Faith Toward God (Part 2)

Foundations of the Christian Faith — Steve Gregg

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Faith Toward God (Part 2)

Foundations of the Christian FaithSteve Gregg

In this session, Steve Gregg continues discussing the importance of faith in the Christian life, particularly in relation to righteousness and justification. Though faith alone justifies a person, it must also be accompanied by works as evidence of one's relationship with God. Gregg emphasizes the need for trust in God's provision and care, even in difficult circumstances, and points to examples of faith from both biblical and personal accounts. Ultimately, he emphasizes the necessity of believing in and placing trust in God as the foundation of the Christian life.

Transcript

All right, we need to finish up what we began in the last session, which is our consideration of faith as one of the essential foundational elements of the Christian life, probably the most obvious essential element of the Christian life, when we consider the various things in the list in Hebrews chapter 6, which are repentance and faith, baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. When you think of that list, obviously faith is the one thing more than all the others that is obviously essential to the Christian life. Now, we all chatted a little bit last time about what faith is.

What I want to talk now about is how faith applies to the way you live your life, and also to just being a Christian. Christianity is a belief system, but it is more than a belief system, it is a relationship. It's quite clear if we discuss Christianity as a belief system, the role that faith plays in a belief system, faith plays a major role.

It is what you believe. You believe certain things. If you believe the doctrines of Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses or Islam or some other religion, obviously your belief in those things is what makes you one of those people.

Well, not only your belief, but your practice of them. But it goes without saying, maybe it doesn't go without saying, it should go without saying, that what you believe will dictate what you do. I say it should go without saying, because obviously you will act out ultimately what you really believe.

You will pursue those things which you really, truly value. But you will not necessarily always act out those things which you say you believe. It's probably a better way of deciding what you really believe, not to listen to what you say you believe, but to see what you do.

See what principles you really act upon. And this gets us to the question of faith and works, which is a very important question. Because when it comes to the issue of salvation, especially of justification, faith is quite obviously the major thing that we focus upon.

And sometimes the focus upon faith is at the expense of works. That is, we look at faith, but we don't get a proper view of how works are involved with real faith. If you turn with me to Romans chapter 3, we will see one of the classic passages where Paul argues this position, that we are justified by faith and not by works.

Romans chapter 3, verses 21 through 28, I think, we shall read. Paul said, But now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference for all of sin and fall short of the glory of God, having been justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance, or his tolerance, God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Where is boasting then? It is excluded. Upon what basis? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.

Now, you saw no doubt how frequently the word faith appears in this passage. Likewise, the word righteousness and justified appears frequently in this passage. Justified is a word closely related to the word righteousness.

Justified means to be made just. And the word just and the word righteous are the same word in the Greek, and in the Hebrew, by the way, in the Old Testament. Whenever you read the word just in the Bible, know that the word in the original language could have been translated righteous.

And whenever you read the word righteous, know that it could have been translated just. Likewise, righteousness means justice, and justice means righteousness. These words are interchangeable translations of the same Hebrew words in the Old Testament or Greek words in the New.

Having said that, we can see obviously the connection between the emphasis here on righteousness and justification. To be justified means that you've been declared just or declared righteous. It means essentially that you have been acquitted of all charges.

The word justified in the New Testament times was a legal term. It called to mind a legal concept. When a person is brought to trial, there are two possibilities.

The man will either be declared righteous or declared guilty. That has been true in trials and cases from time immemorial. There's only really two options.

The person either did it or he didn't. He's either held guilty or he's not held guilty. Now, in our day, if a person is declared to be not guilty of the charges that are brought against him, we would say he's been acquitted.

In biblical times, the word for the same concept was justified, acquitted, declared not guilty. Now, how is it that a person can be declared not guilty when, in fact, all are really guilty before God? In fact, all the passages in Romans prior to the passage we just read, the first three chapters up to that point, are all devoted to showing just that point, that we are not just, we are not righteous, we are sinners, everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, are under sin. So how in the world can a God who is a just judge declare otherwise than what is true? How can he declare not guilty persons who are guilty? It's not enough to just say, well, God loves us, and therefore he turns a blind eye to our sin.

How then could anyone hope for justice in the universe if the judge, or let's not take it in the cosmic sense, in any society, if judges let people off the hook because they were especially beloved to them? So that if a mass murderer is brought before the bar of justice, having been captured and arrested for his crimes, and he turned out to be the judge's son, his favorite son, so the judge says, well, I'll tell you what, because I love you, I'm just going to let you off the hook here. You would not think well of a judge who did that, nor how could you. That's showing partiality.

That's not really becoming the defender of justice. That's allowing sentimentality to overrule what is basically good and right. And God, as a just judge, had this crisis on his hands.

On the one hand, he loved people and did not wish any to be lost. On the other hand, the people he loved all deserved to be lost. They all were criminals.

They've all done crimes worthy of death. The wages of sin is death. So how could God exercise his love in forgiving and acquitting such people when they were all guilty? How could he do so without compromising his goodness and his justice? Well, since God is just, he could not be other than himself.

He could not be unjust. Somehow he sought a way of being just and the justifier of sinners. That is, he could remain with his integrity intact and yet somehow declare sinful men to be not guilty.

As you can see, that would be a very serious dilemma for any judge to try to solve. However, Paul says that God manages. It says in verse 26 of the passage we just read that he might be just and the justifier of those who believe in Jesus.

How did God work this out? Well, that's mentioned in verse 25. God sent forth Jesus as a propitiation by his blood. The word propitiation means a sacrifice of atonement.

The suggestion is that the sins of the persons condemned have been transferred by some legal concept known and understood by God but not entirely by us. Some would call it a legal fiction, although I don't think it's a legal fiction. It's something that really happened somehow in God's reckoning.

God has reckoned that all of our sins were laid upon Jesus. Then Jesus received the full measure of punishment for them. Therefore, there was nothing left for us but righteousness.

If all of our crimes have now been paid for, it cannot be that those crimes will be put upon us. There is no double jeopardy in God's legal system. You cannot, and that has nothing to do with the game show, by the way.

I know we've got a bunch of legally illiterate here. Not all, but we're not talking about a game show. We're talking about double jeopardy.

There is protection under the law to a person who has been acquitted once of a crime that he's not supposed to be able to be brought to court again for the same crime unless he repeats it. That principle seems to have been violated recently in the case of certain Los Angeles police officers, but I'm not going to get into political questions here. In God's court, there is no double jeopardy.

If the penalty has already been executed against the crime, the persons cannot be held accountable for it any further. Therefore, since the full punishment for the sins of you and of me have been put on Jesus and Jesus has borne the penalty, therefore God can justly say, Okay, I guess that lets you off the hook. You've had a substitute go in for you.

Now, it's simply a matter of those who believe this. It's just a matter of those who appropriate this truth by believing God when he says so. By, in other words, allowing what God has done to remove the barriers of relationship, to remove the sense of guilt that prevented us previously from having a relationship with a holy God, by believing that Jesus has done this for us and that he's risen from the dead as a demonstration that his sacrifice is completely acceptable to God.

This belief now removes all barriers to our fellowship with God. And God can say, You are just. I have imputed your sins to Christ and I have imputed his righteousness to you.

One way the Bible says this is in 2 Corinthians 5.21. In 2 Corinthians 5.21, it says, He, meaning Christ, who knew no sin, became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him. In Christ, we are counted to be the righteousness of God. Now, because of this transaction, all that it requires to be justified or declared not guilty is to trust in Jesus.

Now, the Jews of Paul's day and people of many other religions then and since have often sought to be just with God by other means, namely by works. They have felt that obviously they ought to atone by their own behavior for their misdeeds. There has even been in certain branches of Christendom the idea that if you've done certain sins, you have to somehow atone for them yourself.

