Faith and Works, Part 1

What do you as a human depend upon most? Can you think of one thing that you depend upon more than any other thing? According to theboxoftruth.com, human beings depend primarily on sight, as a means of figuring out what is going on in the world around them. When you stop and think about a human being, we are very self-oriented. We see the world from the back of our cranium, through synapses that are firing there, interpreting electronic signals, impulses that come through nerves sent from the eye, nerves sent from the ear, etc. This little goo in the back of your head is trying to make sense of it all. It truly does depend on sight for most of what it can really depend upon, what it can be confident about. Hearing is often what others are making, others are saying, others are contributing. But sight is something that you yourself are producing. You're producing and then conjuring up the images in the back of your brain, and you're making your own interpretations. As you trip through life, as you bump into things, as you touch things, and you see things, and you do things, you develop this wealth of experience that becomes your most trusted source. That wealth of experience depends mostly on sight. Dependable information is therefore held as a resource inside you somewhere. Knowledge that you can absolutely rely upon is something that you have worked out. You hear all kinds of stuff from everywhere, but somehow you have decided that what you know is the thing. You have determined what is right and what is wrong. Based on those inputs and based on your own reasoning, you have come to decide that these people are quacks, this one you really can't rely on, that one's close, but nobody says and does it quite like me. In Genesis 2, verse 9, there's a statement where God had created two trees. It's interesting here in verse 9 of Genesis 2, And out of the ground the Lord made every green tree to grow that is pleasant to the sight. See, we're going to come along with our eyes, this main means of our observation that we trust upon, and we're going to see, oh, that looks good. You know, the apple that was on the tree that Eve ate, well, it wasn't really an apple, it was a pear. But we could get into that later. No, but you see, to the sight, pleasant to the sight, the human would then perceive that, hmm, I know what is good and what isn't. I don't really like green apples, but I like pears. They're sweeter. You might say, no, no, no, no, no, it wasn't an apple or a pear. It was a grapefruit. Somebody says, oh, no, that's not it. It was a passion fruit, because it was so passionate. Ugh, passion fruit are just disgusting. The Bible doesn't tell us what kind of fruit, but God made these things that were good for food, and the tree of life was also in the garden. Hmm, tree of life was also in the garden. It didn't really, wasn't described with the same appeal, was it? But there was this tree, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the personal knowledge, the knowing of what is good and what is evil, and how would you know?

Well, you begin to develop. You use the eyes, you use the ears, you use the resource, but this brain in its various cortexes will assemble what is good and what is evil. And you'll carry that through life as the chief authority, the best authority.

Now, in chapter 3 and verse 6, so when the woman saw with her main means of trustable input, she saw, saw. She saw the tree was, she saw the tree was good. She didn't know the tree was good, she didn't hear the tree was good, she didn't learn the tree was good, she saw the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, a tree desirable to make one wise. And she took of its fruit and she ate. Now what happened when she ate that fruit? Verse 7, then the eyes of both of them were open. See, we have this, this trusty perception instrument, pair of them.

The eyes were open. Not just the physical eyes, but the mental eyes were open. And I now can see even better what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong. What is trustworthy? What is dependable? And they became unto themselves something as the source of knowledge, the highest that there was, knowing better. Even than God. Personal perception trumps trust in God. Your personal perception, your eyes, that which you know, that which you've developed as a human being without help is greater than any other input from any other source. And we come to rely on it. Man has come to trust himself through his five senses. We know because we see, we hear, we taste, we touch. Science is based on knowledge through proof. And science knows. People of science absolutely know because they put forth hypotheses, they put forth theories, and then they disprove them, and they prove them and disprove them until they finally end up with that which is absolute rock solid, trustable. You can have absolute confidence, finally, in science. And so we become wise. Each of us at times will argue with other people. Do you ever wonder why you argue? I believe it's rooted in this very thing that we have come through life to this place, and we don't trust anybody's ideas or concepts as well as we trust our own. So if you come up and say, well, here's how it really is. No, it's not, as a matter of fact. Here's how it is.

Third person says, oh, no, no, no. You're both wrong. This is how it is. And you can really get into a real great discussion about anywhere, anytime, with just about anybody, and end up, they just don't see it. What are they not seeing? They're not seeing the conclusions in life that you have come to. We each trust what we know more than what somebody else knows. And it's an important thing for you and I to come to understand that through our eyes and through our experience, we have come to trust what we know. That is what we depend upon.

