Thank you.
That’s not the Holy Spirit. Okay.
Now, faith is the substantiation of things hoped for, the assurance of things not seen. Why I like that translation—faith is the substantiation of things hoped for—is this: when you have something, you know…
Some of you know that I was a detective for a number of years. When we had something, when we were investigating something, we had something in our grasp. I’d say, “Not enough to get out there and make the arrest.”
But the situations that surrounded it, the other evidence that was being gathered around it, substantiated what we believed to be true. It was substantiating this—what we believed to be true—giving evidence that it was true.
So when we read this and say, “Now faith is the substantiation of things hoped for,” well, if we want our faith to be built up, as it were, there’s one thing that we have to do.
Even as we gather around this table today, the table of remembrance, we need to be keenly aware every day of the Lord working in our lives and through our lives, taking note of it—remembering it.
When we were so weak that we couldn’t pray, God supplied grace that stirred our hearts to pray. When things were just not well in relationships, and we would pray, almost wondering, “Could this ever be made good?” then all of a sudden the Spirit of God moves in such a way that the situation has changed, and we take note: that was the Lord. I had nothing to do with it.
As these things are brought to our attention day by day, it is substantiating faith. So the next time, there is faith to meet the next challenge. God has proven Himself in front of us, before our very eyes, that He is the God who answers prayer. And our faith is built up.
Now, faith is the substantiation of things hoped for, and it says here, “the evidence of things not seen.” Another translation says, “the assurance.”
That word, assurance, for the believer, gives peace to his soul. He has been assured of this because of the working of Christ. He witnessed Christ.
When I say he witnessed Christ, or eyewitnessed Christ, I don’t mean in this particular way—that I’m witnessing Christ to other people, which we should be doing. But I’m witnessing Christ Himself working and doing and moving and healing and teaching. I’m witnessing Him do this. As I see my Lord and Savior in these ways, my faith is bolstered up.
I have three little stories to tell. I’m in every one of them, but the stories are not about me, okay?
After a few years in the Lord—I was a young man then, and just a few years in the Lord—in New York, I had, for the first time in my life really, a regular, steady job. We had bought a little house out on Long Island. I mean, it wasn’t even a quarter of the size of this room, this little house, but it was a little house and we loved it.
Here I was: had the house, first time I had real security in a job, and we felt the Lord speaking to our hearts, saying, “I want you to move.”
We were meeting at that time with a group of about fifteen other young couples, all newly in the Lord. Just wonderful, great fellowship. We even took vacations together.
Now, in the midst of all of this security, He says, “I want you to move.” It was confirmed in prayer with and through these other brothers and sisters I was meeting with.
The ringer of this was, we felt He wanted us to move to Florida, which I didn’t particularly care for. I only knew one person who lived in Florida.
But the Lord convinced us, showed us that it was so clear that not to obey and move would have been sinful. That’s how clear it was.
At that time, I had two children. We packed ourselves in this old used Buick station wagon, and we moved to Florida—Port Charlotte, Florida.
When we got there, it was in the middle of that recession during the seventies. Not much work was going around, and at that time I was working my construction trade. As soon as we got the house a little bit settled, I went out to look for work.
I found the biggest contractor in town and approached him about working. He said, “Well, I have a house for you that you can go in and work at.”
Then he told me how much I would be paid as a subcontractor, and it really set me back on my heels, because I’m coming from New York, and the pay was a lot better there than in Florida during this time. It was a little bit shocking to me.
But I told him, “Well, look, I’m going to do this house. But then, after you see my work and the quality of my work, let’s sit back down and negotiate this.”
So I went out, did the job, and went back to him. He was very pleased with it. I said, “Well, do you have another house?” He said, “Come back in about two days.”
Two days later, I went back. “Do you have a house?” “Not yet, but come back in a couple more days.” I went back again a couple of days later. Same question: “Do you have the house?” “Not yet.”
I got in my car and was driving away from his office. The Lord spoke to me as clearly as I’m speaking to you right now, and He said, “You see, with your personality and your expertise in your trade, you still can’t provide for your family. When are you going to trust Me to be your provider?”
