On Faith, Part 2

Jesus asked the question, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth? The reason He asked that question is because when Jesus Christ returns, He will be looking for faith on this earth. Faith is the most important element on earth. It is also the rarest element on earth.

People are easily confused about faith. There is a confusion about personal belief and the faith that is spoken of in the Bible. Oftentimes, people equate their personal belief in God and the Bible and the stories of the Bible as being faith. However, James says, you believe that there is one God, good! Even the demons believe that and shudder. So belief in God, even by itself, is nothing exceptional at all.

In fact, God intends for all humans to believe that He exists. The creation reveals that. In the book of Corinthians, it tells us that people are dumb. People are not wise. People push through that obvious world and mounting evidence to come up with some other idea. One's personal belief in God is merely a precursor, a precursor of true faith, of godly living faith.

It begins with a personal belief, but it's supposed to grow into something else. It's supposed to transform into something spiritual. Personal belief is enhanced with stories. God gave us many stories and examples. That's to help our personal belief. How will one understand? How will one know of God unless one hears?

How will one hear unless they're told? Miracles enhance one's personal belief in God. And many times there are miracles in the early part of a person's life. Jesus said, if you don't believe me, in other words, if you don't have any faith in me, believe the miracles that I do. See, in the absence of faith, you have stories, you have evidences of other sorts. Miracles can develop faith. Stories can develop faith. At least personal belief. Not real faith, but personal belief where no other belief exists.

If you look at the fact that most personal miracles take place in the early personal relationship a person has with God, you begin to see that the awareness, the building of a person's belief in God begins at some point. Go back in the Bible and see the same thing happen. Witness what happened in the life of the Israelites when they were first called. The very first thing that happens, 10 divine miracles come down on Egypt.

The first interaction with Pharaoh, miracles take place in his court. When the Israelites go out of Egypt, miracles take place for their food and for their water. That was in their early relationship with God. And so it was with other legends, including Nebuchadnezzar in his first encounter with God. And so it was with the first individuals that Jesus Christ, the Son of God who came to this earth, encountered.

They had no faith in Him. They didn't believe Him. And so He provided miracles and said, Let the miracles show you that there is a God and that I'm the Son of God. The same thing happened with the infancy of the New Testament church. In the first area, there was no belief. There was no trust in Jesus Christ being the head of the church.

And miracles took place through the apostles. Miracles took place through Jesus Christ. Miracles took place in the life of the Apostle Paul when he did not believe in Jesus Christ and a miracle happened to him of blindness that was then healed dramatically. Later in his life, that very same thing that he was healed of came back to haunt him. And God said He would not heal him of it again.

Because Paul didn't need miracles. Now he had faith and Paul lived by faith. And so it is in the end-time church. As this era began, there were miracles in the church. Dramatic things happened that you can read of in church literature. The autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong that brought people's awareness of God and where his true church work was. We all experience miracles, actually. Well, we often have one major miracle, maybe earlier in our life.

And these miracles are encouraging. And they are also pivotal because it is at that point we begin to have a new understanding, a new reference. We begin to wake up to something. We start to have a personal belief in something. And that's followed by something else. Countless smaller miracles. Countless smaller miracles are happening to you and me constantly. One miracle that takes place in you right now, in every moment of your life, is the miracle of the Spirit in man. The ability to think, to reason. The ability to understand that there is a God and perceive him.

There's another miracle that comes along, the miracle of God's Holy Spirit. And with it, a host of other things that the angels and God working in your life and mind may protect us from once in a while. You may feel or sense that something has happened to protect you, to prolong you, to assist you. Those are mere events in God's support of a life and a person that he is working with.

Matthew 9, verse 6. Jesus said, But that you may know, that you may have a personal awareness, that you may have a belief that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins.

I'm going to do a miracle. Why? Because you don't believe the Son of Man is on earth and that he has the power to forgive sins. So in the absence of your faith, he's telling them, he says to this paralytic, Arise, take up your bed and go to your house. Now here's a common scene. If you're ever in a small village like this would have been, and you have the paralytic who's sitting on his bed, he's there every day asking for help. Reminds me of an old man I once saw in 1969 in Madrid, Spain.

An old man who couldn't walk sitting on a porch and he'd been there for a long time. He was there every day. He was there all the time and he was begging for help. Because the porch was stained with his self, his oil, his body. It was just a stain all around him. And so when this man was relieved and the multitude saw it, they marveled. And what did they say? They glorified God whom they hadn't glorified before, who had given such power to men. And so the glory came by something they saw. That's not faith. Faith is not through seeing. Faith is not through feeling. Faith is not through hearing. That's personal belief. That's personal belief in something.

The Bible talks about a faith that comes from God. It's a faith of God. It's the faith of Jesus Christ. And those who live and walk by faith have the true thing that comes from God. When God does something that we witness in person, it's inspiring. We give Him glory. We're happy to receive. I don't know about you, but I like things that add things to my life. Time and blessings, healing, anything like that. That would be good. But caution. Those who never grow beyond a personal belief in God, never develop godly living faith.