In Isaiah 5, verse 21, there's this statement, Woe to those wise in their own eyes and bright in their own sight. Uh-oh. This kind of turns on its head, this whole concept that you and I have come to depend on so fully in life. To trust in our own eyes, that primary thing that gives us confidence and gives us steerage. Woe to those who are bright in their own sight. In 1 Corinthians chapter 8, in the first two verses, when you come into the New Testament period, where God's Spirit is given to some, and that Spirit, God living in them as the temple, begins to affect their understanding and change their focus a bit. Paul says here in 1 Corinthians 8 and verse 1, we know that we have all knowledge. You know that. I know that. We have all knowledge. We have the Internet. If you don't pack around enough, it's probably there on your smartphone. We can tap all. We know that we have all knowledge. You know good and well that you've lived a long time, and there's a lot of people that just don't measure up to what you know. We have all knowledge. Next phrase, knowledge puffs up. We can start thinking pretty highly of this knowledge that we have. Knowledge puffs up. And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, that's us. He knows nothing, yet as he ought to know, he knows nothing about the things that lead to eternal life, for instance. The things that are important.

We have all of this knowledge, sometimes even biblical knowledge, but if we think it is here, we know nothing. Nothing that leads to life. Nothing that we ought to know. Let's consider a typical example that God provided for us in King Nebuchadnezzar. Now, he wasn't just your common guy. King Nebuchadnezzar was a smart, intelligent man.

He was one of those uber-talented guys that walked the earth. He was the first emperor that we know of that ever lived. He was that bright. He was numero uno, the first empire of Babylon.

Now, he did, and he saw, and he knew, and there were certain conclusions he came to. If we go down to Daniel 4, verse 29, we'll see him sort of summarize this knowledge, this understanding. Really, what he could not only be convicted about, but what he could trust. This is what is dependable to Nebuchadnezzar.

In Daniel 4, verse 29, it says at the end of 12 months, he was walking about the royal palace of Babylon. The royal palace of Babylon was quite a place. You can see artist's renditions of Babylon, the hanging gardens of Babylon, the Ishtar Gate or the Easter Gate at Babylon, etc., etc.

The army exploits. You know, it was a pretty cool place. And here he was walking around through the palace observing it all, and here's the conclusion he came to. Verse 30, is not this great Babylon that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power for all the honor of my majesty? Let's step back into your shoes for a minute. Isn't this life I've lived and all the things I've seen, the travel I've done, the books I've read, the degrees I have, the work experience I have, all of the stuff, all the perceptions, all my higher understanding than even the politicians in this land have? Isn't this really something? That's where we can come to. And while the word was still in the king's mouth, a voice fell from heaven, King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken, the kingdom has departed from you. You're going to be driven, you'll dwell with the beast, the synapses aren't going to fire so well back there anymore. All this understanding and perception that you had is going to be pulled. Now, what's interesting about this is if you go down to verse 34, you see his eyes, which were on his kingdom and on himself, they were in the physical realm, in other words. This isn't so different than you and me, or so different than humanity. We're looking with our physical eyes and we're living a life that we're doing well at, thank you very much. We're probably the only ones that recognize how well we're doing individually, but nevertheless, it's pretty good. And all of a sudden, verse 34 happens, at the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up my eyes to heaven. Now, this is the first time his eyes have left the physical realm and suddenly, now he's looking up. He's looking, in other words, in a different dimension or at a different dimension. He's looking at the spirit world of heaven. And my understanding returned to me and I blessed the Most High and I praised and honored him who lives forever. Wow! Now he's seeing something in his mind's eye and he's recognizing something that doesn't exist in the physical world. It's not made of physical matter or atoms. It's an eternal spirit world, a spiritual concept that he cannot see of and by himself. That is a huge shift. We humans trust what we see, what we know, and yet what we see and what we know does not help us achieve the reason why we're here. It helps us not towards achieving or receiving everlasting life.

Today in the sermon, let's example a crucial need to shift our focus and our emphasis from what we see and what we can see and what we know and what we can know as humans to that which we cannot naturally see and know.

That's a scary thing, in a sense, to put your total confidence and your total trust into something you can't see, to take away the eyes, even to take away the rest of the five senses and say, Okay, now I have absolute confidence in things, in individuals, in processes. I can't see, I can't touch. I have no personal interaction with them as a physical human being. That's a scary step. And yet that's what we want to talk about today in a sermon entitled, Faith and Works, Part 1, Dealing with our Sight.

You and I need to deal with our sight. Let's take a look at that today.

There's an individual named Eric Weijenmeyer. The interesting thing about Eric Weijenmeyer, well, there's two interesting things. One, he's a very accomplished individual. The other thing is he's totally blind.

Eric Weijenmeyer set a record when he summited Mount Everest as a blind man back in 2001. Now, I would never make it up Mount Everest. I'm resigned to that fact. But I've seen movies and videos of people who have tried. A lot of people die.

Every year people die trying to make that ascent. It's not just a walk in the park. It's not just a trail you go up. There are extreme dangers of gaps, of cracks in the ice, fissures that people drop down and die in. There are difficult, rocky things you have to climb up with, and ropes and objectives.