There are certain penance you have to do or maybe even some purgatory to endure, to purge sins that have not somehow been otherwise removed in your lifetime. These ideas have crept into Christianity because they are so prevalent in religion in general. They are not valid ideas in Christianity, but man is a religious creature and man by nature senses an alienation from his maker and seeks methods of reconciliation.

But the problem is man always seeks those methods on his own terms. The method that God has arranged is to freely forgive those who have put their trust in Jesus Christ and call it settled. Let bygones be bygones, consider that the penalty has been paid, and let's start out fresh with a clean slate.

And that's the righteousness of God that is ours through faith in Jesus Christ, Paul says. We are justified, he says in verse 24, freely by his grace. But he also says in verse 28, we are justified by faith.

Now are we justified by faith or by grace? Well obviously there is no conflict there. In verse 24 Paul says that we are justified by his grace. In verse 28 we are justified by faith.

Grace is what God gives, faith is what we bring to the picture. We have faith and we receive grace through this faith. Faith is the means by which grace is made accessible to us, as Paul points out in Romans 5 too.

Through whom, that is Christ, also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand. In which we stand, in rejoicing the hope of the glory of God. So the grace that God gives us of justification and all other graces that come to us comes through faith.

And the initial thing that must be established when we are talking about faith is the fact that we are saved by faith not by works. No amount of good works can atone for your sins. I mean look at it this way.

If a criminal had committed several murders and under the laws of the land was therefore vulnerable to say the death penalty. But the court didn't catch him for several years after his last murder. And the law enforcement officers finally caught him and after 10 years after his most recent murder.

And I don't know if there is a statute of limitations on murder, I suppose. I don't know. But let's say 5 years after the last time he committed a murder he finally got caught up by the FBI and thrown in jail and brought to trial.

Do you think that he would have a good defense before a just judge to say well true, true I did do those murders. But for the past 5 years I haven't killed anyone. Well the judge obviously would certainly if he was sane say well I'm very glad you haven't killed anyone in the past 5 years.

But that doesn't earn you any credit. Most citizens don't kill anyone. In fact that's what's expected.

You don't get special credit for not killing people. You would need something far more to your credit to somehow erase the guilt of the past. In fact there exists nothing you could do to erase the guilt of the past because no matter what you do it's not going to change the past.

No matter how many good works you do you can help a million little old ladies across the street the rest of your life. It's not going to change the fact of how many people you killed and the fact that there's a penalty to be paid for that. Good deeds done in the future are not going to change what was done in the past.

You can't change history. Only God can do that. Only God can remove actual guilt of past sins.

But any person who decides that I should do X number of religious things or righteous things or good deeds or give to the poor or I should do all these wonderful things so that God should accept me is failing to recognize how damaging his sins have been to his relationship with God. They've obliterated it and the guilt of those sins cannot be atoned for by any number of years of good works. They have to simply be removed by grace.

They have to be removed, washed by the blood of Jesus and this comes only by faith. That happens with the terms upon which God offers this washing and this cleansing. Now since that is so we then have reason to wonder whether good works have anything to do with the Krishna life.

Whether there's any role that we should expect good works to play. There are some who feel that they understand grace and faith best who say therefore the more you sin the greater grace appears. And the more you prove that you understand the concept of faith.

In the first century or more in the second century of the church, a little bit in the first century but tremendously in the second and third centuries there were heresies, a heresy called Gnosticism where it was felt by many that if you understand grace properly and faith you'll realize that sin doesn't have any effect on your relationship with God. And that good works are of no value. In fact if anything if you do good works it shows you're kind of into a bondage to some religious ideas that fail to take full consideration of justification by faith.

Therefore you can better show that you've got a high revelation of the faith doctrine by living in sin. This is called antinomianism. You don't find it in quite such a blatant form so much today.

I don't know very many teachers who say well you can prove that you're a better Christian by living in sin because that will show that you really understand justification by faith alone. But there are some who without saying it quite so crassly nonetheless teach essentially the same thing. In the controversy that I've mentioned to you previously that exists right now among certain theologians some favoring what they call lordship salvation and some opposing what they call lordship salvation those who are opposed to the lordship doctrine, lordship salvation doctrine say it doesn't matter how you live it doesn't matter what you do if you're saved by faith you're saved by faith and it doesn't matter whether you sin or do good works I mean good works have nothing to do with your salvation.

There's actually one teacher named R.B. Thieme. I don't know if anyone's familiar with him. He's not fortunately as famous as some heretics are.

But he's down in Texas I believe. He's a retired military man, officer of some sort. And he's got a national perhaps an international following.

But as I say he's not one of the better known cult leaders or anything like that. And his followers regard themselves as Christians and I think sadly a lot of Christians who are understanding might regard his followers as Christians. Thieme might.

R.B. Thieme teaches many things that are somewhat orthodox and biblical although he seems to think he's the only person who really correctly understands the Greek and the Testament of all persons living today. And he believes that he understands grace better than anyone else. In fact he has a concept he calls super grace.

Now I've never sat under his teachings. I've heard a few tapes of his and his personality is so abrasive. I never enjoyed listening.

In fact I could hardly follow what he was saying. I was so annoyed by his personality. And I never heard very many of his tapes.

But I will say this. From time to time and place to place I've met people who profess to be his followers. There are usually home fellowships in various cities that are fed by his tapes and the leaders are disciples of his and so forth.

And from time to time I've run into Thieme's and these people who follow R.B. Thieme almost in every case it seems like they use profanity. They smoke cigarettes. They party on weekends.

And they do so almost proudly. Because they believe that they understand grace better than others. That they are demonstrating by their loose living and by their questionable conduct that they understand that they're not saved by works.

They're saved by grace through faith alone. And this is, I don't know if he, I've never heard R.B. Thieme actually say go out and live in sin to prove that you understand grace. Maybe he's just teaching grace in such an imbalanced way that people misunderstand him.

Or maybe he would approve of these things. It's amazing to me no matter where I go, wherever I've met Thieme's, they're always chain smokers and use profanity more than the average unbeliever. I mean it's almost like they're putting it on.

You know, like almost trying to show how sinful they can be. Not that I think smoking cigarettes is necessarily a sin, I'm not trying to say that. But they certainly are not making any effort at all to appear sanctified or to avoid offense or anything like that.

And I suppose it sounds to me like Thieme's views are anti-Gnomean. You know, something I never really knew until recently was that Hal Lindsay considered R.B. Thieme his spiritual father. It amazes me to find that.

Hal Lindsay wrote a book a few years back called The Road to Holocaust about a critique of dominion theology. But I have the book and I was amazed to look and only he dedicated it to R.B. Thieme, my spiritual father. You know, which, well that explains a lot of things maybe, but I didn't know it.

Anyway, I was surprised. But I bring this guy up just because he's the most blatant example I can think of in modern times of someone who teaches a justification by faith in such a way as to exclude any place for good works. And yet that certainly isn't how Paul taught it.

And we've seen verses before in some of our classes about this, Ephesians 2, 8-10, where there's a very strong emphasis on justification by grace through faith. He says, for by grace you are saved through faith. It's not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not of works.

Let's not mention both. But then he goes on to say in verse 10, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. Christ has recreated us for good works.

Now, that's only one verse later than his statement, it's not of works. We're not saved of works, it's not by works, but we are saved for good works. And that's not saying the exact same thing.

In fact, it's saying a very different thing. The apostle Paul in Galatians said something that I think clarifies what faith is as far as he's concerned. In Galatians 5, verse 6, Paul said, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.

