thank you [Music] I was astounded by what I discovered when I was working on the Hebrew concept of believe yes it is an action word not something in the mind but the Hebrew discloses who causes us to believe sometimes God sometimes you then in searching the New Testament with this Hebrew understanding I learned not only who will enter God's presence which is eternal life but also win let's take a look at the New Testament word for believe and what we're going to find is very interesting because three times in the New Testament Paul and then I believe it's James uh quotes from the Old Testament so the concept of believe in the New Testament should not stand alone by itself it is definitely connected with the Hebrew scriptures let me show you one all right this is the Apostle Paul and he says for what does the scripture say Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness now the capital letters identify the quotation from the Hebrew scriptures and this is a quotation from Genesis 15 16. we need to take a look at the Greek word for believed which is epista usen now Pista uo is the verbal root the Epsilon at the front and the sigma make it an heiressed an heiress in the in the ancient Greek koine Greek is a completed act so let's take that understanding and take it back to the quotation and we read here that Abraham believed in the Lord and God reckoned it to him as righteousness well here we have a Hebrew word for believed so let's take a look at that one and Abraham believed is now Amman is a three-letter verbal root I've got in red the hey at the beginning makes it a heath eel you can't translate that into English the heath eel is causative so somebody is causing something to Abraham to believe is it Abraham causing himself or is it God it's actually God who's causing Abraham to believe and once Abraham had that complete complete complete belief then God reckoned to him as righteousness so let's take a look at the word Amman to support or nourish Now isn't that interesting how did we translate it believe well I want to show you from the verbal root you can generate other things you can generate nouns you can generate adjectives you can even even get adverbs so I'm going to give you two words that have been generated from the verbal root and I put the verbal root in Red so you can see the Amman in in both of them one of them is O minute the other one is on Note now what are they I'm not going to tell you I'm going to give you a verse and and see if you can figure it out let's take a minute first Naomi took the child and laid him in her lap and became his nurse nurse is a minute look up above Amman means to support or nourish which one describes the nurse it's nourish so Amman which we've translated believe is a visual image of a nurse nursing a tiny little baby now let's look at the other one which is omnote and I'm going to take you to two kings 18 16. Hezekiah he's kiahu was one of the Kings of Judah cut off the gold from the doorposts the door posts is um note which he gave to the king of Assyria because the Assyrians had already conquered the northern kingdom and I have a picture to show you from Solomon's Temple taking the gold off those columns well look up above are those store posts support or nourish their support so what we have is an action word that means firm faithful reliable and that has been used for the concept of belief so in the Hebrew When You Believe that belief is so strong it's not going to waver it's not going to go away it's not going to get lukewarm that belief is firm that belief is faithful that belief is reliable that's the Hebrew concept of believe and there are these pictures that you get visual images that you get with with the concept of the Hebrew word Amman now I want to take you back to translation here they mean is the sacred name of God but I was taught by a Jewish teacher the Jews don't say the sacred name so they so I was taught to say aronai which means Lord so that's the way I'm going to do it now listen again foreign all right let's take a look first of all it's in the heath eel that the valve is a connecting letter the hey signifies that it's Heath eel Heath eel is causative someone is causing something to happen that's what he feel is you can't capture that in the English translation and it's in the perfect sense which is completely completely completely complete hello to the car let's see the verb which is I've highlighted in red means to give value esteem consider or think now the way it's used here is to give great value and esteem and guess what it's in the he feel which is causative now it's in the imperfect but it follows The Vow so it's the reversing valve and the meaning is perfect or complete so God caused Abraham to completely stand firm in his belief that's the meaning of the Hebrew and then we get God caused Abraham to be esteemed and honored and valued in righteousness that's really what the Hebrew is conveying so we ask the question now what did Abraham believe Abraham said since you have given no Offspring to me one born in my house is my Heir so I I want I want to have descendants but they're not going to come for me they're going to have to come from the head servant in my household God took him outside and said hey look toward the heavens and count the Stars if you are able to count them and God said to Abraham so shall your descendants be now what is Abraham going to believe he's going to believe that God is going to give him a son and through that son there are going to be just so many descendants that you can't even count