I repented then. I said, “Lord, I’m sorry.”
Three days later, I got a call from a completely different contractor, and he gave me work. I started to work and didn’t miss a day of work until the Lord moved me into the restaurant business, which some of you have heard about just recently.
The way that happened—this is the second little story—was that my father had come down to visit us in Florida. He said, “Why don’t you open up a pizzeria over here? There’s no good pizza place down here.”
I said, “Well, Dad, I don’t know anything about that business. I don’t have that much money, and I can’t see the possibility of that.”
He said, “We have some cousins that live in Jamaica, Queens, New York, that have a pizzeria. You can go there, learn from them, and come back.”
I said, “I don’t know.” But he convinced me that that would be the way to go: get out of the trades and do something different. He gave me $3,000 to help me do this.
So I drove back up to New York and worked with my cousins for a week. They gave me the recipes, but it was a very, very busy place. With all of the hustle and bustle, I had the opportunity to make one pizza. That was it.
You know, the pizzerias in New York—they’re throwing the pizzas up in the air and all. So I get back to Florida and find a storefront that I was able to put a down payment on.
Now I’m working my trade and going into the storefront, building it up—building partition walls, making counters to work at—working until eleven o’clock at night, trying to do as much as I could myself because I didn’t have much money.
I was using that $3,000, which went like that, and then from the work that I was doing, I took care of my household and invested money in this little storefront.
Going along, we had the big sign on the front: “Coming Soon: Amato’s New York Pizza.” That was it.
One night, about a week before we were supposed to open, literally there was nothing in the store in the way of food products, and I didn’t have much money at all.
About eleven o’clock at night, I’m walking out of there after doing work in the store, and this black Lincoln Continental pulls up. A guy gets out of the car and says to me, “Are you the owner here?” I said, “Yeah.”
He introduced himself—I forget his name right now—and said, “Yes, I’m the Rome food distributor in this area. I’d love to have your business. Here’s my card.”
I said, “Okay.” He said, “Where are you from?” I said, “Well, I’m from New York, out on Long Island.” He said, “Oh, yeah, I’m from New York, on Long Island.”
He looked at me and said, “Do you know a guy by the name of Steve Amato, who lives in West Babylon, on Long Island?” That was the adjacent town to where I lived on Long Island. “Do you know a guy named Steve Amato?”
I said, “Yes, my father.” He said, “That’s your father? I know your father.”
The Lord knows where you are. He knows the circumstance of your life. He knows what you need. And His timing is always perfect.
A couple of days later, I called him up and made an appointment to go to the warehouse. I went to the warehouse, and he showed me all around the whole warehouse. Then we went back to his office.
He said, “Okay, so tell me what you want. Just tell me what you want. I’d love to do business with you.”
I said, “Well, first of all, I can’t tell you what I want because I don’t know what I want. I’ve never done this before. And the second thing is this: I don’t have any money for this.”
He said, “That’s okay. I’ll stock the store for you—everything that you need. Then, next time you give me an order, you pay for that order and pay a little bit more to go against this bill. But I’ll stock you.”
That week, he brought everything to the store and stocked it up completely.
Now, the day I’m going to open up—keep in mind, I’ve only made one pizza—I got there nice and early. I mixed a batch of dough, because you’ve got to mix the dough, let it rise, and then you can start to use it.
We were going to open at eleven o’clock that day. I mixed the dough. It was a disaster. It’s getting closer and closer to the time I have to open the store, so I make another batch of dough. I thank the Lord He gave me enough wisdom to get in there real early that day.
We were supposed to open at eleven o’clock, and the time is clicking away. But I said to myself, “This is the first day. Who’s going to come into the store?” We opened up at eleven o’clock. Who’s going to come into the store at that time?
A few minutes before eleven, I ripped down the paper sign on the window.
I walked back to the counter. It wasn’t two minutes later that the door opened, and my first customers walked in.
Well, I didn’t know what to do. But my brother had moved down, my mom was down there, and they were all working at the store. We put the dough on the counter—the table where you make it—and we gathered around and prayed.