That's the New King James. The King James says, faith that works through love. Now, what avails with God in Christ Jesus? Circumcision, uncircumcision? No, those are not even considerations.

What does then? What does matter to God? What is it that commends man to God? Faith, of course. Paul says that consistently through all his writings. Faith and only faith.

But what kind of faith are we talking about here? A faith that works through love. In other words, if you have a faith that doesn't work through love, then perhaps you don't have what Paul is referring to as faith that avails with God. James, of course, has sometimes mistakenly been thought to be in conflict with Paul on this issue, but I think not.

In James chapter 2, Paul, I mean James, has a lengthy discussion, I think it started around verse 14 in James 2, where he says, What doth it profit my brethren though a man say he has faith and hath not works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says unto them, depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled, notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body, what doth it profit? Even so, faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works. Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works.

If you believe that there is one God, you do well. The devils also believe and tremble. But wilt thou know, o vain man, that faith without works is dead? And he gives examples from Abraham and from Rahab in the remainder of the chapter.

Now, he says, to say you believe in God, that's obviously some kind of faith. Faith is believing. If you say you believe in God, excellent, wonderful, you do well.

So do the demons believe in God. But I don't suppose you want to share their destiny. The demons obviously have faith of some kind.

They know there's a God. They know the gospel. They believe it just like some people who profess to be Christians know and believe the gospel.

But it hasn't changed anything about their behavior. That's the problem. The demons believe it, but they don't act on it.

The faith they have is not a life-changing sort of a thing. It doesn't change their direction. But the faith that saves, James indicates, would change your behavior.

You see a brother or sister who's naked or dusted of daily food, and you have the right kind of faith, you'll be moved by that faith to do something on their behalf. You can show that you have this kind of faith by looking at your works, because your works will demonstrate that you have it. It's just what Paul said in Galatians 5, 6. It's faith that works through love.

Same thing James said. Paul and James are exactly on the same wavelength on this. James has a slightly different emphasis than Paul in some of his passages, but they both believe the same thing.

The faith that saves is a species of faith that changes the way you act. If it does not change the way you act, you have serious reason to doubt that you have ever had this kind of faith. Now, if the works are not present, it is not your task to start looking for more good works to do, but start looking for that faith, because the works are simply the evidence that such faith is there.

They're the product of faith. I may have shown you this group of scriptures in Titus previously. Remind me if I have, and we can save some time.

But in the book of Titus, we have both, in Paul's writing, some of the strongest statements that were not saved by works, as well as some of the most frequent references to the need for good works. Titus certainly is a great book, short as it is, to see the balance on the subject of faith and works. In Titus chapter 3, for example, in Titus 3 and verse 5, or we could start at verse 4, But when the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by grace, and of course that's through faith, we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Now Paul emphasizes, verse 5, It's not by works of righteousness we've done. We're justified by grace through faith. It's according to his mercy only.

Very strong statement. Every bit as strong as Ephesians 2.8. By grace you've been saved through faith, not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of works.

Just as strong as that. But then notice how frequently in the same book he speaks highly of the need for good works in the Christian life. Look at Titus 1.16. Speaking of certain evil people, in Titus 1.16 it says, They profess to know God, but in works they deny him, being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good work.

Now that's apparently a bad state to be in, disqualified for every good work. Why? Their works show that they don't really know God. They profess with their mouth to believe, but in their works they prove that they don't.

The kind of faith that saves us is a faith that can be seen by the way a person makes his choices, the way he lives his life. Look at the next chapter, chapter 2, verse 7. Titus 2.7 says, speaking to Titus, In all things showing yourself to be a pattern of good works, in doctrine showing integrity, reverence, and incorruptibility. Now look down at verse 14, same chapter.

Titus 2.14 Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed, and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works. Jesus gave himself for us to redeem us for himself, and to purify for himself a people who would be zealous for good works. That's what Jesus accomplished in saving us, is he provided for himself a people zealous for good works.

Look at chapter 3, verse 1. Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey and to be ready for every good work. Christians are told to be ready for every good work. Look at verse 8, chapter 3, verse 8. This is a faithful saying, and those things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God, there's faith, should be careful to maintain good works.

Those who have faith should have good works, he says. Look also at chapter 3, verse 14. And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs that they may not be unfruitful.

Now do you notice how many times in this very short epistle, good works are mentioned favorably? In chapter 1, verse 16, chapter 2, verses 7 and 14, chapter 3, verses 1, 8, and 14. About six times altogether in three chapters. Certainly a higher density than in any other epistle.

More high in density than in James, where good works are called for. Yet he emphasizes that we're not saved by our works. But our works demonstrate that we are saved.

Our works demonstrate that faith is present. When we talk about a saving faith, we're talking about a faith that changes you. That changes the way you think, and therefore the way you live.

Look at Romans, chapter 4. One of Paul's favorite verses in the Old Testament, Romans 4, please. One of Paul's favorite verses in the Old Testament was apparently Genesis 15, 6. In that verse it says, Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. And the reason Paul liked that verse so much is it was a very good Old Testament proof for the point that Paul liked to make so frequently, that we're justified by faith.

Abraham believed God, and it, that is his act of believing God, his faith, was counted to him for righteousness. He was justified by believing God. Therefore, Paul's favorite theme, justification by faith, is established upon Old Testament precedent.

Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness. And Paul quotes that, by the way, in Galatians 3, he quotes it here in Romans 4. He or somebody who wrote Hebrews quotes it in Hebrews. It's a very important verse to him.

Now, he gets into a discussion of Abraham's faith. If you'd look at, let's say, beginning of verse 16, Romans 4, 16. Therefore, it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all of Abraham's seed, not only those who are of the law, but also those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.

As it is written, I have made you a father of many nations. In the presence of him whom he believed, God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did, who, that is Abraham, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations according to what was spoken, so shall your descendants be. Verse 19, and not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body already dead, since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb.

He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what he had promised, he was able also to perform. And therefore, it was accounted to him for righteousness. Now, verse 22, it says, Therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness, is obviously a partial quote of Genesis 15, 6. Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

But the therefore is very significant. As has frequently been said by preachers and Bible teachers, whenever you see the word in the Bible, therefore, it's good to look and find out what it's there for. And it's there to call attention back to what's just been said.

And it means that because of what has just been said, it is true what is about to be said. What is about to be said is that Abraham's faith was accounted to him for righteousness. Why? Because it was what is described there.

He didn't waver. He didn't stagger. He didn't think God incapable.

He was fully convinced. He didn't consider the circumstances to be overwhelming for God. In other words, he had a conviction that gripped him and changed his whole way of thinking and his whole set of expectations and his whole orientation in life.

And therefore, because his faith was that kind of faith, therefore, it was accounted to him for righteousness. So the faith that justifies is a faith that changes the way you think and the way you act and your whole outlook. And that's why James could say, if you have faith but no works, in all likelihood, the faith you have isn't the kind that justifies.

It's the kind the devil has, but the devil is not justified. Therefore, faith is, we're not saved by faith plus works. We're saved by faith that works.

And the words sound similar, but it's very different. If we were saved by faith plus works, the suggestion would be that our faith gets us a part of the way to being saved, and then we have to make up the difference with a certain number of good works. That you have to believe and do this, this, and the other thing.

And once you do those things, then you can be assured that you're saved. That is not how the Bible teaches it. The thief on the cross, after coming to faith, did not do one good work.

Yet he is in paradise. He is with the Lord and we'll see him someday, although there's not one good work that can be said to have been done by him. He was justified by faith alone.

Yet, I think since his faith was genuine, we could deduce that had his life been extended, you would see a different kind of man from that day forward. You would see a man who saw Jesus as his Lord, and who was seeking to enter into the kingdom of God, and seeking to press into the narrow gate, and you'd see a man who wasn't thieving anymore, and who was seeking to follow Jesus. We can only deduce that because that's what saving faith does.