Mr. Weijenmeyer made that without being able to see. He made that summit and six more like it, climbing the tallest mountain on every continent on Earth by the year 2002, the next year. He's accomplished quite a few things. In fact, Eric Weijenmeyer is also an acrobatic skydiver.

He's a long-distance biker, a marathon runner, a snow skier, a mountaineer, an ice climber, and a rock climber. He does all of this without physical sight. And in a sense, that's what God wants from you and me, in a spiritual sense. He wants us to have the confidence and trust in a different set of eyes, a different set of vision, a different type of light, a different type of knowledge and understanding. And be very submissive to directives and orders and commands. And if we do that, we are dealing with our sight, as Eric Weijenmeyer does.

A similar situation we find ourselves in in God's church, then, is we really can't trust me. We can't trust mine. We can't trust these. We can't trust this. We can't trust all that experience and knowledge we have. Those things are not what we would trust because that's self-trust, isn't it? And every one of us thinks a little differently, has a little different experience, a little different thought process. We come up with different conclusions, and therefore we can argue. In 1 Corinthians 8, verses 6 and 7, we find that we are to depend upon a God that we haven't seen.

And about you, I haven't seen him. Now, there are faithless religionists, and they can't believe in a God they can't see. So they're always making idols and images and statues and paintings and temples and whatever you can do to try to get near to this God. They're always trying to have a feeling or fall down and kick around and blabble something.

Some proof, some proof that this invisible being indeed does exist.

1 Corinthians 8, verse 6 says, But there is to us, not to the world, not to humanity, not to those without God, Spirit, only one God, the Father, of whom are all things.

And we in Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we by Him. But this knowledge is not in all. Only some have this knowledge. Now, it's interesting what Paul has just talked about here, all invisible things, all spiritual things. It's not here. You can't see it. It's not in our experience. It's not within our five senses.

To us, this knowledge is given about spiritual things in heavenly places.

You know, Jesus asked the question, When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth? You can see the opposite of faith is proof. Some say it's doubt. I would say it's proof. The opposite of faith, one opposite of faith.

One opposite of faith is proof. That's why there's faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love, because some day there won't be faith and there won't be hope. You'll have the real deal. The Kingdom will be here. You'll see it all. You'll be there. You don't need faith. You don't need hope. You'll have the real thing. But for now, we have faith, hope, and love. What we would like is not to have to have faith.

We would like God to just step out, take us by the hand. We would like to have all of the things that God has told us. Sort of true, where you could see the Kingdom of God. You could see this. You could see that. But what we have is faith. And that's a missing element on earth. Jesus said, will it even be here? When I return, will I find faith on the earth?

Why? Well, we've learned to deal with proof. Humanity is really good with proof. Just look at the world right now. This morning I was looking at a flyover, time-lapse video from the space station. Very interesting to watch the earth at night flying over. And it's all covered in lights. And you see the northern lights coming over.

You see the crackle of lightning, visually, in the clouds below. But you see it all. And there it is. And it's all exposed. Nothing's hidden. It's all there. And here's the space station. Satellites all over the place. We know how to put people on the moon. We can send things to Mars all the time. We might build a colony there. We can do almost anything under the sea, above the sea, in the air. It's your house. It's your local stores. You've got all the gadgetry. It's all based on science. And it's a wonderful thing. We've got it all. We've pretty much got it all. So when Christ returns, will there be a need for trusting the unknown, the unseen? Not among most humans. There won't be faith.

There will be proof. We'll get into a little bit of that as we go through.

The Greek word, noesus, which is a basis for knowledge, really, one of the commentaries says that noesus really means the learned.

The learned one. The one who really excels in knowledge. The knowing one. Noesus, knowledge. It's considered, well, nosticism, which is not a term in the Bible, but nosticism was a primitive religion based on higher knowing. It was sort of the premium religion among one group, considering themselves to have the highest level of spiritual understanding. Humans like to extol their knowledge. Knowledge is one thing that the Apostle Paul used when he was talking about what love is and what love isn't in 1 Corinthians 13. One thing was, though I have all knowledge, we put a lot of faith, stake, and knowledge, having all knowledge. That's a big deal to us. Knowledge and noceus. We see, therefore, we know. And we know, and you can't take that away from me, as it were. Our confidence is built at observing and then doing, and scientific testing and proving. And we use our five senses, our eyes, and our ears. You know, the state of Missouri is said to have the motto, We're the show me state. It's just not Missourians. It's pretty much humanity. We're the show me people. I'm not going to believe it unless you show me. And once you show me, that means I see. You see, show means I'm seeing it. Then I'll believe.

Seeing is believing. That's what we rely on. We get confidence from this. We like the Scripture. Prove all things. Hold fast to that which is true. It goes right along with our mental psyche. We don't need faith. We want proof. Having proof of all things and holding fast to that which is true is not in the Scripture, by the way. You want to look at the Scripture there. Prove all things. Hold fast to that which is true. It might sound like a hand in glove. You know, a lot of people even in the church will sometimes use that. They'll say, see, I don't have to believe. I don't have to believe you. I don't have to believe that. I've got my own Bible.