Then we made that first pizza. It was as if I had been making pizzas all my life. We put that on the table, and that customer was my customer until the day we closed the store.
It was God who showed up. But did I recognize it? Yes, we recognized it. That’s what I was saying about this issue of faith. Every time He showed up, every time He demonstrated His faithfulness, it had faith grow within me.
In Ephesians, in that second chapter, it says:
By grace you have been saved through faith,
and that not of yourselves;
it is the gift of God.
So we come into the family of God by His grace and by His mercy. You see, when the Lord first looked at me, He had His eyes on me, just like He has had His eye on you while you were yet in your mother’s womb. He had His eye on you, and He had His eye on me.
When He looked at me, His determination of me was this: “Oh, he is pitiful. He doesn’t have anything. He can’t do anything. He’s nothing.” That was His evaluation of me, because I was born in sin.
So what was His plan for me when He saw me like that? There was only one thing left. There was no improving me. The only thing that was left was that He had to put me to death.
That’s exactly what He did in His mercy. He put me in His Son, and I died in His Son. I died His death.
But He didn’t leave me there, just like He didn’t leave you there. Because not only did I die in Christ, but I was raised up with Him to newness of life. Hopefully, that is something that will be expressed today: He has given you and me a new life. Are we living in that new life?
Romans 6, starting in verse 3:
Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into His death?
I would ask that question of us: do we know that? Sometimes, if we ask that question, people will say, “Yeah, I know that. I’ve been around quite a long time. I’ve heard plenty of messages on that. I’ve read plenty of books about that. Yeah, I know that.”
But I have to ask you: is it yours? Is it yours?
The only way it’s going to be yours is that it has to be apprehended by faith. Just as that little illustration before about faith being the substantiation of things hoped for, so in this matter as well, it’s only yours if you arrest it by faith.
You do that by remembering the Lord Jesus over the years that you have known Him.
Here we are, in a pitiful state at one time, living in darkness. In the midst of that darkness came that one day—that glorious day that I will never forget, and I’m sure you haven’t forgotten—the glorious day when the Lord opened up my eyes to see.
He showed me how utterly sinful I was, perverted in so many ways. He opened my eyes, and I saw: what did I have? I had nothing of any value.
At that point in time, the very light of God—John 1 says that He was the life, and the life was the light of men—pierced my darkness.
He was the light and He was the life. At that very moment, my darkness was pierced by that light. He opened my eyes to see that I was the one who needed a Savior. When I called on Him, He gave me, right then, new life.
Not to be worked for, because this new life that we speak of—this new life is His very life. It cannot be learned. You cannot learn this new life, and you can’t gain this new life. You have to receive this life through faith in order to walk in it.
Again, I am convinced that first comes obedience, then comes faith. This faith is substantiated because we witness Christ at work.
Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into His death?
Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death,
that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,
even so we also should walk in newness of life.
We’re not given a choice of doing it this way or that way—my way or His way. It’s not my life that pleases the Father; it’s His life that pleases the Father. But He has given us His life, so we can be pleasing to the Father every day.
We are to be conscious of the Lord Jesus. It’s not that we’re walking around in a stupor with our head up in the clouds. No, no, it’s not like that. But He gives us the reality of it.
There is something that has happened within us that we can say, “Yes, I belong to Him, and He belongs to me.”
For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death,
certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection.
There is power in the resurrected life. He has power for you and me to overcome, to be victorious. There is power there. But it’s not your power; it’s His power. It’s His life.
You see, when we read in Ephesians, “By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves,” this life began by His initiation, by the Lord’s initiation.
It will be like that until we see Him face to face. It’s all the Lord Jesus. All the Lord Jesus. It’s His life.
Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him,
that the body of sin might be done away with,
that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
For he who has died has been freed from sin.
Now, have you ever seen a dead man sin? On the other hand, have you ever seen a dead man do good and righteous works? No. A dead man is dead.
He says, “You died in Christ, but you also have been raised up with Him.”
Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more.
Death no longer has dominion over Him.