Let me say that again. Those who never grow beyond a personal belief in God, from any and all sources, never have godly living faith. There's a huge difference between the two. I'll give you an example. An example of one of the greatest miracles that's ever happened in this end time era of the church. I'll call the individual that happened to Mr. Howard. In the 1950s, Mr. Howard was coming into understanding God. He developed a personal belief in God, and he came to the church in Pasadena where I was a child. He had a problem. He had been wounded in the war, and he was a paraplegic in a wheelchair, and he couldn't move from the waist down. He had strong arms, and he was a big man. I remember his big knees.

Big knees in that wheelchair as he pushed himself around. He was a boisterous man. He was full of life. One day, when he came to understand about healing, he asked Mr. Richard David Armstrong to heal him. Anoint me, he said, so that can be healed. Mr. Armstrong's oldest son, Dick, as he was called, anointed him. And you know what happened? Mr. Howard got out of that wheelchair and walked without a cane. He walked without anything. He put away the assembly thing that he had made to lower himself in and out of the bathtub. He went out to his house out in the country, and you saw what all he went through in life. He got to put all of that away. In fact, now, as a healed Christian in the church, he had to go to the VA and tell them, quit sending me this check. You know what the VA did? They looked it up on the records and said, sorry, you're paralyzed from the waist down.

We cannot stop sending you these checks. It was really something. Really, really something.

It was a visible thing. It was something we were reminded of every day as he began to come along in the church. Eventually, he was ordained to a minister. He began to preach and teach and talk about God and talk about faith. I'll show you a much bigger miracle than that.

Turn with me to Luke 6 and verse 17. We all thought that was quite the buzz for a number of years.

I was reading something the other day. Mr. Armstrong wrote a letter he wrote out in 1973. He said, we're going to start having some of our more exciting senior men go out and do public Bible lectures, including people like this man and this man and this man and Mr. Howard.

You could see that he had really developed and grown.

Well, that was one miracle. Look at this in Luke 6 and verse 17.

Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place with a crowd of his disciples and a multitude. You know what a multitude is? A multitude is a lot of people.

Only this wasn't just a multitude. It says this was a great multitude of people.

These people came from all Judea and Jerusalem and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. This is a big, big crowd.

As well as those who were tormented with unclean spirits. And they were all healed. All of them.

Imagine that many people. How would you get that close to Jesus Christ to heal them? Maybe he could do a general healing. And yet some perceive that if they could touch him, if they could just get in and touch him. Because it says in the next verse, And the whole multitude sought to touch him, for power went out from him, and he healed them all.

And what was the result of this great healing? The biggest healing I know of in the whole Bible.

Well, in the chapter 7, verse 34, the upshot of it all is, he says, The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, Look, a glutton and a wine-mibber and a friend of tax collectors and sinners.

And right after his miracle, those who opposed him in the council gave credit for his miracles to Satan the Devil. So you see, these physical manifestations, while they can be belief-building, of and by themselves, do not translate into godly living faith any more than the healing of Mr. Howard translated to godly living faith in his own life.

Because Mr. Howard eventually left the faith, left the church, re-entered his wheelchair, and died.

These two great miracles, Mr. Howard and the one we've just read of, should tell us that belief through examples of any kind and personal experiences do not equate to the godly living faith that you and I require to be in God's kingdom. That's because genuine godly living faith comes from God. It doesn't come from you and me. It's not something we sense, something we see ourselves, develop ourselves. It's not a process that we develop over time. It is something, in fact, that is divine. It is a miracle. It is something special from God. That faith is not in miracles. That faith is not in something for oneself. That faith is not a belief based upon how things go in your life or mine. The faith of God is faith in the kingdom of God. It's not a faith about you or me. It's a faith about God and the kingdom of God. And that faith comes from the source of the kingdom, God Himself. And thus the Bible says, the just shall live by faith, the faith of Christ, not by stories, not by miracles, but by the faith, the living faith, of God Himself. Godly living faith is defined this way. Unquestion belief and living that belief in all circumstances. That's what faith is. Unquestioned belief that what God said He will do and living that faith in all circumstances. Today we're going to take a look at five elements of enduring faith. It's the title of the sermon, Five Elements of Enduring Faith. We're going to see how successful Christians live their godly faith in all circumstances. We're going to see how you can begin down the narrow road that is straight and that is difficult and be successful all the way to the end, no matter what. I will show from the Bible how you can have enduring godly faith that always lasts all the time in any situation, no matter what. Let's begin in the 24th chapter of Matthew. We'll start in verse 3. Here's a prophecy that speaks about the time that's just ahead for us. The end of this age of Satan, the end of this man-devised mentality that the world follows. In verse 3, as he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately saying, tell us when will these things be and what will be the sign of your coming and the end of this age.

So these things involve you and they involve me. These are things that we are seeing the indications of all around us, things that could gel and take place at any moment.

