Faith

Thank you. Appreciate that very much. Jesus taught that if you had the faith in an amount of a mustard seed, you could move mountains. Now, a mustard seed is a very tiny thing. That's not much. I've moved any mountains lately, and I wouldn't ask for a show of hands.

Wow! If we had just that much faith, he said, God would do miraculous things in our lives. When we look at how Jesus walked through the crowds and He healed people, there were times when He told people He had no faith at all. There were times when He told people, unto your faith. Your healing would be in accordance with your faith. Now, is that how we measure faith? Because if that's true, then all of us would be healed constantly all the time. We'd never age. We'd be 28 forever. Just healed constantly all the time. And yet that's not reality either. When we look at Abraham and Sarah, we see them as some of the prime examples of faith. But like so many times we think of faith, we only think of faith in times of crisis or of great miracle. When something's really bad happening, we think of faith, our need to trust God, our need for God to intervene. So if you find out tomorrow that you have cancer, suddenly you're going to be very concerned about faith. Do I trust God? Will He intervene? Will He help me? But let's think of Abraham and Sarah for a minute. They're told by God that she is going to have a child, that they are going to have a child. Months, years went by, a decade went by, more years went by, and she did not have a child. And then she has a child. And so we see the fulfillment of that and say, oh, how exciting it must have been to see that God intervened. Here they were, this faith, and God answered the prayer. But what about the years in between? What did faith look like every day for Abraham and Sarah five years after the promise was made? Well, Sarah got up and said, not today.

When Sarah and Abraham looked at each other and said, we're not getting any younger, we're getting a little older. But what did faith look like in the day-to-day life between the promise and the fulfillment? On the days that were good days, what does faith look like on a good day? We sort of know what faith looks like on a bad day, but what does it look like on a good day?

We're going to do something very basic today. I'm going to go through some basic premises about faith. We're going to look at two passages that will establish some premises about faith. And then we're going to look at three qualities that you and I must be developing and exhibiting every day that are aspects of faith and how we relate to God. Obviously, when we talk about faith, we're talking about more than belief. We're talking about trusting in God. But how far does that trust go? Well, let's start in Luke 7. A fascinating story you've all read a hundred times, but it tells us something about faith.

Luke 7. Jesus here is the subject of the passage. It says, verse 1, Now when He concluded all His sayings in the hearing of the people, He entered Capernaum. And a certain centurion servant who was dear to Him was sick and ready to die. So when He heard about Jesus, He sent elders of the Jews to Him, pleading with Him to come and heal His servant. And when they came to Jesus, they begged Him earnestly saying that the one for whom He should do this was deserving, for He loves our nation and has built us a synagogue.

Now let's set the stage here. This is a Roman soldier. This is a soldier of the beast power. It is interesting that during the first century and actually at the end of the first century BC, they were Jews sort of expecting the Messiah to come because they saw Rome as the fourth of the beast power of Daniel 2. So they're living in the time of oppression, and this centurion has turned to God. In fact, he had built a synagogue, which would have meant that he was either a proselyte or a God-fairer, a Gentile who had actually become a worshipper of the God of Israel.

Now, it's interesting. He would have had certain privileges, but he also was still considered an outcast. So this man would have been an outcast in pagan society and somewhat of an outcast in Jewish society. And yet he stayed loyal to God, and he asked Jesus to come. Now we're not sure how much he understood of who Jesus was. He may have understood Him as the Messiah. We're not sure.

For one thing we do know, he understood that He was someone sent from God, and that God would do miracles through Him. And so he had faith in what God would do. So verse 6, "...and that Jesus went with them, and when He was already not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to Him, saying to Him, Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.

Therefore I did not even think myself worthy to come to you, but say the word, and my servant will be healed." So I'm not part of the Jewish community. You know, when the Gentiles came into the synagogue, even if they had converted, they had to sit in a different place than the Jewish men. They were allowed to sit with them. And he says, don't come to my house. I'm not part of the community. I have been, though, brought into it, repented, and become part of the people of God. Verse 8, for I am a man placed under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to one, Go, and he goes, and to another, Come, and he comes, and to my servant, do this, and he does it.