That's what you see in the life of people in the Bible who have that kind of faith. That's what you find in the life of real people today who have that kind of faith. That faith changes you, but faith alone is what justifies you.

After you've been justified, there are changes that can be seen in your life, but none of those changes, including all the good works that you're now zealous to do after you're saved, none of those contribute to your justification, nor to your being accepted. But they do certainly exhibit the presence of genuine faith. Now, let's turn to Hebrews chapter 11 again, and there are some things that we could refer to as the characteristics of a walk of faith.

You see, justification by faith is not all there is. We live by faith also. We walk by faith, not by sight.

Our Christian life could be said to be, from beginning to end, a life of faith. It's not just a matter that we put our faith in the gospel, or that we just put our faith in the finished work of Jesus. We do that.

But after that, our life is a life of trusting, a life of believing, a life of relying on Christ. That's what faith implies. We have unbounded confidence in him, and we choose to believe him in all respects.

When we read what he says, we believe it. When we find out what his will is, we want to do it. And whenever circumstances are challenging, we still trust in God.

Now, if you look at Hebrews chapter 11, which is, as we pointed out earlier, the faith chapter, there are a number of things that faith does in the life of the person who has it. And there are four things in particular that I can find in this passage that are repeatedly referred to. For example, look at verse 4. Hebrews 11, 4 says, By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.

Look down at verse 7. By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household. Verse 8, By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go to the place which he received as an inheritance. Down further, let's move on down to verse 23.

Verse 23, By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents because they saw he was a beautiful child and they were not afraid of the king's command. Verse 24, By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. And so forth and so forth.

What we see here is that by faith, these individuals did something. Their faith produced some kind of works. Some kind of action on their part.

It doesn't say by faith so and so believed such and such. That goes without saying. If you have faith you believe something.

But it says by faith they did something. Their faith motivated some kind of action. Abel offered a better sacrifice.

Why? He knew God wanted him to. Noah built an ark by faith. Why? Because he knew God told him to.

By faith Abraham obeyed. By faith Moses made his choice to associate with the people of God rather than the Egyptians and gave up all the treasures and so forth that had been his in the world. Faith changed these guys' lives.

Faith produced obedience. Faith inspired obedience, I think I should say. And many people have wrongly felt that faith and obedience are concepts contrary to each other.

They are not contrary to each other. In Romans 1.5 Paul says, Through Christ we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name. Interesting.

His apostleship he was sent by God to bring all nations into the obedience of the faith. Why doesn't he say into believing in the faith? Well, obviously that goes without saying. Faith is believing.

But there is also an obedience to the faith that is implied. If you believe that Jesus is Lord, then by unavoidable implications you believe that you are called upon to do what he says. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and you don't do the things I say, Jesus said.

If you believe what God said about Jesus, then along with believing that there is a certain obligation incumbent that you accept. Jesus, I believe to be Lord, that means I believe myself to be his servant. It means I believe myself to be obliged to do his bidding.

So the first thing we see in Hebrews 11 as a fruit of faith or as a characteristic of the life of faith is obedience. A person who has biblical faith demonstrates it by their propensity or their inclination to obey. It doesn't mean, by the way, that the person who has faith is never ever disobedient.

And that goes along with what we said about repentance before. Once you've repented, it's not a guarantee you'll never ever do anything wrong again, but it means you'll never want to. It means you'll never approve of it.

It means if you ever do fall again, it'll be something that you will not have any approval for or you won't be making excuses for. It'll be doing what you know to be wrong and what you know to be undesirable and what you really don't want. Likewise, a person who has faith may not in every case live up to what he knows he should do, but he will always want to.

Faith will always inspire the desire to obey. Abraham was the man who was remarkable for his faith in the Bible. He's always pointed to as the father of those who have faith or the prototype of the faithful man.

And yet, if you read his life, it was an imperfect life. It was a good life. He was, for the most part, very obedient to God, but there were imperfections.

There were falling shorts. There were blind spots. There were even lapses in his faith, as we shall see.

But nonetheless, he was a man who had made his decision to be obedient to God. Once you've made that decision, there is, of course, warfare to fight. There's trials to overcome, temptations and so forth.

And sometimes, if we don't bring the full effort we should to it, we end up not proving ourselves to be as obedient as we should and want to be. But we always want to be if we have this kind of faith. And therefore, since a person who has this kind of faith always wants to obey, obviously they will, at least most of the time, the vast majority of the time, and hopefully in an increasing amount of the time.

Now, let's look on now at the next thing in Hebrews 11. What else does faith do? Well, we pointed out in our previous session, faith is the evidence of things not seen. There's a sense in which faith operates in the unseen realm the way that eyesight does in the natural realm.

It's sort of a spiritual kind of a vision. It says, for example, in verse 13, These died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off. Well, they didn't see anything with their natural eyes.

What did they see? They saw by faith. Their faith served instead of sight or as sort of a spiritual counterpart of sight. Something similar is said about Moses later in the chapter.

If you'll look at verse 27 of Hebrews 11. Verse 27 says, By faith he, Moses, forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who was invisible. Did Moses see him who was invisible? Well, at a later time in his life, the Bible indicates that he saw God in one sense or another, but it's talking here about the time when he first left Egypt.

He hadn't seen anything of God then. It wasn't until 40 years later that God first appeared to him. So, when it says he endured those 40 years in the wilderness prior to his leading the people out of Egypt, as seeing the invisible, it's not referring to him actually seeing God, but rather by faith, his belief in God sustained him as if God were visibly present with him.

Now, how encouraged would you be in a threatening situation if you could see God visibly with you? If you could see Jesus walking at your side, would there be any circumstance that would frighten you? I hardly think so. I can't imagine what circumstance would quicken my heartbeat at all. It would give tremendous impetus to my prayer life and some other things too, if I could see him with me.

Yet, I can't, nor am I encouraged to try to visualize him or anything like that. We're not talking about visualizing. We're talking about having faith instead of vision.

We walk by faith, not by sight. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5, I think it's verse 7 or 8, we walk by faith, not by sight. Faith takes the place of sight.

Jesus, when he was talking to Nicodemus in John chapter 3, said, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. That must be John 3.15. The interesting thing about that is when the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, what were the people required to do in order to be healed of their snake bite? Just look at it. Just see it.

If they just turned their eyes and fixed their gaze upon it, and if they could just see it, that healed them. And Jesus said, That's like me being lifted up, so that whoever believes in me will not perish. Believing in him is comparable to seeing that object in his comparison.

Faith is the spiritual counterpart of seeing. So Moses, who did not see God at the point in his life that's being described here, didn't see him with his eyes, yet he endured as if he could. As if he could see him who was invisible.

Why? Because he had faith. By faith he did this. Faith functioned in the place of sight for the invisible.

So, you know, the person who has faith acts differently because he has a different outlook. He sees what others cannot see who don't have faith. My former pastor, Chuck Smith, used to say that when he was a child, he liked to catch bees and then provoke them to sting some thick clothing of his or something, so they'd lose their stingers.

And then, of course, bees, when they lose their stingers, somewhat shortly afterwards they die, but he would take these stingerless bees and he'd have them walking all over his bare arms. There was a little kid that impressed his friends. They thought he was extremely bold and very courageous because he was walking around with these bees walking all over his skin.

And he was nonchalant and couldn't care less. And everyone would be astonished and say, wow, how can you be so brave? But he says, you know, I knew something they didn't know. I knew that there was no stingers in the bees.