And we need to be watching ourselves and the state of our spiritual condition very closely so that we are in a position of being counted worthy to escape these things that Jesus Christ talks about. And he says in verse 4, Take heed that no one deceives you, for many will come in my name saying that I am the Christ and will deceive many. Whereas Mr. Armstrong used to say, and will deceive the many. Now, is this going to be a universal deception? Why can somebody be deceived? You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. Verse 7, National rise against a nation, famines, pestilences, earthquakes in various places. These are things, brethren, that can shake your faith if your faith is personally based. If it's a personal belief based on certain situations, based on certain predetermined circumstances that you require in order to believe in God and to trust in God and to follow God, these things can rock and move any of us.

But Jesus says, I'm telling you, these things in advance. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you and you will be hated by all nation for my name's sake. Now, how does that fit into your and my little personal belief system?

We develop these little personal belief systems sometimes. It goes like this. Now, if I pray and get anointed and I'm healed, then I believe strongly that there is a God. And if my finances are going along well and I pray about that, I believe strongly in a God. Now, if things aren't going well and there is disruption and things aren't going well and the church aren't so many healings, then I have to wonder, well, this is really the church of God. I'm not sure.

You know, maybe I better look somewhere else.

Well, imagine this. They will deliver you, the true church, up to tribulation and will kill you. Oh, what happened there? Where was God? Where was Him when I needed Him most? And then many will be offended. Oh, guess why? And betray one another and will hate one another.

And then many false prophets will rise up and deceive the many.

How are they going to deceive the many? Well, because lawlessness will abound. And love of many will grow cold, but He who endures to the end, the same will be saved. There's an endurance here of faith. And today I want to give five elements of enduring faith that will make any of these things doable. They won't shake anybody's faith.

That will make an individual go right on down that straight and narrow path. It'll go straight ahead like an arrow, fighting, resisting, and being successful all the way to the end. Because Jesus said, He who endures faithfully to the end, that individual will be saved.

We must have that kind of faith. Verse 24, I asked a question a while ago. Let's answer it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise. Now listen, if the false Christs and false prophets are coming at the end of this age, I posit to you that they are alive right now.

Because we are coming up quickly on what appears to be the very end of this age. I would say that all those false Christs and all those false apostles are walking, talking, breathing people today. Now why doesn't anybody believe in them?

Why doesn't anybody believe in them? You don't know who they are. I don't. Nobody believes in them.

For some reason, they're not believable. How do they get believable? Well, Jesus tells us, they will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, the very elect.

A person who has a personal belief system based on stories and based on signs and based on miracles will be very motivated by this. I can believe in that person suddenly. I can believe in a great false religious leader who calls down light from heaven and says he's God. Wow, because look at the proof, look at the miracles, look what I see with my eyes. Something is wrong where personal belief does not accompany godly faith. Godly faith is there. We're left like a boat on the sea without rudder. We're left to our own imaginations, our own criteria. We come up with our own rules of what is true and what is not. Godly faith is absolute trust in God and obedience to God at all times. That's it. Godly faith is absolute trust in God and obedience to God at all times.

Irrespective of anything else that's going on, irrespective of that.

In Hebrews 11, verse 1, faith is defined. This is in our personal faith now. This is the faith that comes from God. It says now, faith, godly faith, godly living faith is what this chapter is dealing with. It's the substance of things hoped for. It's the evidence of things unseen. So this is the belief, this is the trust part, and the rest of the chapter goes on to show the deeds of the faithful. You have not only the trust in God, but then the deeds that accompany it. And that is the complete, the completeness of faith, of living godly faith. Not just believing it, but doing it.

The lesson is that godly living faith involves total trust and total obedience all the time.

Total trust, total obedience, all the time. We're active in godliness. Now what will keep us living in godly faith until the end? Ask yourself, what will keep me living in godly faith until the day I end? Somehow. For some individuals, that may come today. For some it came this week. For some it came last week. You just never know. For some it may be at the return of Jesus Christ.

What will keep you living in godly faith until your end, in all circumstances?

One strong thing I would encourage is for you to unhook from your physical belief and depend upon the faith of God. And if that is shallow, if it's lacking, if it's not strong enough, ask God for more faith. Godly faith. Because physical faith is fickle. It works like this. If times are good, if blessings are coming, we believe in God. We believe in what He says.

Like Mr. Howard did, amazing proof of God. But when tough times come, if you were in the church in 1974, when the first real round of tough times comes along, then things shake up in your mind. And in tough times, bad times, you begin to wonder.

And wonder makes a person considerate. Considering can make a person doubt.

You know, there's some things we can doubt about. The church in 1957 could doubt about the minister who healed Mr. Howard, Mr. Armstrong's oldest son. How do you have him do the anointing? The miracle takes place. He gets in a car with a driver and is hit head-on and crushed up on a highway in California back in the days before seat belts were in cars, back in the days when the dashboards were steel. How do you have him dying in agony in a hospital up around Santa Barbara, refusing treatment from doctors because he wants to be healed from God too? And he wasn't. What about Mr. Bill Winter? Long-time pastor in the church, director of ministerial services in Australia, pastoring back here in the United States. It's unfair that he got a brain tumor last year.