Now that's a very fascinating statement, because he says to Jesus, I understand you receive authority from God. And he says, I know what that's like. You have spiritual authority given to you. He was the Messiah. And he says, so when I tell people to do things, now a centurion means that he was a man over a century.

In other words, he was a company commander. So here he has at least 100 men under his command. He's used to having people do what he says. And he says, all you have to do is say, and it happens, because you have authority in the universe, and you have authority over my life. He saw God as a benefactor, but he took it a step farther. It is not enough for us to see God only as a benefactor, someone who does good for us.

Now, we have to see him as someone who does good for us, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But he has to be more than that. God can't be a genie in a bottle. When we're in trouble, faith is, rub the bottle, and the genie comes out and grants us a wish. That's not what this can be, because God doesn't respond that way. He understood God had total authority over him. To really have the faith that we need to have, we have to have given our life to God.

Now, we talk about that. Oh, yes, I gave my life to God. Back when I turned to God, it was baptized. But it's not until long after we're baptized we begin to realize what that really means. He really means it. We have to give everything to God. We have to submit to Him completely. That means you and I have to believe in His wisdom. We have to believe in His goodness. We have to believe He knows what He's doing, even when we don't.

Faith is hard. Faith is hard, because that means we have to submit to God even when what we're saying to Him is, what? No, no, I got that wrong, right? What are you saying? What are you asking me to do? That can't be right. But God, it wasn't supposed to be this way. And you say you're good. I think I would do that all the time. You know, I could get sick because I did something wrong, but then I get mad at God because, well, you could have stopped it. You guys, wait a minute. Eating the second pecan pie probably had something to do with you being sick. It wasn't my fault. But see, what we do is, well, you could have stopped me.

Faith is surrender to God. That's a basis of faith. It is His authority that He is the sovereign of your life. He is your King. That's a reality. Jesus Christ is your Master. See, we say these words. We use them. We throw them around. But do we really know what they mean? Yes, you are my Master. Yes, you are my King. Yes, you are my sovereign. I worship you. I trust you even when I don't know, or even when it seems different than what makes sense to me. The second point is in Hebrews 11. So our premises are having to do with, when we talk about faith, we have to talk about total, complete surrender to the will of God. Yes, Lord, even when it hurts, or even when I don't understand, I actually wish it was easier than this. I can't make this any easier because it's what it is. My life would be easier if this was easier than this, but it's not. This is what it is. Now let's look at Hebrews 11.6. But without faith, it is impossible to please Him. Now, it is important to understand, and we'll get into this, the relationship between faith and obedience, because they're coupled together. But notice it doesn't say without obedience, it is impossible to please Him. Why does He say faith? We know we're supposed to obey, and there's a reason why. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. Without faith, it is impossible to please Him. For He who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. We do have to believe that there is a benefit to faith. Because you know what happens in issues of faith? There are times when in order to carry out faith, there is a temporary bad thing. In order to carry out faith, in the short run, something bad happens to you. So therefore, we have to believe that God rewards us, that there is a benefit, that God is involved, that God understands, and that God will reward. He will give. He will solve problems. Even though in the short run, it doesn't seem to be happening that way. In other words, if God answered all my prayers within five minutes, I'd be the greatest person of faith on the face of the earth. You just come up to me and ask me a question. I say, don't worry about it. Let me pray about it. Five minutes from now, it will happen. But is that faith? Faith sometimes really is tested when? When you ask and nothing happens. Now it's faith. It's when the answer is different, the answer takes a long time. Now our faith is tested. Now it becomes real.

So we look at this and we say, okay, I must believe faith is based on God's sovereignty. He is God, and He is a genius, and He is wise, and He's good, and I must believe in it. I must trust in it. And secondly, I must trust that no matter what's happening, in the end, He makes it good. In the end, He rewards those who diligently seek Him. In reality, you cannot have faith unless you are diligently seeking God.