For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all;
but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
Likewise you also reckon—take into account—
yourselves to be dead indeed to sin,
but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Reckon yourself dead. How do we do that? We do that by seeing Christ, knowing by faith that He died on the cross for your sins and mine. We are in Him. I can reckon myself because of what He has done, what He has demonstrated in my life.
This wasn’t reality to me until after being with the Lord for some time. Now, it was the truth. That is the truth. But my understanding of it, receiving it, and being benefited by it did not come until the Lord had to make it clear to me and real to me.
That’s why it says, “Likewise, you also reckon.” Consider all that you have seen and witnessed yourself of the Lord Jesus, and then you can believe: “Yes, I am dead to sin. That life is no more. I have a new life.”
As I walk this way with the Lord, I think I am speaking for every one of you. I hope I’m not being presumptuous. I don’t think so.
But as I’m walking with the Lord after this glorious new birth and all that accompanied it, those first few years in particular were just exciting. Seeing things that I had never recognized before, things right in front of my face that I was blind to; now He opened up my eyes, and I could actually see God moving.
Being able to hear the voice of God, being instructed through His Word—which at one time was just another book on the shelf—ah, glorious things.
But I began to recognize something about myself. I shouldn’t say all of a sudden, because these things were there all the time. But there were things offensive to my Lord—things in my character.
Maybe I lied too much. Maybe I was harsh. Maybe there were other sins in my life that were recurring.
When these things rose up, I’d get before the Lord and say, “Lord, I’m so sorry. I really am sorry. Lord, I hate myself when I do those things. Please forgive me, Lord. I will do better, Lord. I’m going to do better. Lord, forgive me.”
I’d go along, and all of a sudden, boom, the thing pops up again. I’d go to the Lord, shaking my head: “Oh, Lord, I’m just a mess. Forgive me, Lord. But I am doing better, if You’ve noticed, Lord. I’m better than what I used to be.”
There was a time, as foolish as this may sound, my dear brothers and sisters, when I would judge my spirituality on how long I went between my sins. “Ah, good. This was two weeks now. I’ve been doing pretty good.”
Not too long ago, it was just like a week, and I could lose my temper or do something foolish.
I was trying really hard. I prayed hard and earnestly: “Lord, change me, Lord. I want to be kinder. I want to be able to love more. I don’t want to speak lies.”
The Lord spoke to my heart, which I’ve shared here before. He said, “You see? You’re just as weak today as you were the day before you knew Me.”
I agreed with Him. “You’re right, Lord. I am. I am so weak. Please forgive me. But I will be trying harder.”
The Lord let me see that He was not interested in making you or me a better person. He was not interested in making Len Amato better.
He had to convince me that there was no hope for me outside of Him. He had to convince me that He had to be my life.
It took some time, because I was still trying to be good. Again, He had to say to me, “I’m not interested in making you good, Len. I’m interested in your living out of your new life. Out of your new life. That’s what will please Me.”
As I said before, to live in newness of life—you cannot learn to do it. You cannot gain it by doing as I was trying to do.
That is where this issue of faith is important.
Again, I found that in this new life, the life that I once lived is crucified.
The Lord had to orchestrate circumstances, as He does in your life too. He had to orchestrate circumstances where I was ready to get in there and fix the problem, address the issue, because that’s where I am naturally. I’m a fixer. I want to fix things.
“You got that? I’ll tell you what, this is what you should be doing. These are the Scriptures you should be reading.” I wanted to fix it.
The Lord began to show me just that. There would be that situation, as you encounter—and there is going to be that situation—and you’re ready to take hold of it.
The Lord is saying, “No. No, that’s you. That’s your life. Leave it alone. Let Me deal with it. Let Me do this work, because you can’t. What do you have to offer?”
That’s what He says to me: “Len, what do you have to offer?” I have nothing to offer. “What can you do, Len?”
I realized that what I do is filled with frustration. That’s what my Christian life was like. It was frustrating. The harder I tried, the behinder I got. Why? Because I was still living out of the old man, the old life.
He brings us into those situations, and all of a sudden He puts stops there. He says, “No, no. Trust Me. You say you believe that I’m a God who answers prayer? Pray and see.”