That just shouldn't happen to a faithful minister who we need. We're short of ministers.

I don't know any minister in the history of the church that has been more faithful than Mr. Bill Winter.

And when he began losing his eyesight because of the pressure of the tumor, he finally said, okay, I guess we've got to get something out in there and relieve the pressure. And the operation went great! And the doctors were amazed!

And he was recovering so much faster than anybody thought he would last Wednesday night.

And Thursday morning, Wednesday night, the family was all around and everybody was happy. And everybody was thanking God. Thursday morning, he got up and while he was sitting there, his heart stopped. And they worked on him, I believe, for 45 minutes in the hospital and couldn't get it started. And his funeral was on Sunday. And what about things like that? What about down in Yuma, where we have Joy and Ida?

Ida was born and had cerebral damage. So she's been a quadriplegic her whole life. She can't talk. She can mumble some things that only her mother can understand. And Joy, her mother, in her 80s, a frail little lady, is the only one that can interpret. And Joy will say, and then, or Ida will say that, and then Joy will interpret it to you. Mr. Eliot hears what she says. And it's amazing. Nobody that we know of on planet Earth can understand her except her daughter. And she cares for her daughter 24 hours until last Saturday morning when she tripped and fell and broke her hip and went to the hospital. And now Ida does not have her mother, and her mother is in for some extensive rehabilitation.

What does that do to our personal, devised confidence or trust? Because bad or hard times make a person wonder. But these are faithless games we play. They're self-centered issues. I will decide whether God is real, God is true, where the Church is based on, and we roll out our little criteria. We play these little games. It's about my logic.

It's about what I receive. It's about me. I believe when and I believe if. You see? Somehow we get ourselves wrap up into something that has nothing to do with faith.

But there is another faith, a real faith, and that's the faith of God.

It's the faith of Christ. It comes from God. We read in Romans chapter 12 in verse 3. At the end of the verse, or the second half of the verse, a person shouldn't think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but think soberly as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.

God deals his faith to you and me as individuals.

We should be sober and humble about that. If we look in Acts chapter 3 and verse 16, right in the early part of Church history here, in Acts chapter 3 and verse 16, and his name through faith in his name, through faith in the name of God, the holy hallowed name of God, the only perfect, the only creator, the only being, and the faith, not just in him, but the faith in all that he is about, including his kingdom, has made this man strong, whom you see now and know. Yes, the faith which comes through him.

That's a different faith, isn't it? It didn't come through you or me, or hearing, or reading, or seeing, or sensing. It's a faith that came through Christ. Through him has given this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. The faith of Christ is something that you and I need, brethren. Once we have this faith, we can grow in it. Galatians 5, 23, and 22, talks about the fruits of God's Holy Spirit. Having God in us, and having that faith of Christ in us, following baptism with the receipt of the Holy Spirit, wraps up a whole bunch of elements in our life. If you notice, it starts with love as sort of one beginning boundary, and ends with faith as the other boundary of a whole bunch of fruits that really are all tied together.

Not even tied together, they're all really inseparable.

You know, once you put the Kool-Aid in the water, and pour in the sugar, and stir it all up, it's Kool-Aid. You can't sort of reach in and get the sugar out. You can't take out the red dye number five, you know, on any other chemicals they put in there. You can't extract the water anymore. It is what it is. And the mind of God is about trust and obedience, which is love.

Love is the absolute trust in God, and doing what God wants. It's the fulfilling of the law, and the joy that comes from living the law and loving others, and the peace that happens between the people. These are all one and the same. You can't break them out anymore. In Hebrews 11, in verse 1, we come back to what we often call the faith chapter, where it says, faith is the substance of things hoped for. This godly living faith becomes the reality, the reality of what God has promised you, but what you don't have. Faith is the reality of what you do not have. The Greek word here, hupo stasis, comes from two root parts. Hupo means under, and stasis means girds or girding, under girding. In other words, it's talking about a foundation. Faith, by definition, really is a foundation. Faith is a foundation of Christianity. Faith is a foundation of the faithful. Faith is the foundation of the Bible, and all the faithful people in the Bible, and without it, you don't have a foundation. And I wouldn't have a foundation without faith. So when it comes down to it, faith is the base on which we build our spiritual temple. We have to have it as the undergirding foundation.

When you look, and here in Hebrews chapter 11, you find the examples. What is being spoken of here is a lot of stories and things that happen, but they're all based on faith, on trust, absolute trust. Rahab could not have done what she did for the spies if she hadn't trusted that the promise made to her would be fulfilled. Abraham was called the father of the faithful because of several things, including the fact he trusted God no matter what God told him to do, and so on and so forth. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, their whole example in the Bible is because they trusted that whatever happened to them, God could be trusted, and they were going to live his way of life.