The more what we do many times is we want faith in the crisis when we should have been diligently seeking God all along. Of course we're diligently seeking God when the tornado is bearing down on your house. But what's faith look like when it's nice and sunny and everything's beautiful? What's faith look like then? Because diligently seeking God isn't something we only do in the crisis. It's what we must be doing every day. And so once we have these premises, we're going to talk about three areas, three qualities of faith that appear every day in our lives. Just like everything else, the qualities of faith is like a rollercoaster. It'd be nice if we just did everything, you know, just flat, good. You know, we were like this every moment. It's not. One moment you're up, one moment you're down. One moment you seem to have all the faith in the world. And the next moment you're just begging God to get you through the moment, right? We go up and down and up and down. But there should be in our everyday life, not in the crisis time, but in our everyday lives as we go through the details of everyday life, there are certain qualities that are developed in us by our faith. And we need to look for these qualities and we need to ask God for these qualities and we need to see how to develop these qualities. The first, faith produces confidence. Now this is self-confidence. What I mean by confidence is a sense of calmness because you believe God is going to work it out. A sense of calmness because you believe God is going to work it out. That doesn't mean you don't suffer anxiety or worry or fear. We all do. But it means that those emotions eventually are controlled by a certain calmness that God will do this in my life. God will take care of me. God will work this out. One of my favorite passages in all the Bible is in Jeremiah. I have a couple of them in Jeremiah. Now this one I'm applying a little bit out of its specific context, but when we get to it, I think you'll see why I could do that. Jeremiah 29.

Judah was in a state of rebellion against God. And they were suffering national catastrophes and personal catastrophes. And there wasn't any repentance going on. And so God tells Jeremiah, you tell them this for me. And it's in the first person. In other words, this is God saying this to those people. So this is what He said to those people. But the few verses I'm going to pull out, I want to pull out and look at it because I think these verses can apply to God's people anytime, anywhere. It just doesn't apply to them. It can apply to you and me as God's people in the church today. I'm going to go through it and you'll see what I mean. Verse 11. Remember, this is God saying this. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Now He's saying this to people that He's about to let their nation be absolutely devastated and destroyed. And He says, but what I think about you, what I want for you is peace. Peace what? Between peace between them and Him. In other words, basically He said, diligently seek me.

God has thoughts of peace toward you, even when you and I are doing it right. He wants to heal it. He wants to bring this peace between us and Him. That's Jesus Christ, it's all about that reconciliation process of peace between us and the Father. He wants to bring us together. Notice He says in verse 12, For you will call on me and go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. He says, I'm waiting for you to come back. You know, that is God's response to us every time we turn our back on Him. Every time we sin. Oh, He might be upset with us. He was very angry with these people. But He says, I know my thoughts, God says. My thoughts are, come back. Just turn around and come back. This is at the core of faith. We have to have confidence in this. I mean, how many times is our faith shaken because we believe that God won't take us back? Oh, I'm such a rotten person. God can never take me back. And God says, my thoughts toward you are, I want to create peace between us. Now, you're going to have to deal with it. It's like, well, He'll take us back and then I can just go out and do it again. Now, we have to deal with what we do. We have to deal with the sin. We have to deal with the problems. But God says, turn to me and seek me with all your heart. That's why faith involves seeking God with all our heart. Or as Hebrews says, diligently seeking God. We can't have faith without diligently seeking God. You know why? Faith is only as strong and as important as what you have faith in. You know, I can have faith that I'll wake up tomorrow morning and be six foot tall. That's meaningless, isn't it? I mean, there are people that have faith that they're Napoleon. We put them in institutions. I met a man one time who had absolute faith that he talked to Jesus Christ.