And a Christian can live very differently than a non-Christian. He can even court death, as it were. Can be subject to martyrdom, can do life-endangering things in obedience to God because he knows that death has lost its sting and the grave has lost its victory.

That's an unseen reality. But by faith he knows. Oh, death, where is your sting? Oh, grave, where is your victory? And the unseen realm is real to the believer.

The unseen truths are banked upon and counted on and lived according to by the person who has this kind of faith. And therefore he lives with a totally different vision, a totally different perspective than those who do not have this kind of faith. So obedience and this kind of a vision of the unseen, this kind of awareness and conviction of what others cannot know about without faith, these are characteristics that the writer of Hebrews says are part of the kind of faith that Christians are to have.

Another characteristic is seen, for example, if we read in Hebrews 11, verses 32 and following, it says, And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens, women received their dead raised to life again. Now what do we make of this? What does he tell us here about faith? Quite obviously, he's saying that these men of faith in the Old Testament, many of them that he doesn't have time to discuss in detail at this point, but he can only summarize, they saw God's intervention on their behalf. God acted on behalf of a faithful man.

God turned their enemies away. God stopped the mouths of lions. God even sometimes gave their dead back to life for them.

Now, I think we can say that the writer of Hebrews is implying that this is what can be expected. Faith, one of the characteristics of a life of faith is that God intervenes on behalf of the person who has faith. God answers prayers.

God provides. God does things for people. And as we pointed out earlier in the last session, James says, the man who doesn't have faith should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

But if you have faith, Jesus indicated, nothing will be denied you, at least nothing in the will of God. And that's a very important qualification that's brought up elsewhere in the Scripture and implied even when Jesus makes the statements. But the point here is the man of faith or the woman of faith has God intervening, has God actively involved in his life.

Now, if you look at the list of things we just read, some of those things are overtly miraculous. The stopping the mouths of lions probably is referenced to Daniel in the lion's den, though it could conceivably be referenced to David or Samson, both of whom killed lions, apparently by divine assistance. But stopping the mouths of lions sounds more like what happened to Daniel in the lion's den.

Quenching the violence of fire, that probably also is from the book of Daniel, probably referenced to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, whom the flames could not hurt. Reference to women having their dead raised again, at least one story in the life of Elijah is characterized by a child being raised to dead, and also Elisha seems to have done a similar miracle. And yet, some of these things do not necessarily appear to be supernatural.

I mean, they no doubt, it is implied that God helped these people in these situations, but there's not an overt miracle. But it says they subdued kingdoms. Well, how did David and others subdue kingdoms? Through military effort.

They went out and fought wars and won. Now, in any military effort, someone's got to win, presumably, and when someone does, it's not altogether obvious that God was involved. So, the Jews won some of their wars, they lost a few too.

What's so miraculous about that? Nothing in particular, unless it's speaking specifically of some amazing cases, like that of Gideon with his 300 overrunning tens of thousands of Midianites, or of Jehoshaphat going out with only his singers and musicians against the armies and the armies of the aliens killing each other off. Those were clearly miraculous deliverances, and the writer of Hebrews may have them in mind, but he doesn't single those out. There are many times in the Bible where God clearly gave the Jews the victory over their enemies, though not in a way that is obviously miraculous.

When Moses had his hands up on the mountain, Joshua and the Israelites were fighting with the Amalekites down below. When Moses' hands were up, the Israelites were winning. When his hands went down, the Amalekites were winning.

So, his hands were propped up all day so that the Israelites would win. Now, we can very clearly see that God was the one involved in whether they were winning or losing. But down on the battlefield, those who were not able to see Moses, to them it just looked like they were winning or losing through their military efforts.

And somebody who was not informed that Moses was up there with his hands up would simply look at the situation and say, well, we won the war. We had the superior military machine. Or they might even say God certainly gave us the victory, but they would still see it as something accomplished through their actual fighting, and rightly so.

God actually used their efforts, blessed their efforts, and gave them what they were working toward. And this is often the way God works. I live by faith.

I've said that before. And I consider living by faith to be basically trusting God that if you do whatever he says, the consequences he'll take care of. And accepting them.

Accepting the consequences. If I, for example, decide, as I did many years ago, I'm not going to tell anybody my financial needs. Well, I believe God can be trusted in that respect.

And I've lived this way for 23 years, and I'm a testimony that it works. I mean, you don't ever have to tell anyone your financial needs in order for God to provide. I know people sometimes point to George Mueller and others who have inspired me.

And some people who believe in fundraising, and I'm not against it. I just don't do it. But some people who believe in fundraising try to discount the miraculous element of George Mueller's life.

They say, well, you know, he said he never told anyone his needs, but he did put out a newsletter letting people know about former needs that were met, and that kind of put it in people's minds to give and so forth. Well, maybe so. But I don't even do that.

And frankly, I'm not saying that's superior to what George Mueller did. I don't think George Mueller can be faulted. He'd never let people know when he had a need.

He only let them know after God had provided it. Likewise, I don't even have a newsletter, so no one even finds out, usually, from me after God has met a need. But the point is, if I don't let people know my needs, God provides.

But I might have to live more poorly than if I did let people know my needs. I might be able to put out a newsletter and put out impassioned pleas and have pictures of my children and say, these children are going to go hungry if you don't send money now. I will not be able to be on the radio anymore if we don't get $8 million.

God's going to kill me. And things like that. Now, those kinds of appeals, history has shown, they generate income.

And I could choose to do those kinds of things and probably generate more income than currently comes in. But I wouldn't be sure that I was trusting God. It would, to me, feel like maybe I was kind of trusting in my appeals or trusting in people.

I'd rather just leave it in the hands of God and then trust Him with results. If money comes in in large amounts, I say, praise God, I've got no complaints. If money comes in in small amounts, as long as it meets my needs, and it always has so far, I've got no complaints still.

But living by faith doesn't just mean you don't have a job. And living by faith doesn't even mean that you don't put out a newsletter. Everyone has to make his own decisions about how God wants them to live by faith and what it means.

But what it does mean is trusting God to do whatever you believe He wants you to do and leave the results with Him and accepting the results, being resigned to the results. If I live, praise the Lord. If I die, well, praise the Lord.

Paul says if we live or die, we're the Lord's. I can handle it. Some people do this in terms of their health.

They won't go to doctors or something. Now, I personally don't do that. We have been blessed, our family has been blessed with so much good health that we almost never go to doctors anyway.

You know, when you've got five kids and all together you've never been to doctors more than, say, five times. I think each of my kids have been to a doctor once in their life. And I think I've been to a doctor maybe twice in my adult life.

It's been 23 years since I moved out of my parents' home. I don't think I've been to a doctor more than twice. But we just don't get sick enough to go to doctors.

We don't have anything against going to doctors if we get sick. We don't mind going. But this is just the point.

If I'm sick or if I have need of money, there's different ways I can approach that situation. I can either, and both could be by faith, I can either say, God, heal me or else I'll die and wait for a miraculous healing, and it might come because those things do happen. Or I can go to a doctor and say, God, I'm trusting you that you've given me, I'm thanking you that you've given me this doctor.

He's available. I can go have my broken leg set by this guy and put a cast on it and I trust that you'll help it to heal up well and so forth. And some might see that as inferior faith.

I just see that as another leading, another way of being led. God sometimes applies through means, through natural means. But one who's got faith can still see God's hand in it.

If I need money, I can do a number of things. One thing I could do is go out and get a job. Say, well, I don't have time for ministry anymore.

I'm going to go out and get a full-time job and support my family. If money came through, that means I could say, God gave me the strength, he gave me the employment, he gives me the talent or whatever, and therefore God is providing for my job, and that would be a right way of thinking. That would not be a wrong way of thinking.