Daniel prayed out the window every day several times. He lived his faith, and when the decree came that if you prayed to another God other than the God of the pagans, you would get thrown in a lion's den. Daniel just continued to do what he always did. He trusted that God was trustworthy and that God meant what he said, and he was going to obey what God said no matter what.

That is what the Bible is about from beginning to end, and we are invited along to become some of the faithful, some of those who also base our life on trusting God and then obeying God no matter what.

Faith then is the foundation of Christianity. You are building your entire spiritual Christian life on something, on a foundation, and so the question becomes as Jesus Christ floats it out to us, what is your foundation? If you build your house on a rock, if you build it on godly, living faith, you've built it on something that's stable and secure because you can trust God and what God said he will do, and if you always follow God, there's a kingdom coming at the end. At the end of that long and straight road, there's an entrance for you into the kingdom of God.

Now, if you build on sand, if you want to build it on belief, personal belief in stories and events and miracles and inspiring things and how you want to add things up, you're building on sand and it's just a matter of time until the floods and the winds and the rains come along and great is going to be the fall of that house because anything built without the hypostasis, the foundation of absolute trust in God will not stand. Will not stand. So let's examine five elements of a foundation that will stand, that will remain and will endure to the end.

The first element of a faithful foundation is to fear God. The fear of God. If you lack any of these five elements, your foundation will not hold your spiritual building. At some point in time, it will come down. You've got to have all five. The first one is to fear God, the faithful fear God.

You know, without fear of God, which the Bible's term for fear is both to fear and to revere.

Fear and revere. The Greek word is phobos and Thayer's Greek lexicon defines it as fear or dread or reverence for one's husband. Now, how's that for a definition?

Fear or dread or reverence for one's husband. Anybody here want to be a bride besides me? Of course you do. But do you want a husband, Jesus Christ? Of course you do.

If you revere your husband to be, that is phobos. Or you can fear because you're in the wrong place and he is coming as the king of kings with a sword and he's going to smash and deal with the ungodly. So it's up to us. But the faithful fear God, in other words, they have awe of him.

You cannot trust whom you do not awe, whom you do not stand in awe of, whom you don't say, wow, God is perfect. He is the sum of all. He is the perfection that I'm aiming for. He is all that I want to be. He is perfect. I am not. That's okay in a sense because he is perfect and I can head for perfection. I can try to be perfect. He'll help me be perfect. He is wonderful. He's created this universe. If you don't think the universe is really cool enough, go up here to one of these big sporting good places like Bass Pro Shops and look at all the fish from around the world swimming in the tanks and all the animals up on the walls and things that we haven't even seen. It'll drop your jaw looking at some of the fish in the ocean that God has made and the little propulsion devices that differ from fish to fish. Think, wow, God is awesome. Everywhere you look, every way you look, if you have that mentality, you then begin to revere God with awe. A faith that lasts is based on reverence of God.

In 2 Corinthians 7 and verse 1, it says, therefore having these promises, what promises?

That I'm going to be healed, that my finances are going to be good, that I'm going to lead a charmed life, that my house is going to get paid off, that what is it? What promises?

I think you know what the promises are.

Having these promises of God, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit put on righteousness, perfecting holiness in the fear of God, in the deep awe of God. Let's get rid of our nature. Let's get the leaven out. We don't want to be like Satan, our old father.

We are in awe and reverence of our new father and we want to be like him.

We want to become and be perfect like he is. In Hebrews 11, once again in verse 7, it says, By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not seen, he prepared an ark. Why didn't Noah prepare an ark? Why did he work for 100 years, 120 years, out in the middle of blue skies in a plane building a huge ship and being laughed at and then climbing in it when the weather was still good and sealing himself and his family in there?

Why did he do that? Let's notice why he did that. In verse 7, he was moved with godly fear, with godly awe, with godly reverence. He would do anything that this God asked him because he was so awed by God. You see what a root factor awe, reverence, this godly fear is in our foundation of faith? It's part of the faith that comes from God.

Living godly faith begins with a deep appreciation and a reverence from God. It should be renewed every day. The model prayer outline that Jesus Christ gives us is full of awe for God. Our Father in heaven, wow, you think about the throne in heaven and He's our Father. Come on, you have got to be awed by that individual. Holy and hallowed is your name, just the name of God, just the name which means so much. It's the family of God and all the family is doing and the mentality in the mind of God. Your kingdom come. There's an awesome concept of the eternal kingdom, rulership, mind, territory, laws of God.

You are so high above me, your will be done. It concludes with, yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. See the awe that comes even in our daily prayers? It's not about us, it's about God. It's about the kingdom of God. The second point is the faithful trust God. The faithful trust God. This great supreme being that we are in awe over, we learn to trust and we develop a trust. The trust is not based on what God does, what happens here or there based on our little system, our little game. It again is part of the faith that comes from Jesus Christ to you and me through the Holy Spirit. As humans, the five senses are all we have, but God gives us the Holy Spirit to understand things that we cannot perceive.