And I said, that's interesting. What's he look like? He says, well, you won't believe it. I said, well, you're probably right, but go ahead. He said, well, he talks to me through the television. I said, oh, well, what's he look like? He said, George Bush. I said, you're right. I don't believe you. And so we have to realize that God desires for us to come back. And you have to have faith in it. You cannot cut yourself off and lose your faith because you believe God doesn't want you anymore. You have to accept that God will take you back as long as you repent. Look at Psalm 62. You know, as I get older, the Psalms become more and more important to me. When I was younger, the Psalms didn't mean much to me. But now I understand them as expression, remarkable expressions of the personal thoughts and emotions of the people who wrote them. Verse 5 of Psalm 62. Look at where the confidence comes from. What do you have confidence in? When people say, I just believe. Believe in what? You just got to believe, but believe in what? And they'll get frustrated. Well, you just got to believe. I don't know what that means. You just got to believe. You have to believe in something or in someone. Look where the power is here. My soul, David says, is very core being. My soul waits silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him. He is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense. I shall not be moved. And God is my salvation and my glory. The rock of my strength and my refuge is in God. Our faith is only as strong as what we have it in. If our faith is in God, it'll be strong. If our faith is in other things, it will fail. This is why you must diligently seek God, because it is in Him that we have this faith. Now, to do this, you have to do something. And this is hard to do in our society. You have to take time. You have to take time to break away and find that calmness so that you can have confidence. You have to have time with you and God alone. You just can't keep rushing through the chaos, trying to sort of sort through the chaos, and then suddenly have faith. You have to get away on your knees or alone someplace or in the woods or with your Bible and pray and absorb the Word of God. There is no other way to do it. Let God talk to you and you talk to Him. Then confidence will come. You will find the Scriptures where He's talking to you. And you will pour out your soul as it says here. You'll pour out yourself to God, and in doing so, you will diligently seek Him. You're crying out for help. You're crying out for guidance. You're crying out for Him. His presence. His Spirit.

And in that, you will find calmness. And in that calmness, you will find confidence. So that's the first point. Faith does produce confidence. You can get out of bed every morning and face the day with a certain confidence. God's going to be with you that day. God's going to help you through that day. He's going to be there with you that day. The second point is that faith produces hope. And we don't talk a lot about hope. And hope's sort of weird as a motion. But we're not sure what it is. If I ask you what hope is, most people don't even have a definition for it. What is hope? Hope is a positive anticipation for the future. Hope is a positive anticipation of the future. God has promised us the future. Remember what I read in Jeremiah just a minute ago? He says, I have a hope and a future for you. That's what he said. We have to believe that God has a hope and a future for us. That he's preparing a hope and a future for us that we can live with, that we can be energized by. Yet one of the greatest stories of hope and how that motivated someone's faith. Faith and hope go together. It's in Luke chapter 16. It's in Luke chapter 16. The other is in Luke chapter 2. Let's go to Luke chapter 2.

Luke chapter 2. So, if I have a positive expectation of a future God is promising to me, that I will live my life towards that goal. You understand?

If I get up this morning and I have a positive expectation about going to church, what did you do? You got up, you ate something, you got prepared, you got dressed, you got in your car, you went to church. Your positive expectation. Now, there may be of somebody who had a negative expectation of coming to church today, and they're probably not here.

Hope is that positive expectation, and because of that, it motivates what you do. Look at this man here. Verse 25. And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. And this man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. He was waiting for, and his consolation of Israel, just another title for the Messiah. He's waiting for the Messiah. I don't know about you, but I've spent most of my life waiting for the Messiah. But this man was highly motivated, waiting for the Messiah. He went to the temple every day saying, today might be the day. Now, why would he do that? Verse 26. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. So at this point, the implication is he's an old man. He's an old man. And he's told, you're not going to die until you see the Christ. That's your reward. Part of the reward you get. Part of the reward is you're going to get to see the Christ, then you'll be resurrected. And he's waiting, his faith, his confidence, his hope. And so he keeps being driven to get up every day and go into the temple and wait for the Christ. Verse 27. So he came by the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the wall to be circumcised, he took him up in his arms and blessed God. Now wait a minute. Can you imagine? You're Joseph and Mary. You come in with your baby, and you're going to have the ceremony, and there's going to be this blessing. And all of a sudden this old man runs up and grabs the baby out of your hands and holds the baby up and starts saying, look what he says next, Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace. Now I can finally die in peace. This is great. This fulfills what you said you would do to me. All these years of faith. What did his faith look like day after day after day? Confidence that God was going to do this, and hope anticipating it happening. According to your word, verse 30, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel. And Joseph and his mother marveled at those things which they had spoken of him. Probably a lot of people said, get this crazy man out of the temple. He just grabbed this little baby and said, this is the Messiah. Messiahs will stand on the Mount of Olives, splitting too, according to Zechariah, conquer all the armies that have come up against, you know, to fight God. This little baby.

