We should begin where Hebrews 11 begins, because the writer gives us a definition that is worth handling carefully. Verse 1 says this: "Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen." The CSB translates the Greek word hupostasis as reality. Some translations say substance or assurance. The idea is that faith is not wishful thinking. It is not a feeling you work yourself into. It is not optimism dressed in religious language.

The writer is saying that faith functions as a kind of present possession of a future reality. The things God has promised, though not yet fully visible, are genuinely real. Faith is the means by which a person lays hold of that reality right now, in the present moment, even while waiting for its full arrival. And then the writer adds the second phrase: faith is the proof of what is not seen. That word proof carries the sense of conviction or evidence. Faith is not the absence of evidence. It is the conviction that God's word is itself the most reliable evidence available.

This matters because we live in a world that tends to define reality by what can be measured, observed, and immediately verified. The writer of Hebrews is pushing back against that narrow definition. He is saying that the unseen things of God, his character, his promises, his purposes, are more certain than the visible things that are passing away. Faith is the posture of a person who has been persuaded of that.

Then in verse 6, the writer makes a statement that cuts right to the heart of the matter: "Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him." Notice what is required. Not perfection. Not complete understanding. Not the absence of questions. What is required is this: believing that God is real, and believing that God is good toward those who seek him. That is the foundation. Everything else is built on those two convictions.

The Gallery Of Incomplete Stories

Beginning in verse 8, the writer begins walking us through a remarkable collection of men and women who lived by faith. And if you read these stories carefully, you will notice something that might surprise you. Not one of them received everything they were promised during their lifetime.

Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place he was going to receive as an inheritance. He went out, verse 8 tells us, even though he did not know where he was going. He lived in tents. He waited for a city. He died still waiting, in a certain sense, for the fullness of what God had promised. Verse 13 is one of the most honest verses in all of Scripture: "These all died in faith, although they had not received the things that were promised. But they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth."

They saw the promises from a distance. They greeted them. That is a beautiful and somewhat aching image. These were not people who had everything figured out. They were not people whose lives were free of hardship or confusion. They were people who remained persuaded, even at the end, that God was telling the truth. They kept walking toward a city they could not yet see, because they were convinced that the one who promised it was able to deliver it.

Verse 16 tells us how God responded to that kind of faith: "But they now desire a better place, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them." God is not ashamed to be called their God. That phrase is worth pausing over. These were imperfect people with incomplete understanding who lived in the tension of promise and waiting. And God looked at them and said, those are mine. I am their God.

This is what faith looks like at its core. Not the absence of uncertainty. Not the possession of all the answers. But a persistent, grounded, forward-leaning trust in the character and promises of God, even when the road ahead is not fully visible.

A Father's Honest Prayer

Now we come to Mark 9, and the contrast in setting could not be sharper. We move from the sweeping gallery of Hebrews to a single moment of crisis. A father has brought his son to Jesus's disciples, and the disciples have been unable to help. The boy is suffering severely. The father is desperate. When Jesus arrives, he asks how long this has been happening, and the father tells him, and then he says something that many of us have felt but perhaps been afraid to say out loud: "But if you are able to do anything, have compassion on us and help us."

If you are able. There is doubt in that sentence. There is exhaustion in that sentence. There is the accumulated weight of watching his son suffer, of hoping and being disappointed, of bringing him to people who could not help. The father is not presenting Jesus with a polished, confident prayer. He is presenting Jesus with the ragged, honest truth of where he is.

Jesus responds to the if. He says in verse 23: "If you are able? Everything is possible for the one who believes." And then the father gives us one of the most human and most honest responses in all the Gospels. Verse 24: "Immediately the father of the boy cried out, I believe; help my unbelief!"

I believe. Help my unbelief. Both sentences are true at the same time. He is not pretending to have more faith than he has. He is not manufacturing a confidence he does not feel. He is bringing what he actually has, which is a fragile, struggling, honest trust, and he is laying it before Jesus and asking Jesus to do something with it.

And Jesus does. He heals the boy. He does not wait for the father to achieve a higher level of spiritual confidence. He responds to the faith that is actually there, even the faith that is mixed with doubt and exhaustion and honest uncertainty.

The Central Claim

Here is what these two passages, taken together, are telling us. Faith is not the absence of questions or the elimination of uncertainty. Faith is trusting the character and promises of God even when you cannot see the whole road. It is the conviction that God is real, that God is good, and that God can be trusted, even in the middle of circumstances that are painful, confusing, or incomplete.

The heroes of Hebrews 11 did not have all the answers. They had a God who was faithful. The father in Mark 9 did not have unshakeable confidence. He had enough trust to bring his need to Jesus and ask for help. And in both cases, God met them where they were.

This is not a prosperity message. Hebrews 11 is not promising that faith will produce a comfortable life. The same chapter that celebrates these heroes of faith also, later in the chapter, describes others who were persecuted, imprisoned, and killed for their trust in God. Faith does not guarantee that the circumstances will resolve the way we want them to. What faith does is anchor us to a God whose character does not change with our circumstances, and whose promises are more certain than anything we can see.

Living This Out

So what does this mean for the person sitting in this room today?

If you are someone who is walking through something hard right now, something that has not resolved, something that has left you with more questions than answers, the invitation of Scripture is not to pretend that everything is fine. The invitation is to do what that father did. Bring what you actually have. Lay it before Jesus. Say, I believe; help my unbelief. That is not a failure of faith. That is faith being honest about itself.

If you are someone who has been keeping God at arm's length because you feel like you need to have everything figured out before you can come to him, Hebrews 11 is telling you that the people God calls his own are not people who had everything figured out. They are people who kept walking toward him even when the road was unclear.

And if you are someone who does not yet know Jesus, who is still working out what you believe, the gospel is this: God has not waited for you to be certain before he acted on your behalf. He sent his Son into this world, Jesus lived the life we could not live, died the death our sin deserved, and rose from the dead, so that anyone who turns to him in faith, however fragile that faith may be, would be received. The door is open. You do not have to have it all together to walk through it.

A Closing Charge

The road ahead is not fully visible. It never has been, for any of us. But the God who called Abraham out of Ur, who healed a desperate father's son, who raised Jesus from the dead, is the same God who walks with his people today. He is not ashamed to be called your God. He is able to do what he has promised.

Keep walking. Bring what you have. Trust the one who knows the whole road.

Sources Consulted

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017.

F. F. Bruce. The Epistle to the Hebrews. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990.

William L. Lane. Hebrews 9 to 13. Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 47B. Dallas: Word Books, 1991.

James R. Edwards. The Gospel According to Mark. The Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.

Thomas R. Schreiner. Commentary on Hebrews. Biblical Theology for Christian Proclamation. Nashville: B&H Academic, 2015.