We just simply cannot perceive them. And the results, as I've mentioned, are wrapped between love and faith as defined there in Galatians chapter 5. God gives us His faith as we read in Acts chapter 16 verse 3. But when we talk about God as human beings, you see God involves a lot of things. Ideas, ideas about places unseen, ideas about beings that have never been revealed to you and me in person. We believe that Jesus Christ is sitting on God's throne and has a portable throne that goes along straight lines very rapidly with fiery wheels within wheels. We believe that there are 24 elders around the throne of God the Father with His Son sitting in His right hand, that there's some sea of glass in the middle, that carob beam are overhead, and there's a bow, perhaps a rainbow over the throne. We've never been there. We've never seen that. We believe there are angels that God uses occasionally or all the time, some to help the church, some to help people, church members, who knows? That's another world that we're not told that much about.

But all these things, the way of God that we read, the New Jerusalem that we look for, the Kingdom of God and the future, none of these things we've ever seen with the five senses. Our five senses have never touched, taste, felt, or sensed, or heard God or any of those things in which we believe at any time.

But they are real to you and me because God put His faith in us.

We can read about them in the Bible, but that's not faith.

They're true. They are the substance. They are the proof to you and me because of what God put in here.

We trust Him. We are convicted. You know, Abraham never saw a single page of this Bible, never read a page in his life. I'm not even sure Abraham could read.

Some sort of writing developed where he was from in Ur, but it was mostly clay tablet financial information. I don't know. Maybe he did know how to read or write, but you know, Abraham without a Bible was the father of the faithful. So we can see that faith doesn't come from the Bible. Faith comes from God, and faith is written about in the Bible by and of the people of God.

In Romans chapter 10 and verse 17, Romans chapter 10, let's notice something that's said in verse 17.

So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. And we often pluck that out and think, okay, you get faith by listening to somebody.

You get faith by hearing from the Word of God. Is this faith or is this personal belief being spoken of? Let's look at the context. The sentence preceding it in verse 16 says, but they have not all obeyed the gospel. They've heard it. Yeah, they've heard it.

They believed it, but they have not all obeyed it.

For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report. Not everybody believes.

It doesn't really convert over. Verse 18. But I say, have they not heard? Verse 18.

Yes, indeed, their sound has gone out to all the earth and their words to the end of the world.

How many faithful are there? And Jesus concludes where there even be any faith on earth.

In verse 20, Isaiah is very bold and says, I was found by those who did not seek me, and I was made manifest to those who did not ask for me. After all the writings in this Bible and all the Old Testament that was written, there were no faithful. They had heard. They weren't faithful. And so, as we just read here in Romans, the prophecy was fulfilled that God gave it to the Gentiles. God began to then call the Gentiles who had never heard, who didn't have. And He instilled in them His Holy Spirit, along with some of the believing Jews. It's very important for you and me to have a strong, godly living faith that's not about this life, it's not about our blessings, it's not about miracles, rather it's all about the Kingdom of God with an absolute trust in God that that Kingdom is coming. And an absolute trust that if you do what God says, that Kingdom will involve you.

Let's look in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 in verse 1. Here Paul talks to the church at Corinth, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 1. For we know that if our earthly house is destroyed, this tent, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. See, it's not about you, it's not about me, it's not about this life, it's not about the events that take place here, it's about the Kingdom of God. And if we lose this house, we have the Kingdom. For in this we groan earnestly, desiring to be clothed with our habitation, which is from heaven. That's what it's about. If indeed we have been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan being burdened. Life is a burden. Life has challenges. Life has difficulties and problems. Not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Real life, eternal life, and that's what our faith is in.

Now, he who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee, as a down payment as it were.

If you want the Kingdom of God, you can have part of it today.

The Holy Spirit is a peace of the mind of God. It's a peace of the family of God. It's a peace of the laws of God. It's a peace of the divine nature that will exist in the family of God forever. It's no longer about this life. Look in verse 14. For the love of Christ compels us, not us, not our belief system, it's the love of Christ that compels us because we judge this way, that if one died for all, then all died. And if he died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, no longer for me. It's not about me. I don't need physical things from God. I'm not basing my trust or belief in God and what happens to me. It's no longer for themselves, but for Jesus Christ who died for them and rose again. It's about a life with Christ and God forever.

Godly faith guides us, leads us, leads you, sees you through. In Hebrews 11, verse 3, it says, By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God. Oh, do we?

Not everybody understands the worlds were framed by the Word of God.

In fact, most people today don't believe the worlds were framed by the Word of God.

They look for the physical, the evidence, the things by sight, and they conclude something entirely different. It's not by going back and somehow digging in the ground and proving it or changing, twisting science to where you can somehow believe that maybe it happened. No, God said it happened the way it did in Genesis 1, and therefore it happened the way it did in Genesis 1, and God repeated it in John chapter 1, and that's the way it happened. And we trust God and we believe it. And that will always lead us to believe that God is the creator of all things and never lead us to believe anything else irrelevant of what the physical proof may be that people come up with. The faithful trust God. Godly living faith boils down to this. God is asking you a question. Do you trust me? And that is the rarest substance in the universe today, is people who trust God.