One example of faith. Not the things we think about as faith. You know, he slew giants and he did this, did that, did the other. This man just waited for God to fulfill. He believed God's promise. I'm going to let you see to the side. He said, that baby's it. Verse 34, then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, behold, the child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel and for a sign from which will be spoken against. Yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. What a positive anticipation. You know, you and I have to be careful because the world we're in is deteriorating and it can make us very, very negative. And it's harder to live in it. And the longer you live, the more emotional scars you have, right? We love to sit around. You know, men love to sit around and show scars. How many of you saw the movie Jaws? Okay. You know, there's the scene in there where they're all sitting around in the boat comparing scars. Oh, this was when a sand shark bit me. And this is when a bull... That's men. If we don't have scars, we make them up. And then the one guy says, I beat all of you. You know, broken heart, Mary Jane, fifth grade. You know, well, they could beat that. No one can beat that. But you know what? We sort of do that in jest. But you know, if we're not careful, we do get overwhelmed with the scars that we carry. You don't get through this Satan's world without scars, right? And we can absorb with the negative. We get absorbed with what's happened to us, what bad things have happened to us. So, you know, we talk about bad things, but if you get to the place where all you think about are the negative and bad things, how can you see what God is doing? You know, in Louisiana, in South Texas, they have alligators. Down along the coast. In fact, a few months ago, before we moved, my son and I were fishing. My son is 26, about 6'1", 230 pounds, and we're in a swamp. And it got real uncomfortable because there were a lot of alligators. You know, a 10-foot alligator is a big animal. And at one point, I'm walking along and I looked around and I said, just keep walking. Just keep moving, okay? Because there's alligators all over the place. And he looked at me and said, I'm not worried. I just have to outrun you.

Thanks, son.

But I was listening to the radio. This was, I want to say, six or eight years ago. And this story just struck me. There was a little boy, and I think he was in Louisiana, might have been Mississippi, but he was playing in water someplace. And an alligator came up and grabbed him by the leg. And what they do is they take you down and they roll you under, okay? They drown you. And it grabbed him by the leg and he was screaming and hollering and just pulling him into the water. And his mother comes down and grabs him by the arm and they're pulling. And the little boy is just screaming. The alligator is trying to twist his leg and his mother is twisting his arm and they're pulling and pulling back and forth and back and forth. And finally the alligator let go. The mother is screaming, the boy is screaming. And so he was in the hospital. And of course, you know how they go. They love to interview people that have been bit by sharks or alligators or whatever. And he was showing the scars on his leg. He said, this is the scars where the alligator bit me. Look at his big teeth marks and all this. And then he showed the reporters his arms. He said, these are the scars from Mom who saved me. You know, we have such a negative viewpoint of life that all we do is look at our scars. Oh, I've been hurt. I've been done that. You've done that. Well, maybe you haven't, but I've done that. We just look at the negative. We forget the hope of the living God. See, you can't separate hope from faith. They're connected together. You know, some of those scars that you have were caused by the alligator. They were caused by God who was holding on to you. Some of those are good scars. But see, we forget that.

I had a dear friend of mine in the ministry who's getting a little senile now. He and I, for years, were together. He used to always tell me and remind me, Gary, Gary, this life is the training ground for eternal life. That's what this is. It's just a grand adventure where we're being trained for eternal life, and training isn't easy. So stop wanting it to be easy. Oh, yeah. I do want this to be easy. Now, look what Peter says in 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 1.

Yeah, that story with that woman and an alligator and what that little boy said had such a profound effect on me. I went back and wrote that story down and said, I'm going to remember this because here's the scars from Mom. Oh, he left a little scars on us holding on to us from time to time.

I lost 1 Peter.