I've got my own brain. I've got my own experience, my own eyes. And I'm going to prove all things. And I'm going to hold fast to that which is true. It's a bit of a mistranslation of 1 Thessalonians 5, 21. Because to prove doesn't mean you're going to get proof. That's a totally different word. To prove just merely means to test or to examine. To approve.

This is here in the New King James Version. To approve. To test all things. This is putting it to the test, in other words. And the word true, hold fast. The word hold fast to those things which are true, the Greek word means good. As in the King James Version, you use the word good.

Beautiful or virtuous. So we're not going to be able to prove all things and have proof of all things. No, we're going to be able to test and approve the things that are good, that are virtuous. By use of God's Holy Spirit. Just like Jesus said, you'll know the false teachers by their fruits. You have to test them, don't you?

And you then hang on to the ones, hold to the ones that are good. It has nothing to do with getting physical proof. Tangible proof. The meaning of that phrase might be said like this. By the fruit of all things, you will know which are worth keeping. Try all things. Test all things. Prove all things.

By the fruit of all things, you will know which are worth keeping. Hold on to those which are good. What is the testing agent? Testing agent is not you and me. It's relying on God, His Holy Spirit. It's relying on His Word as the agent to even know what is good.

In 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 7, let's hear an important component of your Christian calling. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 7, very short verse. For we walk by faith, not by sight.

Uh-oh. They just took away that which I relied on. They took away that means for me to judge and prove and have proof for all that is good and right as far as what I think. I have to walk by faith. Trust in God. Trust in something else. Someone else. Not myself. Not by sight. We want physical proof by sight, but we don't get physical proof.

You and I see, and so we base our confidence on that which we can justify, that's which we can test and have proof of. The Martians just landed over. Oh yeah, really? Yeah, show me. And then we see some magazine or newspaper in the grocery store, sure enough the Martians have landed. And we're like, I don't think so. Look, that doesn't look real. That photo's been doctored. We know better than that. Show me the real Martian if you want me to think the Martians have landed. We're not falling for that stuff anymore. We rely and base our confidence on sight. Like this website that stated sight as our primary means of knowing what's going on.

It continues this way. In conditions where we find this sense of sight significantly diminished, it is extremely disconcerting to us. Extremely disconcerting. Many people are afraid of the dark. Many people are afraid of going out in the dark. And rightfully so. You don't know what's out there. Because the sight is diminished. How many people like to go mountain climbing in the dark? Or swimming across the channel in the dark? You know, it's not our favorite. We just soon go in and lock the doors in the dark.

Why do we lock our doors? Because it's the fear of what's out there in the dark. We don't like not seeing. We don't trust what we can't see. Neither do we like to trust someone else's knowledge. Consequently, as the title of the sermon says, we must deal with our sight. In 2 Corinthians 5, 7, for we walk by faith, not by sight is actually in the context of what you and I believe. And I believe that the most important thing is that of what you and I believe.

Let's look at it. Here in 2 Corinthians 5. We'll begin in verse 1 and read quite a bit of the chapter. 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 1. For we know, that's us. We, not the world. Remember? We know that if our earthly house, that's me and my five senses, that's where our tent is destroyed. We have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Wow! How do we get to this point? We've long put off all of this dependence on eyesight and now all of a sudden we're not even worried about the body. We're not worried about what's going to happen to me or even in my physical realm. We're not worried. We're not overly anxious. We're not focused on a building not made with hands, not in the physical realm, eternal in the spirit dimension. That is a huge leap, a leap of faith. We didn't get there by sight. Verse 2. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring, not sort of, hopefully, cautiously, desiring to be clothed with our habitation, which is from heaven.

We really do believe, brethren, in something that we can't see, have never seen, have never heard, have never sampled, tasted, touched, smelled. Verse 3. If indeed we've been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groaned, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed or die, but further clothed with life, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now he who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us his spirit as a guarantee.

You see anything tangible here? We have a spirit as a guarantee. Can you find that spirit? Can you find that God? Can you find your eternal being and future? Verse 6. So we are always confident knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. For, here's the context now, for we walk by faith, not by sight.

Instead, we are learning to deal with our sight. We're learning to put it in its proper perspective. We're learning to ignore it. In many cases, we're learning to look beyond it, with different eyes and trusting different sensory perceptors.

Verse 8. We are confident, yes, well-pleased, rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. Therefore, we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well-pleasing to Him. See, faith with good works, well-pleasing. We are really doing something here that is far beyond what humans would be comfortable with. Confidence in unseen realities permits you and me to focus on the things that are important for our eternal salvation. And yet, if we don't have confidence in those unseen realities and start thinking the physical realm is our reality, we will be focused on things that, as we've read already, do not have knowledge that is beneficial for us at all.