Again, I could speak for many of you here. You have prayed for things, and some years later, all of a sudden that thing you prayed for came through. God knew the time and the occasion for it to happen.
Sometimes I stand in wonderment. There are some things recently that I had been praying about, and all of a sudden, there it is. It almost surprised me. “Oh my goodness, that prayer really worked.”
It wasn’t that prayer really worked. In my impatience, I forgot that I asked the God who answers prayer to do this.
In Romans 7, we’re very familiar with this predicament that I found myself in, and you may have found yourself in, where Paul is saying, “There are things that I want to do, that I will to do. I see that the Lord wants this in my life, and wants my life to be this way. The very things that I will to do, I don’t do. The very things that I don’t want to do, I find myself doing.”
We know he goes through all of this. It’s agonizing. It’s frustrating. That’s what he was experiencing, just like you experience that. I think I’m speaking for some other person here besides myself.
This was Paul’s frustration. This was my frustration. He comes to this part and says:
O wretched man that I am!
Who will deliver me from this body of death?
This is just a little sidestep here, and some of you already know this. Paul was speaking to Roman believers. He knew his audience.
I used to say this about Paul the apostle: when Paul spoke, he knew his audience. When Paul went up to Mars Hill to speak to the philosophers who wanted to hear this new thing, he said, “As I was traveling here, I noticed that you are a very religious people, and you have many altars to many gods. Then I saw this one altar: ‘To the unknown God.’ It is He whom I’ve come to share with you.”
He knew his audience, you see? Sometimes we need to have a better understanding of that in our own lives—the people that we’re talking to.
So Paul was talking to these Roman believers, and he says, “O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?”
Well, in Roman law, as capital punishment for those who went against the state, against the empire, their sentence was a sentence of death. What they would do was take a rotting body and strap it to that man—arm to arm, leg to leg, around the chest—until the putrefaction entered into the body of the man sentenced to this horrible death.
The Romans knew what Paul was saying: “Who shall free me from this body of death?” That’s what he was referring to. What a way to go.
Then he says:
I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God,
but with the flesh the law of sin.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus,
who do not walk according to the flesh,
but according to the Spirit.
This issue of walking in the Spirit contains everything that we’ve heard before. It’s all part of this new life: that we actually are walking in communion with the Lord Jesus, in an intimate, abiding relationship with Him.
That is what this new life is. It is this communion and intimacy with God, where He is our very life.
The only thing that can free you and me from trying to do this in our own strength is that we, by faith, embrace this new life.
Again, we embrace it by recognizing the working of the Lord Jesus every single day in our midst, in so many and innumerable ways. Your faith is built, and my faith is built, to believe that truly I have died, and truly I have been given new life.
It’s not pie in the sky. Like I said before, you can’t learn it, and you can’t gain it by doing things. You have to embrace it by faith, because He has demonstrated to you and me in so many ways that He is a faithful Master to serve, that He is the One who heals.
Those little stories are told about the faithfulness of the Lord—how He showed up, the way He did, for those groceries, to supply me work. Some of you know the miraculous healing of my leg, the healing of my hand. I’ve seen people healed. I witness Christ as the Healer.
I’ve witnessed Christ as the Prophet, when I’ve heard brothers and sisters in an assembly speak and share a word that was just needed at that time.
So we witness Christ in all of His beauty. We witness Him, and He causes us to take hold of this new life.
He will orchestrate, day after day, situations where you can recognize that the Lord is in control. He’s saying, “Len, take your hands off of this.”
More and more, He will bring us into the intimate relationship that He is looking for. It is the life of His Son in you and me that the Father is looking for. It pleases Him, and it will please you. It pleases me.
I think that’s all He wants to say.
Dear Father, I again bow my heart before You, because we do serve such a wonderful Master—Your Son.
Lord, get a hold of us. Teach us and show us, Lord, that Your life is what is so pleasing. Your Son’s life is what is so pleasing to You, and in Your mercy You have given us His life.
We ask this again in His precious name. Amen.