them just like the stars in the sky that's what Abraham has to believe so Abraham acted on what he believed by faith Abraham when he was tested offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son now let's stop and just think for a minute here Isaac is going to be the son who's going to have all the descendants so if he's going to sacrifice Isaac he's going to be dead how can he have descendants if Isaac's going to be dead now we have here the word tested you know God doesn't cause testing I which I think a lot of people think I think it's something that kind of we stumble upon and God kind of looks at us to say okay how are you going to deal with this are you going to deal with this in a Godly way or are you going to deal with this in a worldly way well The Godly way was to believe God's promise that his son Isaac would would have me you know would have many descendants so let's continue in Hebrews it was he to whom it was said now capital letters quoting from the Hebrew scriptures in Isaac your descendant Shall be Called Abraham considered that God was able to raise people even from the dead from which he also received him back as a type I think that's really powerful so in the New Testament the interpretation is that Abraham believed that God was going to allow Isaac to have just so many descendants like stars in the sky so if he killed Isaac which you do in a sacrifice then God would have to raise him from the dead somehow that that's the interpretation that we get in the New Testament but the point here is the concept of believing in the Hebrew believing is to be so firm to stand so solid in your in your belief that you're not going to waver from it and look at what what Abraham did he believes so strongly that God would give him a son and through that sum there would be descendants like the stars in the sky that he was willing to go ahead and do what God Said was to sacrifice his son of course we all know what happened you know God brought a rant for a sacrifice instead of Isaac but I think that more than anything this really gives us the the Hebrew concept of of believing now remember that the the believe was in the heath eel which is causative so somebody has to cause something in the case of Abraham God caused Abraham to to have this this incredible firm belief to the extent that he was willing to sacrifice his son so I want to take a look at the how this Heath eel causative is used in Hebrew and here we get Moses before the Red Sea and we read that the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians now the saved is in the heath eel so the Lord caused salvation for Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians because he parted the Red Sea so he caused and Israel saw now this is the perfect if you know any Hebrew okay so that's it's in the Pastime and it's absolutely complete complete complete so the the people of Israel completely completely completely saw what what God had done and they saw the Egyptians dead on the shore and that this passage continues and we're going to get to believe as the passage continues so we read here when Israel saw now that's that complete pass and it was done they saw the great power which the Lord had used against the Egyptians the people feared the Lord this is not causative this is in a complete sense so when they feared the Lord they completely completely completely completely feared the Lord they believed that's in the heath eel they believed that's the causative it's complete they believed in the Lord now I think here that God is not causing them to believe they saw the miracle that God accomplished and it caused them in their inner being to believe so in a sense they're causing themselves to believe and I think this is important because in our own lives today you know there are times when we don't just believe we have to something may be so extraordinary that in a sense we cause ourselves to believe it's so extraordinary and then we have to stand we can't waver once we believe we can't waver we have to stand in it now um I'm going to give you another example of this Heath eel causative where the Lord spoke to Moses saying take the rod you and your brother Aaron assemble the congregation and speak to the Rock before their eyes that it may yield as water so they're in the Sinai desert and they don't have any water and they're thirsty they've got to get water so God is telling Moses what to do now what did Moses do Moses lifted up his hand he did not speak to the Rock he struck the rock twice with his rod and water came forth abundantly well Moses did not follow the Commandment he did not do what God told him he did not speak to the Rock he struck the rock so what's going to happen the Lord said to Moses and Aaron because you have not believed now believe that there's our Amman that's our our Hebrew word and it's in the heath ill and mean it's in the heath ill which is causative so let's continue and and see what we have here therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them Moses has not believed it's in the causative Moses you have not caused yourself to believe to the point where you will stand firm and completely completely obey me so I think this is important because we have to understand that when we say we believe something it's not in our mind it's in in our actions and our actions have to stand firm and waver and don't waver at all now I'm going to give you one more example here all right we have Saul the king who's decided he's going to kill David because David has become so popular David says