1 Peter 1. Verse 3. Peter says, Bless be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He said, This is our hope. And we can be assured of this hope because we believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The holy days give us help. Zero us in for faith and hope. You can't have one without the other. Notice the rest of the sentence, To an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you. So he points towards that future that we are supposed to anticipate. We're supposed to get up every day and anticipate it. I don't mean ignore today. Yeah, we're supposed to live today. But in anticipation of this event, this journey we're on, this place that we're going to, so that today has meaning. But notice, we still haven't finished the sentence here. Verse 5, Who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. We have this hope because we have power of God. We received because we believed Him. And we said, yes, yes, Lord, this is where we go. And I follow and I have no idea. You hold on to dad's hand and you have no idea what dad's doing. That's what it is. And in that we can have this hope. Notice what he says in verse 6, in this, this hope, because of the power of God through faith, in this you greatly rejoice. Though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials. Why? That the genuineness of your faith be much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Hope means that we must consciously look for God's hand in our lives. Now, I don't mean, you know, we can't look for God's hand in everything in a specific sense. I mean, if you, you know, God, should I have Pop-Tarts or Cheerios this morning, okay? We can't look for God's hand in every detail because why? He'd have to take the free will away from us. Probably you shouldn't eat Pop-Tarts, so choose the Cheerios. But anyways, but you understand the point. You understand the point. We can't expect, but we have to see God in this bigger sense, and sometimes in a very specific sense, because sometimes God is touching our lives in a specific sense. So we have to consciously look for that hope. We have to consciously look for what are you doing now so that that confidence can be fed. But it's said here, Peter says, we have to be genuine in our faith. Okay, what does that mean? What does that mean? For our third point, I'm going to go to two passages in the New Testament where Paul and James quote the same verse from Genesis and yet seem to have two different points. In fact, it seems to be so different that many commentators say that they are actually opposed to each other.

That we find in the New Testament two writers who are opposed to each other and how they interpret what God is doing. There are commentators who say that. But when we look at this, I want you to see that that's not true. What they're doing is they're approaching something from two different directions. And it's very important how they're approaching it, because this is our third point. Faith produces obedience. There's an idea in the proselyt world sometimes that faith and obedience are two different things. No, faith must produce obedience. Let's start in Romans 4. Paul is always very concerned with motive. And when you understand Paul, which nobody totally understands Paul, you will see that he is obsessed with motive. And there's a reason for that. He came from a Jewish background where obedience to God was something he strove to do every moment of every day. Everything had a ritual so that he could obey the law of God. Whether it was a ritual from the actual Old Testament or it was a ritual made up by Judaism, but everything was, we must obey the law of God. And he tried to obey and tried to obey and tried to obey. And then when Christ came and knocked him down, he had to evaluate his motive. And it really affected him because he thought his motives were good and he found out they weren't. So he also was dealing with the pagan world. He's right here in a room that's a mixture of Jews and pagans. The pagans were coming out of a background where how did you approach God? How did you earn a right to have a relationship with the gods? When the pagans, it was very simple. You had to do the right magic. If you said the right words or did the right sacrifice or did the right dance or whatever was required, that God or that goddess, whatever temple you went to, was required now to justify you, to bring you into a relationship. In the Jewish world, you know how you were justified before God. At the end of the day, did your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds?

If they outweighed your bad deeds, then God, you can be justified. The problem is, some of you may be accountants. Here's the real problem. Now, justification in Greek doesn't mean this, but it makes a great analogy. How do you justify an account if you're an accountant? It has to come to zero. An account is justified when it's finally zero. All the pluses and minuses add up. The problem Paul was now faced with is he couldn't get rid of the minuses. It didn't matter how many pluses he could put on the account. The minuses were still there. Now, this is important to understand because Paul, a lot of times, is talking about justification, which is the front end of our relationship with God. It's the very front end of it. Look what he says here. He's going to use Abraham, and he's going to use the Old Testament to support this because this is what it teaches in the Old Testament also. Verse 1, What then shall we say that Abraham our Father has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about. But he does not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Okay, justification. The right to appear before the righteous God. Now, something has to happen for us to appear before the righteous God.