People who trust God and will follow God no matter what. In Hebrews 11 verse 6, But without faith, No, that's some kind of belief thing. You've got to conjure up. Without the absolute rock-solid trust that God can be trusted, is trusted, and you will do whatever he said, no matter what, it is impossible to please him. Why? Because he's looking for that faith. That rare substance. He's a minor. He's a minor. He's a minor. He's a minor. He's a minor. He's coming to mine faith. And he's always looking for faith. And he's looking at the faith of Abel. And he's looking at the faith of Noah. And he's looking at the faith of Abraham. And he's encouraging the Israelites. And he's looking at the faith of Moses. And he's looking at the faith of the people that are around Jesus Christ, and the apostles, and the New Testament. And in the end time, he's looking for people of faith. And he's sifting out the Philadelphia era, who are faithful and don't deny his name. It's all about this rarest of substances called faith.

And it's impossible to please him because that's what he's looking for. 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 faith and works together. Totally trusting and believing in God, and then diligently seeking to do what God says. God rewards that. And that reward is life forever in the kingdom of God. God wants you to trust him. This is the second point. It's so important. God wants you to trust him. Verse 17, by faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. And he who had received the promises, he received a son at age 100. His wife was 90. She had a baby. They got the son and now kill him. Go and kill him. And take a long time getting all the way up there to the mountain to do it. Now kill him. Put him on a deal there. You know what Abraham did? Sure. Bundle him up, tied him up. We're going to kill you. Here we go. Why? Suppose we read here.

You know, the only thing you can figure out was, I trust God.

Verse 19, concluding that God was able to resurrect him. This was a type of God the Father sacrificing his own precious, only son.

And just as symbolically Isaac got up and was resurrected, symbolically as it says here, so Jesus Christ was resurrected.

Jesus Christ trusted God the Father.

Abraham trusted God. Do you and I trust God? You know, the 23rd Psalm, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Why? Because you were with me. The valley of the shadow of death is a scary, scary, scary place that God has told you to go. But you don't worry because God is trustable. He's trustworthy. You can trust Him.

The faithful of Hebrews 11 all demonstrate trust.

Hebrews 11, verse 4, for instance, Abel bases his sacrifice of animals on an event that would take place 4,000 years after he lived.

The killing of lambs that symbolized Jesus Christ coming and dying in that blood, forgiving the sins of humanity. And Abel believed in that. He knew of that. He trusted in that, even though it would be 4,000 years later. The crux of trusting God is really, what did God promise you?

Sometimes we get in our minds that God's promised me this, or He's promised me that, and He's letting me down. What did God promise you? The overview of it is Revelation 21, 7, and 8. That's the real tight overview. My favorite verse in the whole Bible is Revelation 21, 7, because it just reduces the Bible and everything I need to know down into one verse. Makes it simple. I like things simple and plain straightforward.

He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.

Done. Verse 8 is the converse of that. If you don't do that, if you want to sin and not trust God and not obey God, then I don't like verse 8. I like verse 7.

You can always trust God, and living your faith is about trusting God, and God's only going to reward those who trust Him. Point number 3, the faithful always obey God.

Faith, remember, is trusting and obeying God. James said, I will show you my faith by my obedience. I'll show you my faith, my trust in God by what I do, by my obedience to God, by my works.

Twenty-third Psalm, again, talks about God being the shepherd. He's going to lead. He's going to lay out the path, and I am going to follow. I'm going to obey God.

Abraham was the father of the faithful. He's doing well. Get out of the land of your father up in Haran. Well, why? I know this is the crossroads of the world. He's doing well. Now go down there to Canaan. Okay. Abraham does it. Okay, go to Egypt. Okay, back to Canaan. Sacrifice your son. Abraham didn't receive the promises, but Abraham obeyed.

In Genesis 26 and verse 5, it says, Because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws, the faithful always obey God.

You know, all the examples in the Bible, you stop and think about it, all the examples in the Bible are about people, the positive ones. They're about people who trusted in God, trusted in God, and obeyed God. Point number four, the faithful suffer loss. The faithful suffer loss. All of us have to give up. Abraham was told to give up his only son. This is a type again of the father in Jesus Christ who gave up his only son. Paul said that his life was a loss for Christ. We're told to sacrifice ourselves daily. We are told to give ourselves to God and to one another.

God has given up everything. Think of what God has given up. He gave up all of his time to create this universe in incredible detail and then to work with it all along the way.

And then to create a kingdom and give up his supremacy as he and Jesus Christ are being the only two God beings in the universe forever. They're going to give up that specialness and include billions and more God beings in the family. He's going to give up all that he has created in this physical universe and burn it up in the end. That's a lot of work. And just keeping up with your thoughts and mind and putting up with all of us humans on this earth and what we've done for the last 6,000 years and will do for the next 1,100 years, that's a lot to give up.

