God is explosively,

and God is explosively, overflowingly, rewardingly, self-sufficient.

And God is pleased by responses of human beings that display these two things.

And what is that?

He says, is faith.

Faith comes to him as a God who is and embraces and believes that, and faith comes to a God

who is full and overflowing and is satisfied with that.

So what is it about faith that pleases God?

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper opens Hebrews 11, 4 to 6, to emphasize the importance

of knowing who God is in order to strengthen one's faith.

The sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on June 8, 1997. Let's jump into chapter 11. To connect with last Sunday, these verses 4 through 6, you may remember that I did not say anything about verse two last Sunday, even though that was the

text.

I skipped it.

That was intentional because it is the link with today's text.

Now let's read it.

Start with verse one.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for,

the conviction of things not seen,

for by it, here's verse two, by it for by it here's verse two by it by faith

men of old gained approval so he's referring now to these heroes that are coming.

They gained approval with God by faith.

Let's paraphrase these two verses,

...