God has to do something to us. We can't go before God in all of our filthy rags. Or, let's put it this way, how many of you have a ladder long enough to reach up into heaven, knock on the door, and tell God, let's do lunch? How do you get there? I can't get to God. Either God does something with me, or I can't get there. I can't make God love me. I can't make God listen to me. I can't...what do I have? This is the point about justification. And why? Because I am a flawed, distorted human being.

Unacceptable to God in the state I am. So that means for me to go before God, he has to do something. He has to justify me. He has to say, come here, son. You can come. And I can't make him do that. Either he does it or he doesn't. Right? Think about it. How do you make God? Okay, God, I've kept the Sabbath for 10 years. Let's spend some time together, you know? You see what I mean? If God doesn't allow us to come, if God doesn't do something...and this is in Paul's mind all the time, because remember, he had spent a lifetime thinking that as long as he kept the ledger, really, you know, lots of checks on the one side, somehow God ignored what was on the other side. And then he realized that's not how it works. He said, okay, Abraham, he was justified when he believed. Now we're going to have to see what that means in a minute. When God told Abraham something, Abraham said, I agree. I will follow. So he goes on, he says, now this is where people get messed up, as in verse 4 and 5, but when we go on a little bit more, you'll see what he's saying. Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. To him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. Okay, see? Stop all this trying to obey God. Stop trying to keep the law. All you have to do is believe and you're justified. That's not what he means. If you read all of chapter 3 and chapter 4, it's obvious. Well, if you read chapter 5, 6, 7, and 8, it's obvious that's not what he means. But the problem here is what is Paul talking about? And he's saying, how did you and I get to God? How did we get the privilege? How did Abraham get the privilege to go before God? God invited Abraham and then Abraham did something. We'll see what we mean here. So he goes back now to put this into context by quoting from the Old Testament. Just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. So he's going back and he says, remember what David told us. Blessed is the man who is forgiven. That God says, you can come to me because I have forgiven you, because you don't deserve to come to me. This is strange in the world that we have today, the Christianity we have today, which doesn't really recognize you and I don't have any rights to go before God. He gives them to us. He gives us the right to go before God.

He says you can come here, child, or he says you cannot come here. And Paul is very aware of that. He says you come because you're forgiven. You would be absurd for people to say, oh yeah, what you're saying, Paul, is you're forgiven so you don't have to do anything. You just, you can see it. Paul would have screamed and hollered. Paul had a temper, by the way. You can see it in his writings. So what does he say here? Verse 9, does this blessedness then come from the circumcised only or upon the uncircumcised also? So the issue here is circumcision. For we say that faith was according to Abraham for righteousness. Now then was it accounted while he was circumcised or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of righteousness of the faith. Let's bring this down into the story flow. God calls Abraham and says, I want you to give up your pagan beliefs and I want you to come follow me. And Abraham says, I believe that. Okay. And he followed. Now, what some commentators do with this is it's almost like Abraham said, oh, okay. And that he didn't follow. Understand his faith produced something. He willingly was circumcised.

That's quite a thing to ask a person to do.

I would have said, can't we all just like wear hair a certain way? Can't we come up with something else here? Is that what we do with God all the time? What did you do with God all the time? I have an opinion. I am 59 years old. And since I was about seven years old, I've been waiting for God to ask me my opinion. And he's never asked me once. And he never will.

The only opinion that counts is his. And there's the point here. Abraham did not, he did not become circumcised in that produced faith. The faith produced circumcision. Paul's really, really, he drives his whole. This is important to him. He did what he did because of his faith. So when did God justify him or give him the right to come before him? When Abraham said, okay. God said, now we can work together. Now we can work together. So at that point, he now becomes justified. God's forgiven him, as Paul just read from what David said in the Psalms, God's forgiven him. He now left his home country, wandered around through the desert, ended up being circumcised, and ended up having a child decades after God promising, then ended up being asked to slay the child. What a history! When did, none of that would have happened if he would have said, yes, I believe I have faith I will follow, be circumcised. I'm going back to be a pagan. He said, I mean, none of that could have happened except his faith led him to a response. Faith must produce obedience. This is why then people say, well, James is in opposition to Paul. Let's go to our last scripture here in James. No. Paul's talking about how you become justified. And it all has to do with our faith. Yes, Lord.