It is. And yet the faithful suffer loss, including God. Jesus Christ certainly suffered loss. He gave it all up, including his physical life, so that you and I could receive and be part of the kingdom with him, that he can share his inheritance. And he says in Luke 14, 27, whoever does not bear his cross, suffer loss, and come after me cannot be my disciple. We read in this Hebrews 11 that people weren't all healed, even those who were healed later died. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance. Verse 35, that they may obtain a better resurrection. You see, it wasn't about them and their life. It was about the resurrection, the kingdom. Others had trials and chains, imprisonment, stone, saun and two. You know what it's like to be saun and two, like Jeremiah the prophet? You say, oh, I'd like to be Jeremiah. Really? Well, he went out being saun and two. Saun and two doesn't hit your vitals.

It just goes for the non-vital areas, and you get to watch and feel the whole thing for a while.

It's not pretty. Verse 39, in all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, they trusted God and they obeyed God. They did not receive the promise. Yet, God, having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.

What loss will you go through in order to keep trusting and obeying God? Now, are you really, firmly building your spiritual house on the rock foundation of the faith of Jesus Christ? If so, it doesn't matter what comes along. You'll be in there with the faithful, and it's just another day. Today, I trust God absolutely, and I obey Him explicitly, and come what may. The fifth point is the faithful endure testing.

God is mining pure, godly faith. He's not mining faith and doubt. He's not mining some corrupt substance. He's not faith watered down with mistrust. Our biggest test, really, isn't about the big event in life where you get sawn into. Our biggest test is living faith daily.

Every day of the week, on the good days, the sunny days, the easy days, who do you really trust?

Who do you really follow? That's the big test. Doing what God says because we have His faith in us.

We trust that doing the right will be blessed now and in the future. Some who don't trust don't fully obey. That's the caveat. If you don't fully trust God, you won't fully obey God. You'll take things into your own hand. But if you do trust, you will sweat to obey.

You will fast to obey better. You will cry out to God and show me where my sins are so I can obey you more perfectly. The biggest test, though, I think is obeying before you receive the answer. And that's what Hebrews 11 is all about. We're obeying without receiving the answer right away.

The reward comes later. Noah was told of the flood 120 years in advance.

That reward of being saved physically came 120 years later. Life was okay for 119 years.

Jesus compares our days to the days of Noah when everything's going to be going along quite. Now, we were told of World War III and we're told there's protection for some.

Elections are coming, though, you know? The stock market was looking up on Friday.

And so, like Noah, we're told an age will be ending and there's World War III. But what are we doing each day? Are we living daily by faith?

That's really the test of the faithful who are spared the Great Tribulation. Jesus said, pray that you may be accounted worthy to escape those things. Not be tested by them, to escape them. How much do you believe and trust God? How much do you obey Him? God needs to know. And you will be tested on that just like everybody in the Bible. And tested daily, tested by society, tested by the Sabbath, tested by the Holy Days, tested by the people along the side of that straight and narrow path that want to drag you off or kill you as you walk down it. But there will be tests.

Paul was tested regularly, jailed, whipped, shipwrecked, down, beaten.

He just kept going steady as a rock. Christians were monitored. I guess it was Isaiah that was sawn in two. That's right. Jeremiah went down and was put in a pit of not nice things. Latrine pit up to the nose, I guess.

Will you obey Him? God needs to know. Inumerable multitude, perish. Too many to count in the Great Tribulation. They perish and lose their lives faithfully.

They trust God. Or there's Revelation 3, verse 8. He says to the Philadelphian Arab, You have a little strength. You have kept my word. Notice that. You've always obeyed me. And you've not denied my name. You trust me. Therefore, because you have kept my command to persevere, I will keep you from the hour of trial, which will come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth. You don't need to be tested. He's saying to this group, You've shown me every day. You don't need this other testing.

Well, brethren, everyone runs a race. But everyone runs their unique race. Everyone's race is different. You can't find two people in the Bible who ran the same race. Just like you and me, you and I have our own unique race to run. And in doing that, we have a perfect example. Jesus Christ. Hebrews 12, next chapter, in verse 2 says, Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith. He is the originator of our faith. He is the finisher of our faith. This trust in God and the propulsion we have to go on and obey God. Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross. Look what He went through. Despising the shame, and He has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostilities from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. In whatever your race is, whatever hills are there, whatever lions are in the way. Remember, Jesus Christ has run this race before you, and He has come with a great cloud of witnesses in the Bible. And it's your turn to run. It's my turn to run. In conclusion, enduring faith comes down to five things. How much do you revere God? How much do you trust God? How much do you obey God? And will you continue doing those things while suffering loss and being tested? It comes down to how we answer one question, really, and that question is presented in the Bible in James 2 and verse 5. Let's be asked this question by God through James. How will you answer? James 2 and verse 5 says, Listen, my beloved brethren, has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who loved Him? That's what it comes down to. And if you revere God, and if you trust God, and you obey God, you will receive the gift of eternal life in His kingdom.