On the other hand, there's another way I could do it. I could say, well, I really think God wants me in full-time ministry. I don't have time to go out and get a full-time job, so I'm just going to have to trust God for the money, and then it will come in some other way.

Now, either way, one way seems more miraculous, the other seems more natural. If I go to a doctor and trust God to get me well through medical means, or if I go get a job and trust God to provide my needs for keeping me employed, I'm still trusting God if that's what I feel God wants me to do. And when God does do it, it's less obviously a miracle, but it still is his doing, it's still his intervention, whether he does it through seemingly natural means or without them.

If he just heals me in a bolt of blessing from heaven, you know, cancer, just as I'm on my knees praying, or if he sends money, you know, drops manna out of heaven or something like that, that's more clearly a miracle, and either one might be the way God chooses to do things. God might say, listen, sit still and see the deliverance of the Lord, you know, and the money comes in the next day or that day that I need. Or he might say, now listen, go out and get a job.

So I do that, and the money comes in. Both are God's provision. Now, the thing is that the man of faith, or the woman of faith, is going to be doing what they believe God wants them to do.

And as such, they will see God's provision and God's intervention throughout their life. Sometimes it will be obviously miraculous. Other times it will not be so obviously miraculous.

God will work through very natural seeming circumstances in ways that you could almost miss it. In ways that you could say, well, we won that war because we had a superior fighting force. But that's not really seen the whole picture.

Because unknown to you, someone is up there with their hands up praying for you, and God, through their prayers, sent the victory, sent the blessing. You maybe didn't see the praying going on behind it. All you saw was the natural means by which it happened.

But it was God's intervention nonetheless. Now, what the writer of Hebrews says in listening to these things is that God intervenes, and the people who have faith have God on their side. And God will do all that needs to be done for their good and for what they need.

Maybe he'll work through natural circumstances. They turn about the armies of aliens because they fight them and drive them away. That was inappropriate in the Old Testament.

I know you're probably wondering how that jives with my ideas about wars that I've stated earlier. I personally believe some things were allowed and appropriate in Old Testament times that ceased to be allowed under the principles of the kingdom of God in the New Testament. But we'll have to discuss that another time in more detail.

But I do certainly believe that the wars that the Jews fought in the Old Testament were godly wars. They were ordered by God, and that God used those means. Just like he might use you working at a job or doing some other natural thing to get something for you that could have been given by a miracle instead.

God didn't always deliver the Jews through miracles. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't. And, you know, Jesus didn't always feed the disciples through a miracle.

He didn't always multiply bread and fishes. He didn't always give them miraculous catches of fish. Yet, we could argue that every time they ate, whether it was because of the gift of the women who supported them or because they went out fishing and caught a very ordinary catch of fish, every time they ate, it was God providing for them.

And so God intervenes. God is always active in the life of the believer. It takes some faith sometimes to know that.

Because if he works invisibly through circumstances, that could be explained without postulating God's intervention. You know, you sometimes have divine appointments that you say, wow, God really put that together. You know, God was in my making that decision to go there, and they made that decision.

Most of us, we usually wouldn't make those decisions, but we happened to connect here, and this is an important connection. God did that. But you could also sit back and say, well, no, that wasn't, you know, not necessarily God.

You know, that person just decided to go to the post office that particular time and just coincidentally happened to go there too. I mean, we had to go sometime or another, just happened to meet there. I mean, you could explain some of the providences of God in terms of natural things if you don't have faith to see that God's in it.

But the believer sees God's hand always in his life, sees God in those victories. Now, there's one other thing besides God's intervention and the other things we've talked about in Hebrews 11. At verse 35, we read the first sentence, women received their dead raised to life again.

But then the next sentence says, others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. They could see the unseen, the resurrection, and that motivated them to not seek deliverance, which would have required them to compromise. Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment.

They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth, and all these having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.

Now, this last category illustrates something else that God, something else that's in the life of people who have faith. They suffer, but because they have faith, they endure it. And it's interesting because he specifically indicates that some were slain with the sword.

In verse 37, they were slain with the sword. Yet, in the previous group that were mentioned, some escaped the edge of the sword. In verse 34, quench the violence of fire, escape the edge of the sword.

Now here, these people have faith, just like the previous category have faith. But one group of people who have faith escape the edge of the sword. Another group of people with equal faith are slain with the sword.

People who have faith have, at least on one occasion that we know of, escaped the violence of fire, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But people of faith have also died, burned at the stake. There have been many cases in Christian history of Christians who had just as much faith as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, but they were not spared.

They were burned up. There are Christians or men of faith in the Old Testament for whom God stopped the mouths of lions. But there are many hundreds or thousands of Christians in the first two centuries, or the second two centuries of Christianity, who were eaten by lions.

And God didn't stop the mouths of lions for them. The point here is that men of faith have seen miraculous deliverances and intervention in the form of God relieving them of their dangers and their trials, but others have seen God's intervention in the sense of his sustaining them through such things, keeping them firm, keeping them strong enough that they would refuse deliverance if deliverance required compromise of their faith, compromise of their conscience. They'd refuse deliverance seeking a better resurrection.

Now, this point brings out very clearly that men of faith do not live a life of unbroken tranquility, except perhaps inwardly, and even then it's questionable. Men of faith may also have their inward agitations, although faith in God certainly calms the inner man in any crisis. And if a Christian finds himself agitated and worried and anxious, the key to becoming calm is simply to renew one's trust in God and say, well, I believe God.

I'll trust in God in this situation. You know, the psalmist said in Psalm 42, why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God. I'm going to renew my trust in God because my inner man is disquieted.

Well, outward tranquility is certainly not guaranteed to those who have faith, despite the fact that some people, when they talk about faith, what they're really talking about is a power or a force, which they say if you have it and know how to exercise it, you may remove such trials from your life. You won't ever have to be sick. You won't ever have to be short on funds.

You won't ever have to wander about in sheepskin and goat skins and be destitute and afflicted. You will have authority over the animal world. You'll never be eaten by lions and so forth.

If you have enough faith, these things, you'll be invulnerable to them. Well, that is simply not what the Bible encourages us to believe. These heroes of faith, many of them certainly knew the delivering and healing and providing power of God.

Many miraculous provisions and deliverances were known in the Old Testament, but many people who did not experience such deliverances also died in faith. What this tells us is that faith is very much resignation to God's will. A person who has faith is resigned.

It's a sad thing that a person's faith is often judged by his outward circumstances, whether he's sick, whether he's prospering or whatever, and it's thought, well, he must not be a man of faith or else he would overcome this in the sense of removing the problem. But you can overcome the problem in another way. You can be victorious over afflictions.

You can be victorious over trials in a way that does not necessarily involve the removing of the pressure and the removing of the circumstances so unpleasant by resigning yourself to the will of God, by saying, I will trust God. Faith, by the way, is not in something other than God. It's not in healing.

It's not in a provision. It's in God. When I say I believe in God, that doesn't mean that I'm sure that he's going to give me healing.

I do believe God heals the sick, and I have been healed by God. I've been healed without medical intervention, and I've been healed through medical intervention. I've been healed both ways, different times.

I believe in both. I believe in God, and I believe that he's a God who heals. But I don't believe in healing.

I believe in God. And the difference, you might say, what's the difference? The difference is this. To say I believe in healing means that my faith is set on a particular blessing, namely getting healed, on some particular provision or some particular deliverance, some particular kind of intervention that I'm hoping God will do, that my faith is set on that thing that I'm hoping to get from God.

But that's not what the Bible calls us to. Jesus said, Mark 11, have faith in God. And faith in God means I trust him.