Sight. Physical sight in the physical world. It ruins it for it. It messes it all up. It just gets in the way. I know it sounds a little crazy, but it does. Let's drop down to verse 15.

And he, Jesus Christ, died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves. We are not even, in all our perception now, even focused on this tent, our self. We're not after the special fruit and those things in life that would be so appealing to us.

Instead of living for ourselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. Here's another individual. We haven't seen him. He rose again, but nobody saw him rise. He was invisible when he rose. Couldn't find him.

Verse 16, Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh.

See how far we've gone? We don't regard anybody, myself, yourself, anybody. We're not looking at the physical realm. We're not putting our confidence there. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, they had seen Him. Paul and John and the other apostles had seen Him.

They no longer regard anyone according to the flesh, even though we've known Christ according to the flesh.

Yet, now we know Him thus no longer.

We have moved beyond this and we've come to the Spirit. God leading us through the Holy Spirit. God living inside us. Verse 17, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is, it says, a new creation.

Theirs would say, of a new kind. Children of our Father in Heaven. We're growing into spiritual sons. Old things have passed, or old things pass away. Behold, all things begin to be new. It's kind of one of the interpretations of the Greek.

The concept isn't that we have done this or that. But old things pass and we, as new children of a new family, are becoming or beginning to be new. We're seeing things differently, in other words. We're not like our old physical parents who looked at that tree and said, Yep, that's good. I can see that as good fruit. That's going to make me wise. That's going to give me what I need. We're now seeing, nope. We're seeing through different eyes. Verse 20, now then, we are ambassadors for Christ. Have you ever met Christ? Have you ever seen the kingdom of God? And yet, what are we? We are ambassadors of that. We are going around promoting it. We're preaching the kingdom. We're representatives of something. We're very assured of that. It has nothing to do with our physical eyes. Ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. Be stitched together, reconciled. Have a strong relationship through a covenant with a God that you've never seen, you've never heard. And yet, you're absolutely convinced that He is the one to lead you. Notice, in this whole chapter, there's not one thing that can be seen or perceived through the five senses. Not a single thing. And yet, look how confident we are, or should be at least, in this faith-based religion, faith-based covenant that we have with God. It's pure faith, and we are dealing with the issues concerning sight. We need to be dealing with those issues.

How do we get so engaged with the spiritual, unseen dimension, the concepts of a God that we haven't seen? Do we do so in some mechanical way? Or is it actually through repentance and baptism we receive a new spirit, and God awakens our thought processes to where we think differently? We have different priorities, different perspectives, different objectives.

We now strive in non-physical affairs to the human body, at least. They're tangible to us. And they're just as strong as they were physical. I don't know if you've ever thought about this.

But when we are really strong in the faith, do you ever think that God has not ever been seen? Do you ever think that the things in the Bible really have to just be taken on pure faith? We begin to take this around and say, this is the truth, I'm hanging on to this, everything in here is so real, I can see God. When I get down on my knees, I see God the Father and Jesus Christ and that sea of glass, and I go right up to the third heaven and I talk to God. I come away very inspired. I'm sure you do too. There's some symbolism there in Ezekiel 4 and 8. It helps us. Jesus Christ walking on earth, we see all that through a mind's eye. But to us it's very, very real. And all the promises here in the coming kingdom, we can just envision the millennial reign of Christ, helping and serving, and then the second resurrection and all the people in the third resurrection, the new heavens and the new earth, I mean, we're right there. It's just real to us. It's really what faith is. It's so real, it becomes the evidence of things that are unseen. Consider your life's chief priorities for a minute through this lens of physical eyes, spiritual eyes. You seek a God, seek Him daily, our Father in heaven, our Father in the spiritual dimension. You've never seen your putting first, seeking first God's kingdom, which you've never seen, never experienced. You trust a Bible whose information and characters are without physical evidence in 99.9% of the cases. And yet, this is it. We'll even take it down to the Greek meaning of a word, you know, just to really extract the knowledge of this. You have devotion to changing your human nature, this carnal human nature we have, into holy righteous character of a God that we haven't met yet. You're an ambassador of an unseen kingdom in which flesh and blood can't enter. You can't go in there, can't be part of it, but you're an ambassador of it. It just points out that you haven't seen it or been there yet. You and your religion are opposed by most people on earth, and will be, especially as the end approaches, even more so. And we're threatened to go through universal chaos, the worst times ahead you can imagine, great persecution and great deception. And we're going into all of this with what? You know, where is it?

When it all comes down, when the chips are down, when the rubber meets the road, whenever whatever persecution you have to go through happens, is it these eyes you're going to say, well, wait a minute here. I didn't actually see God. I didn't actually see the kingdom. I didn't actually see these things. I didn't touch and taste them. Can I depend on faith? Can I trust that which I am involved in, this covenant? It's a very, very big question. It's fundamental. And the fundamental answer is that God says it's impossible to please Him unless we have faith.