I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living it's in the heath ill Perfect by the way that believe is in the heath ill perfect so it's causative so David is causing himself to believe so completely even if if Saul kills him he's going to see God so God did not cause this belief David actually caused the belief in himself because he knew it says here that he would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living David is saying teach me good discernment and knowledge for I believe in your Commandments again it's the heath ill causative it's in the perfect complete complete complete so I completely cause myself to believe in your Commandments every single one in the word of God the New Testament word for believe is all the authors of the New Testament were Jews with one exception which was Luke but Luke became a disciple of Paul traveled with Paul and so he was thinking Hebrew also so the New Testament cannot be separated from the old and the authors of the New Testament think Hebrew that's important now let's take a look at the Greek word piste you oh very often the word is expressed as a participle a participle has an ing at the end so you're eating sleeping dreaming it signifies ongoing action you do it constantly all right that's that ongoing action now the word is dunamis and I put beside Dynamite because that's how I memorized it because dunamis is power that's just it's not power in action it's like a stick of dynamite that hasn't been lit yet it's potential power it's the gift of the Holy Spirit but you have to activate the Holy Spirit to make it operate so the dunamis is the power that's just a stick of dynamite that's waiting to be lit now what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us who believe the belief is in the participle who are believing in an ongoing basis and then it goes the working is the inner Gaia which is lighting lighting the dynamite the power is Kratos okay which is so it's used for somebody who is so strong you know I'm putting up here they could lift the dumbbells so let me go over it again what is the exceeding greatness of his dunamis Dynamite which is potential power to us who are in the ongoing process of believing according to the inner Gaia thinking of lighting the dynamite lighting the dynamite when we light the dynamite we are operating his Kratos the Kratos the power and strength of of God so this is the way Pista uo is used in the New Testament now let me take you to the Apostle John who was probably the author of the first second and third Epistles of John and he's going to use these participles in the New Testament for ongoing action whoever believes that's a participle whoever is ongoing believing in a walk of believing that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God and whoever loves that's the part of whoever is loving in an ongoing walk of loving the father loves the child born of him I think these participles are really really really powerful and I don't think you see them in the English translation now let me show you another example this is ongoing action who is the one who is overcoming see it isn't even translated properly in English who is overcoming the World ongoing action the word is from which we get Nike shoes and that's why I've got the picture here of the Nike shoes and what what do the Nike shoes do they allow us to go on to Victory and they hear Nike the goddess of victory for the Greeks he who believes there's that participle ongoing believing that Jesus is the son of God so if you have an ongoing believing in your life every single time you think you you dream you you do something you plan something you talk someone you're you're believing that Jesus is the son of God then you are in the process of overcoming the world the one who believes that's that participle ongoing believing the one who is believing in the Son of God has a testimony in himself the testimony is the word of God it's like it's in you and everything you do every thought every action everything you do is believing that word of God and acting on it the one who does not believe in an ongoing way now you may believe today but maybe you're not acting on it tomorrow and this is you the one who does not believe ongoing action has made God a liar because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning his son I want you to try this challenge okay this is in First Peter and you see what he's quoted from the Hebrew scriptures behold I lay in Zion a choice that's God's choice of a Remnant by the way and that's my work in scripture the choices the choice of a Remnant a precious meaning having value and he who believes in an ongoing action in him will not be disappointed now we have to go back to what Peter has quoted and that's Isaiah 28 16. so we have behold I am laying in Zionist Stone a tested zone now that's referring to the Messiah a costly Cornerstone for a foundation firmly placed but but Peter's saying is ilay and Zion a choice Stone a precious stone and he who believes in him will not be disappointed is talking about those Believers in Christ who are now dedicated so expanding the tested Stone to include beliefs in Christ also so it continues he who believes now this is the he feel we're in Isaiah he who causes himself to believe in this tested Stone which is Messiah will not be disturbed I just want to leave you with the concept of believing and I hope you put it into your life that believing is something that is an ongoing thing you stand firm and you do everything that is in the word of God with that I say shalom