And it means that I know his character and trust his character so that I believe that if healing me is what is best for me, and best for his purposes, that's exactly what he'll do, and he'll have no difficulty pulling it off, no matter how challenging or incurable my disease is. God's got no problem whatsoever healing it if that's what serves his purposes best, and if that's what's best. But my faith in God means that if I ask him to heal me and he chooses not to, I still trust him, because he, not the healing, is what I have my faith in.

I have it in him. I should hope that my children trust me, and I hope that that doesn't mean that they expect I'll give them everything that their hearts desire, because there are things that they desire that I cannot give them. There are things that I would not be loving toward them if I gave them.

They don't understand that many times, but I understand many times better than they do what they need. And for me to say no to them is part of my caring for them and part of my being faithful to my commitment to them. They may not know that, but I hope they do, because I hope that my children, at least if they do not already, they may learn to trust me personally and my commitment to them and my basic faithfulness to them and my love for them so that they may ask me for something they want, but if I say no, they'll still trust me.

They resign themselves to it because if they're off, well, he must realize that it's something I don't know about their situation. There must be some reason why it's better for me to go without such and such a thing, or it's better for me to have to endure such and such a trial or discipline or pain or whatever. Now, it may be asking a lot to expect children to know that much about their parents, but parents understand the principle.

They understand that even if their children haven't learned to trust them when they're denied what they want, yet there's every reason their children should, because the parent says no because of his commitment to the children. And if the children knew the parents' intentions as well as one would hope, the child would trust the parent regardless of the answer the parent gives. And this is what faith really amounts to.

If somebody's coming after me with a sword, I will pray, God, deliver me from the sword, and I know that God is able to, that I could escape the edge of the sword like some of the people here did. At the same time, if I do not escape the edge of the sword while I'm trusting God, and I'm slain with the sword, I will be slain knowing that God is a reliable God, that there's a God in heaven who is fully in charge of this situation, and that what is happening to me is his choice for me and best for me, and I resign myself cheerfully to accepting it. That is what faith is.

It's resignation to God's sovereign choices for me because I trust him, because I trust his good intentions, I trust his wisdom, I trust his ability, I trust his commitment to me. And faith is that too, being resigned to the will of God. Faith expects to see God's intervention, and many times we'll see it in the form of deliverances and provisions, but also faith resigns itself to whatever God wants, even if the deliverances and provisions that we hope for are denied us.

There have been many people who died in faith being denied what they would have preferred to have. There have been a few women who've had their children raised to life again, but not many. Many more people with faith have seen their children die and not be raised back to life again, and have had to resign themselves to that.

That's part of trusting. That's part of having faith in God. Now, in the few minutes we have left, I want to talk about the subject of increasing our faith.

Because I spoke disparagingly in our first session about people who claim to have little faith and so forth, and there is such a thing as little faith. It's just that if you have little faith, you're not a victim of little faith. There are some choices that you've made and some choices you can make to remedy that.

There is such a thing as having little faith. There is such a thing as not trusting God very much. Now, every Christian trusts God somewhat, and in fact trusts God in a very profound way, to be its savior.

Every Christian trusts that Christ's death and substitutionary atonement is adequate. How do you say that? Substitutionary atonement. Everyone who is a Christian believes in that, and has hung their whole faith eternally upon that.

But when it comes to trusting God for day in and day out things, like that the bills will be paid when there is no visible means of support, trusting God that a loved one who has gone on a dangerous errand or trip or something will be in God's care or whatever. It's the kind of trust that totally eliminates worry and anxiety from the Christian life. Not everybody has strong faith of that kind, although it's not so that they're stuck with what they've got.

You can increase faith. Let me show you how, biblically, if we can. Look at Romans chapter 10, and some of you may know immediately where I'm going to.

This verse is often quoted along these lines, although I want to take it a little differently than some people understand it. Romans 10 in verse 17 says, So then, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Now, in the context, Paul is not talking about how to increase a Christian's faith.

He's talking about saving faith in the person getting saved. He says just prior to that, you know, How shall they call on him whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? Obviously he was saying, you want people to believe, you want people to have faith. Well, they're only going to have faith that they hear from a preacher.

They've got to hear the word of God. Faith doesn't come without hearing the gospel. People will not become believers unless someone preaches to them the gospel.

Because faith comes as a result of hearing the word of God. That's what he's saying. He's talking about evangelism here.

He's not talking about increasing a believer's faith. But the principle is clearly there as well. The word of God is full of many promises, which you cannot believe unless you know they're there.

Just as an unbeliever cannot believe the gospel until he hears it, so a believer cannot rest in any promises of God that he's not aware of. He can't rest in promises that he's never heard or read. And in the sense that we acquaint ourselves with what God has guaranteed us, and even more so with his character in general, we have more of an ability to trust him in more areas.

I might have trusted him for my salvation, but unless I know that he's guaranteed me all things necessary for survival, I might not know to trust him for those things. The more of his promises I acquaint myself with, the more substance there is for me to hang my faith on, to put my faith in, to rest in. I do not believe personally in claiming promises.

I realize that's heretical in charismatic circles because Pentecostals have been claiming promises for ages and urging others to claim it, brother. Well, I've never seen it in the Bible. I've never seen anywhere in the Bible that anyone's supposed to claim any promises.

I don't understand us to be in the position to be claiming things. We're supposed to be the servants. God's not supposed to be the one that we're making demands of.

But I just don't like the whole flavor of the whole notion of claiming something as if I'm demanding what's mine. But I do certainly understand the concept of trusting God, and that would be, in essence, resting in the promises. I don't need to claim promises.

I can just rest in them. They're true. God's promises are true.

I don't have to make them true by taking Him to court about it and trying to demand what's mine. God's promises are true, and I can just relax in that fact. If I relax and rely on that fact, what is that but belief? That's what faith is.

But I can't rest in promises until I know those promises have been made by God. And therefore, one of the ways to certainly increase the perimeters of your faith and increase a life of faith into more departments of your life is to become more aware of what kinds of things God has guaranteed and promised you so that you can trust Him for those things too. The more things you know that He's said, the more things you can trust Him for.

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Once you know that God has spoken, then you've got something else you can believe from Him. Now, the promises of God are a multitude.

One of my second-year students has decided to go through his Bible and highlight in a certain color all the promises of the Scripture. I tried that once. It's not a bad idea, but you'll find as soon as you do some hard questions.

Some things are very clearly promises, but it's not clear whether they're promises or not. I mean, when the Bible says, A soft answer turns away wrath, is that a guarantee that every time you answer back to someone softly, that they will stop being angry? Is that a promise or is that more of an observation? You know, sort of a cause and effect sort of thing. Or the statement, Train up a child in the way that he will go, and when he's old he will not depart from it.

Is that a promise of God? Many people claim it is a promise. But is it? Or is it more of an observation? Again, more of an observation of cause and effect. The way a child is raised is going to influence the way he is when he's older.

I don't know. I mean, some of those decisions are hard choices, hard calls to make. It's not always easy to tell a promise from something that's not necessarily a promise, but just a generality or an observation or a statement of cause and effect.

But, if you look for them in the scripture, if you acquaint yourself with the scripture, you will certainly become aware of many unmistakable promises of God. And if you commit those to your heart and to your memory, you will find yourself in the position to believe God more largely and more broadly, in more areas of life, and for your life to be more characterized by faith than it currently is. That increases your faith.

A second thing, biblically, I think, for increasing your faith that could be recommended is to recall God's faithfulness in the past. I said earlier that faith is nothing other than judging God faithful. You will tend to judge him faithful if you can recall concrete examples of his faithfulness in the past.

Now, I'm not saying you should need those. It might be well and good if you could judge him faithful consistently all the time without ever having any concrete examples. Just because God says he's faithful, you believe him.