God isn't in physical proof. God isn't presented Himself. He hasn't presented His Word. He hasn't presented His kingdom with a lot of physical proof for us who rely on that. Why is the calling like this? And where is the physical proof of it all, anyway?

Well, I would argue that there is no physical proof for it, and that there never will be, as long as you and I are living here in the flesh. That's kind of a tough position to come to. How do you like that? How do you like that, cons? I'll just make it my cons. There's no physical proof of this, and there won't be. Are you comfortable with that?

We think, oh, that's scary. That's scary. He just took away my eyes. I was hoping it was going to show up. I was hoping God was going to knock on the wall, or someday He was going to peer to me and say something. Heal me! Make the sun go back 10 degrees, make it go forward 10 degrees. All the human experiences. We always want proof.

Humans love proof. Is that what God's going to give to us?

The result of the lack of physical proof for what's in here has caused Christianity largely to disbelieve in God. I know it sounds stupid. Let me give you an example.

It's an article. Why was Jesus Christ crucified? In the Good News magazine, it'll probably be coming out this year sometime, written by Mr. John Ross Schrader.

Modern education is fundamentally based on the theory of evolution. Even established churches are deeply affected by this falsely assumed theory. Evolution. Churches. It gets deeper. Columnist Clifford Longley, writing recently in the Roman Catholic Weekly magazine called the Tablet, stated this. The Catholic Church accepts Darwin's theory of evolution, at least as probably true. Where did we as Christians get to where the big one is accepting evolution? It goes on. It has rejected the historical accuracy of the creation account given in Genesis, including the story of Adam and Eve and the apple. What sort of God, the article says, requires that his beloved son die to remedy an act of disobedience by someone who may have existed, Adam, but probably didn't. Now, you might think, well, that's nuts. Let me take it to another level. Remember what humans rely on most? Sight. Can you find Adam? Can you dig him up? No. Can you figure out creation? You go back to Genesis 1 and you read through the creation. Does that sort of match the fossil record? Does it match the paleontology record? Does it match the fossils in the ground? Does it match the taxonomy of plants and animals that are in the ground that you dig up? Tens not two. Therefore, scientists going way, way back have had a big problem with this part of the Bible, with Adam and Eve and the week of creation. And they can't really depend on it. You see, because there's no proof. They can't see it, they can't feel it, they can't touch it. So they go for that which they can see. They can see a layer of, layer after layer of life going down in the ground and say, well, I can see that. And therefore, Darwin's theory is what I can trust because of what I can see.

That's the problem with proof. That's the problem with creationism. Creationism. Creationism is a religious set of ideas to confront or to counter evolution. A bunch of other theories. Creationism is a bunch of theories. They go like this. One creationist theory believes that God started evolution working. This is creationism, belief in God as a creator. He created by starting evolutionary process billions of years ago and through that everything has evolved. And the seven days are just time frames, just general frames of time. God made everything, but He did it by evolution. Therefore, I can believe in the Bible. Another version is there's old earth creationism. Old earth creation goes back to the laws of physics that God made actually did happen and the dinosaurs did die 240 million years ago. And so on and so forth. And we come up to today. I believe that. And there's gap theorists who say in the beginning God created heavens and the earth and they were without form and void. There was this gap and then He recreated everything 6000 years ago. Then you've got another group. They are called the Young Earth Creationisms. They don't believe that anything existed 6000 years ago. Nothing, not an atom in the universe. And God created everything in six days, including all the sun, moon and stars going out 13 billion light years and somehow they can pack that into 1500 years. And then change all the laws of physics in the Flood. And here we are today. That's called Young Earth Creationism. Now in order for that to happen, they bring in a bunch of scientists, convert them into a hodgepodge of Christian ideas. And then those scientists, they go out and change all the laws of physics when you're not looking. The speed of light isn't that fast. No. Instead of 184,000 miles a second, it's 184 billion trillion zillion miles a second until the Flood. And now, you see, 13 billion years really does fit into 1500 years. And they do that with all the science. They do that with all of the various radio isotopes. They just change it all. Are these religious people? These are people who don't have any faith. All of those concepts are based on faithlessness. Faithlessness. They're proving, you see, they're generating their own proof so that they can believe in a God. Now, let's go to Hebrews 11, called the Faith Chapter, and see why we believe in the seven days of Creation. You know, it's interesting. Paul was with Christ, taught for a couple years in the desert. The other apostles, John, was with Jesus Christ. He was a fisherman, three and a half years. He was an apostle. He lived till 90, 91 A.D., at least. He wrote the book of John. He begins the book of John this way. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And through him all things were made, and nothing was made except through Jesus Christ, the Word. How did John come to that? Did he somehow see it? Did he witness it? There was a lot of science in his day. He was with, he believed, he took it on faith, he held to that rock solid. How did Paul feel? Well, let's look here. Hebrews 11, verse 3. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which are seen with our human eyes that we trust were not made of the things which are visible. That's cut through all the creationism. It doesn't matter what everybody is arguing about out there. It's a bunch of faithless-based replacements for what you and I believe. We, by faith, understand that that which is not physical created that which is physical. End of deal, end of discussion. Saves you a whole lot of science and a whole lot of arguments and a whole bunch of museums. It's by faith. That's what it comes down to. God did not give us in the ground the things that would provide proof.