Yes, Lord. When you were baptized, you said, yes, Lord. Were you perfect? No. If you had to be perfect to be justified, you couldn't have been justified. So what happened? You were forgiven. You're a whole lot more obedient now than you were when you were baptized, right? You had to grow in that obedience. So let's look at what James says, James 2.14. What is a prophet, my brother? And if someone says he has faith, but does not have works, could faith save him? Some would say, oh, yeah, I just read Paul. And Paul says it can. No, Paul said it led to the circumcision. But he was justified before God, before he was circumcised, when he said, yes. Yes, I'll do this.

He says, if a brother or sister is naked in destitute of daily food, one of you says to them, depart at peace, be warned and filled, but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body. What does it profit? That's also faith by itself. If it does not have works, it's dead because it's not genuine.

But some will say, you have faith, I have works. Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there's... This is one of the most sarcastic statements in all of the Bible. You believe there's one God? You do real well. Even the demons believe that, and they tremble. But do you want to know a foolish man when faith without works is dead? Now look at the example he uses. Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he offered Isaac his son to the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? Verse 23. And the scripture was fulfilled which says, Abraham believed God and was accounted to him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. He uses the same verse Paul uses. And what's the point he makes? Abraham believed God so much, he did what God said.

Faith must motivate what we do. Why is that such an important point? You know, we can be motivated by a lot of reasons to obey God. Some people obey God because they think, oh, I know people over the years that obeyed God only because they thought they would skip the tribulation. And then the tribulation didn't come. So they stopped obeying God. I know people who have obeyed God just because they're afraid of him, and they never grow into love. Or people who obey God because they think it makes them better than everybody else. And they have this great sense of superiority because I obey God and you don't. Our motivations, and this is what Paul said, our motivations for obeying God could be a lot of things. And he says, if it's not faith, it's not pleasing to God.

If it's not based on, I believe that you have my best interest in heart. I believe you are good. I believe you are wise. I don't understand.

You go tell God that sometimes. I don't understand. God, this makes no sense to me. God never punishes somebody when we go and honestly pour our heart out and say that. Sometimes what he says is what we told our kids. Remember? I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand. After about the fifth time, he'd say, do it because I said so. And that's God. I've explained it to you five times, kid. Just do it because I say so. That's why he is one sometimes. We have to be honest.

I've known people who have obeyed God and resented it. Oh, why didn't God call me later? I could have had so much more fun. I've heard people say that. Why did he have to call me when I was a teenager? I could have married my high school sweetheart. I could have gone on and had to college. I wouldn't have had any of this trouble with Sabbath. It would have been great. And I could have died in a drunken stupor at age 23. But I've actually had people tell me, oh, why did God call me and ruin my life? But they seem to be obeying. They were trying to obey. There was no faith in it. When we put James and Paul together, we find this incredible truth of what God is doing. Faith, trust in God, has to produce qualities in the day-to-day life. Confidence, hope, and obedience. Confidence, hope, and obedience.

Sometimes we lose that confidence. We lose the hope. We can even lose the obedience because we just wear out or we are caught in a moment of weakness. But usually when we start to disobey, it's because we've lost confidence and hope. We've lost confidence in God, so we disobey. Or we get caught up in all the negativism of life. You know, the next time you feel like you have an alligator by the leg, or he has you by the leg, and he's pulling you into that water, and you're hollering and you're screaming, and then you look afterward, you think, I have all these scars! I have all these scars. Look around. Look on your arms. Because you'll find that you and I are carrying scars. They're there because of God. Because God didn't let go of us. God held on to us. Because God has our best interest at heart. Because God actually knows what He's doing. And He has saved us from a lot of alligators over the time. So remember, when you struggle with faith, go to God. Because God will never let you go.