But, whether that's how it should be or not, we are not lacking in many concrete examples of God's faithfulness. You can see them in reading the scripture, how he's been faithful to men of old. You can read Christian biographies, which are very inspiring because you see the faithfulness of God in those stories.

Or, maybe best of all, you can see it in your own life. Keep a journal. And, when God answers prayers, mark it down.

You know, sometimes when people say, does anyone here have a testimony of what God's been doing this week? I can't think of a thing. Even though I know God's done many things for me, it's just that I've become so accustomed to God doing things. Prayers are answered all the time that I never make note of.

And, I soon forget them. You know, just really neat little provisions that I didn't even think to ask for, but some wonderful things just came to me. You know, I see the Lord and think, man, that's the blessing of God.

I should testify about that, but I forget it by the time someone asks for testimony. I don't write it down. These kind of things happen so much, my memory is almost a blur.

Occasionally, one of them will fix itself in my memory, and I'll be thinking about what God did in that case. But, you know, when it just comes to... You know, I don't have a testimony so many times, unless there's something that happened that day that stuck out in my mind, I can't remember them. And, that's a real shame.

Because, if I kept a journal and could read them, and from time to time I have, I've kept journals of specific trips and things I've made when I was hitchhiking or traveling by faith or whatever, and got some really great stories, and some wonderful things that are really faith-inspired, but I haven't kept a journal generally. It's really not a bad idea to do a faith prayer journal or something. You know, I prayed for this, God answered it in this way.

Why would that be good? Because, next time you're praying, it helps your faith, it helps you to really believe something's going to happen, if you can remember how many times God has proven that he answered prayer before. David, when he went to stand before Goliath, stood as an unexperienced soldier, and the king, in fact, Saul, said, you can't fight this guy, he's been a soldier from his youth, and he's never fought in any war. You're not equipped for this.

And, David wasn't trusting himself, he was trusting in God. But, how did he get that kind of faith? He said, well, your majesty, when I was tending my father's sheep, on one occasion, a bear came out, and I killed it. Another occasion, a lion came out, or a wolf, I think he said a lion, came out after a sheep, and he, yeah, a lion, and he killed that one too.

Now, those are both animals that are much larger than a man, much more powerful than a man, and he gave credit to God. He says, God, who delivered me from the mouth of the bear and from the paw of the lion, will also deliver me from the hand of this Philistine. Now, David said, this is not unprecedented.

And, sure, this is a real test of faith, facing this giant like this. But, I happen to know that God has been with me in previous situations that were not too dissimilar. Where I faced an adversary that was greater than myself, and God gave me the victory.

I have every reason to believe that he who did it then, and who did it then, will do it this time too. Because I have a specific testimony to what God has done in the past. And to keep some kind of record or memory, and recall God's faithfulness in the past, is obviously one thing that makes it difficult to doubt him in the future.

It's so funny, you know, when we see miraculous provisions and deliverances from God, we often tell ourselves, I'll never doubt God again. This is so amazing. This is so astonishing.

I'll never have a doubt again. But we do. We do have a doubt again, because we forget what happened before.

We're very forgetful people. Presidential elections show how forgetful people are. You know, the guy who was the hero six months before the election did something that, you know, people don't like three months before the election, and they forget that he was a great hero.

Now we've got a president doing all kinds of things that people hate, but watch, in about two or three years, he's going to do something wonderful, and he'll try, by that means, to get reelected. He may even succeed, because people have short memories. People have short memories in their relationship with God too.

God does all kinds of wonderful things. Oh, I'll never forget this. But we do forget.

And there's good reason to commit things to memory or to put them in writing or something, or just, you know, reading the testimonies, the biographies of faithful men of the past and what God did in their lives. It's a wonderful faith-building experience, because you see the faithfulness of God in action, and that builds your faith. One third thing I would say, and this I would say very briefly, I hope, is that there are lifestyle choices you can make which you are not required to make.

But which will tend to put you more at the mercy of God than you otherwise would be. I mentioned earlier not letting people know my needs. The reason for that is because I'd rather see a miracle than see the same provision and wonder whether it was a miracle or not.

I mean, if I put out a desperate appeal for money every once in a while when I have a desperate need, and then the money comes in, I can say, praise God, the money came in. But in the back of my mind I wonder, did this happen because of God or did I manipulate the situation? Is this me? Whereas if I don't tell anyone about God and the money comes in, then I say, wow. Now I see a miracle.

I see the faithfulness of God here in a way that's unmistakable. And that's a choice that one doesn't have to make. A person can raise money or can do things very differently in their finances than that.

But certain people, like George Mueller and Reese Howells and Hudson Taylor and many, many others, have adopted this same plan and said, you know, I'll just trust God to tell people when we have a need. And then they see, and they have a great testimony, and they see more occasions to trust God to be the one who's really involved in this day-by-day kind of stuff. People make different decisions about insurance.

Some people feel it's a responsible thing for them to get medical insurance or something like that. Others feel that they should just trust God to deal with those situations. Christians make different decisions about birth control.

Some feel that, again, it's responsible to use birth control. Others feel it's not trusting God and that they'd rather just leave those things in God's hands. There's all kinds of areas in life where choices can be made either to put yourself more at God's mercy or less at God's mercy.

I'm not sure that either choice is a wrong choice or a sinful choice. It's more of just a choice. It's a life-God choice that either choice is okay.

Either choice is within the bounds of what God would approve and would bless. But one choice more than the other kicks out all the props, gets rid of all the crutches, and puts a person more in a desperate situation of being dependent on God. And that, in my opinion, is a very good situation conducive to increasing faith.

Because, as I said earlier, if God provides through natural means, then you can still give God the credit, and should. But it's not as evident that it was God. There's always a possibility for this nagging little doubt that says, no, who knows, even if there were no God, this could have happened this way, because, I mean, I did take these procedures.

Whereas a person who chooses, a person who's, you know, some people have chosen not to ever go to doctors. I haven't made that choice. But some do choose to do that.

And they just leave themselves in God's hands. If they die trusting God, so be it. If they, you know, that's okay.

A person can make that choice. The Bible nowhere says you have to go to a doctor. I personally don't say the Bible says you can't.

And I would prefer to go to a doctor, in most cases, I think, because I could see God using a doctor. I just don't go to doctors very often because I don't need them. But there are choices that some people make just because, for the specific reason that they want to trust God more, in more areas of their life, than they even would be required to.

Paul said that he did not ever take money for his ministry. So not because he didn't have the right to take it, but because he didn't want to be deprived of a particular spiritual blessing that he had in doing this. And likewise, there are many choices that you can, you can look at your life and say, how many of the things I'm doing are doing to insulate me against disaster in areas where if I did not just insulate myself, God has made promises and guaranteed that he would take care of these matters.

And how much of my lifestyle choices are really an exhibition of little faith on my part, that I really don't think God can be trusted in this matter of finances. I don't really think God can be trusted in this matter of family planning. I don't really think God can be trusted in this area of insurance.

One preacher friend of mine said, people who get insurance, what they're doing is they're making sure that if God rips them off for everything, they can get it all back. And, you know, that's not really how they think. They don't think in terms of it being God who gives and takes away, and yet Job did, and I think the Bible encourages us to.

If we see it in those lives, then we can trust God for a lot of things that we're not commanded to trust him for, but the choice to do so gives one much more opportunity to exhibit and grow their faith, to see God more visibly active in the things that happen in their lives, and so forth. So, knowing the promises of God, making mental notes about God's faithfulness, and of course, altering lifestyle choices can sometimes help to increase your faith. And we've just run out of time, so we'll just stop at that, consider that we've covered the topic, and move on tomorrow to the subject of baptisms.

Amen.