Why isn't there physical proof? You can look and there's almost no record at all that Jesus Christ was ever on the earth except in the Bible. There's no record in the apostles were ever here except in the Bible. There's no record that Adam and Eve were here, Noah was here, you don't read of Moses, you can't find him in the Egyptian stuff. All these things that are rock solid to you and me, there's little or no. I'll put little in parentheses just in case. You can't find the ark and you never will. Why? Well, in Hebrews 11 verse 6, if we just continue there, we'll find out why. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. All of this sight, all of this proof, all of this stuff that you and I want, the signs and the wonders and all that, that doesn't do it. Without faith, we have to trust God. He made it that way. I don't know why he made it that way. But it's much more comfortable if he kept the ark and the ark of the covenant. We could see Moses' bones and we could go to David and just the whole thing. We could go to where Christ lived and where he did his miracles. We could see little things on the ground, pieces of bread and fish. It would be great to just walk through there. We could have photos and videos and interactive, ask the master videos. It would be really good. Why can't we do that? Because without faith, without trusting God implicitly, it's 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. That's what it all comes down to. And we have to deal with our sight in order to have that kind of faith. I'll give you some predictions. Noah's ark will not be discovered. Too many are found already. Scientists say they find one about every other year. There's probably a good reason for that. Some of the reading I've done on it, first of all, Mount Ararat is not known. There's a range of mountains. They choose this one mountain. It's a favorite among ark hunters. So it happened that, historically, in 200 BC, that's 2300 years ago, there was a forested mountain with pine trees. And there was an artisan community up there logging and creating things and creating structures out of wood. So just because you find a little wood or a wooden structure or a hud or an underground cave that's paneled in wood, doesn't mean you're going to find the ark. There's a lot of wood up there. There's going to be a lot of wood up there. And people are looking all over for it. But anyway, is it important to you that the ark is found? Do you need to find the ark in order to believe in this? If so, you've got a problem.

We find here in Hebrews 11 that, by faith, Noah. It really happened. The one who was taught by Jesus Christ talks about Noah. It happened.

Second prediction. Christ's will be seen here with plenty of miracles as physical proof.

He said there would be. Mark 13, 21 and 22. Therefore, if anyone says to you, look, use your eyes, look, here is the Christ.

Or, look, he is there. Finally, at last, I'm going to get some proof. Don't believe them. He says, do not believe it. Disregard what your physical eyes would see and don't believe it. Don't trust it. Don't trust your sight. Verse 22, 4, False Christ and false prophets will rise and show for your eyes great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. Whenever we start using our eyes, we're getting ourselves set up, aren't we? We're losing our faith. Humans like proof. Why? It avoids our need for faith. It's really encouraging to us. Proof works. With the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, proof really works well. It keeps me in the driver's seat. I'm the authority. I'm the one determining. I'm the one driving this thing. So you keep the proof coming. I'm self-reliant. I'm self-knowing. Let's go to Mark 8.

We'll start in verse 4. This is an important teaching of Jesus Christ. Let's try to grasp this now with the concept of dealing with sight. See what he's telling us here. Very, very important. Mark 8. Let's start in verse 4.

Then his disciples answered him and said, How can one satisfy these people, these crowds, with bread here in the wilderness? They're far from any place to buy anything. They're in an uninhabited area. And Jesus asked them, How many loaves do you have? And they said, Seven. So he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. He took the seven loaves and gave thanks, broke them, gave them to his disciples to set before them, and they set them before the multitude. Everybody saw this now. They're taking seven loaves and suddenly four thousand people have food to eat. And they also had a few small fish, and having blessed them, he set them also before them. They now saw a few little fish and four thousand people have fish to eat. So they ate, verse 8, and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets of leftover fragments. That's a sign. I mean, there's some physical proof there of something, isn't there? After he's going through the land, healing them, and that's why they're following him. Miracle after miracle, sign after sign, he turned water into wine, and now he's turning food into feeding a multitude.

Now those who were eaten were about four thousand, and he sent them away, and immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went across the Sea of Galilee, this big lake. He went across to another side. Now when he got to the other side, notice in verse 11, the Pharisees came out and began to dispute with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven, testing him. Okay, now you healed us, and you made all this bread and fish.

Now we want another sign. My eyes want to see even better proof that you are the Messiah, the anointed one. Verse 12, but Jesus sighed deeply in his spirit and said, Why does this generation seek a sign? Well, the answer is because we don't want faith. We want proof. Why does this generation seek a sign?

Assuredly I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation. Now he just got to the other side of the lake, and what does it say in verse 13? And he left them, and getting into the boat again, he departed to the other side of the lake. This has got to be frustrating. You can do so many signs, and you can give so much proof, as it were, but it's never enough. Humans crave it.

Now the disciples, verse 14, had forgotten to take bread. Wow! This is just really something. You've got no bread, so he has to make bread, then he gets over there, and they want to see a sign, and he gets in their boat, and they head out in the boat, and there's no bread.

It continues to be out. They have one loaf, 12 disciples plus Christ, not enough to eat. And then, verse 15, he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. They coveted more for those physical eyes. The Pharisees were in the driver's seat.

Herod was a man who was in the driver's seat. This isn't the Herod that tried to kill him when he was young. That Herod died off. This was another Herod, one of the sons. He desired and coveted and wanted more for the eyes, for the physical eyes. You can see that in Luke 23, verse 8. They wanted bigger and bigger signs. They were faithless. They didn't have that faith, that trust in God. And so, in verse 16, it says, the disciples reasoned among themselves. One of the commentaries says they argued among themselves.

They started maybe accusing each other of not thinking and not realizing they should have brought some of that bread from those seven baskets. And it was your fault and my fault, you see. And Jesus had told us, beware now of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod. But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, Why do you reason because you have no bread? Why are you using this human reasoning? Do you not perceive nor understand?

Don't you see through different eyes? Don't you have an understanding here that transcends the human eye? Is your heart still hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? Having ears, do you not hear? Do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets of fragments did you take up?

They said, twelve. Verse 20, Also, when I broke the seven for four thousand, how many large baskets full of fragments did you take up? They said, seven. So he said to them, How is it you don't understand? He goes on through this. The next thing he does is come to Bethsaida, and they brought a blind man to him. It's about sight, and he's now going to continue to teach them, someone who can't see. And the blind man begged him to touch him.

So he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town. And when he had spit upon his eyes and put his hands on them, he asked him if he saw anything. He's going to give him real sight here. And by analogy, he can give us spiritual sight. And he looked up and he said, I see men like trees walking.

And then he put his hands on his eyes again and made him look up. And he was restored and saw everyone clearly. And then he said, don't go into town or tell anyone in the town.

And then Jesus said to the people and to his disciples, Who do men say that I am? You've seen all this with your eyes. Who do men say that I am? And so they answered, well, John the Baptist, some say, Elijah, one of the prophets, they were the ones in charge of their knowledge. Verse 29, he said to them, But who do you say that I am? And Peter answered and said, You are the anointed one. You are the Messiah. You are the Christos. And then he strictly warned them that they should not tell anyone about them.

In verse 31, he begins to talk about things that didn't make sense to them. The Son of Man must suffer. He must die. He must return to heaven. He must receive a kingdom. Peter, verse 32, took him aside and began to rebuke him. No, no, no, Lord, don't say things like that. No, no, no. And he said to him, verse 33, Get behind me, Satan, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but you are mindful of the things of man, physical man.

You and I have to get rid of what we see and put on the mind of Christ, the mind of God, and get away from these physical things and our need for proof. And he goes on and he talks about coming after him, denying himself. Whoever desires to save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake in the Gospels will save it.

Things that you can't see, you can't touch, you can't get the proof of. But this is what we're to devote our life to. In verse 38, finally, he says, Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with his holy angels. Faith and trust in the Spirit, the unseen God, is required for salvation. In conclusion, your life and this age in which we live is partly for the testing of our faith, not for the testing of our eyes.

It's for the testing of our faith in God. Testing of our faith while there's lots for our eyes to see, to distract us. If we want to go that way, we can be drawn away. James 1, verses 3 and 4, talks about the importance of our testing and being tested. In Matthew 7, verse 24, I'd like to show you how we, as individuals who don't see, we don't have the tangible proof, can endure.

In an age where people are against us, society, its concepts are against us, all the things that our eyes can see and perceive really would work against us, including religious things. Christ even warned us, be wary of what you see, because there's a lot of deception coming. Matthew 7, 24, says, Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, actually acts on somebody else's instructions, like the climber Eric, going through all the things he does and has done, relying and trusting on someone else.

Whoever hears these directives of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock.

The rain descended. The floods came. The winds blew and beat on that house. All of these pressures will come. But it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. It was founded on something better than human logic, physical perception, and experience. Verse 26, But everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them, but trusts his physical eyes, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, and it fell, and great was its fall. We need to deal with sight, and we must grow and replace it with faith. Next time, in Part 2 of this series on faith and good works, we'll examine the necessity of faith for salvation.