How to Exhibit Genuine Faith

When we look at Paul's letters to Timothy, we see an example of instructions from a minister to another minister, an older minister to a younger minister. But we also see a very interesting relationship, a relationship between Paul and Timothy, who he looks on in many ways as a son. And he makes a very interesting comment about him in 2 Timothy.

Let's go to 2 Timothy chapter 1. 2 Timothy chapter 1. And pick up in verse 3 here. Paul says, I thank God ... and it's very personal comments he makes here. I thank God, who might serve with a pure conscience as my forefathers did, as without ceasing I remember you in my prayers night and day. So he tells this young man, I remember you in my prayers all the time. We know that Timothy was quite a bit younger than Paul.

In fact, he even tells him here, don't let people despise your youth. Because here he was, a minister and people could say, well, you're just a young man. He says, greatly desiring to see you, being mindful of your tears, that I may be filled with joy. He says, I know you're having a hard time. And he says, I wish I could be there with you, but I can't.

So he gives him a lot of words of encouragement. He says, verse 5, When I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice, and I have persuaded, is it you also? Now that's a remarkable statement. He says, I know, I see in you, the same thing I saw in your mother, the same thing I saw in your grandmother, a genuine faith.

Genuine. It needs to be authentic. It needs to be real. It needs to be un-hypocritical. He says, I see in you a real faith, and I saw it for the last two generations in your family, a real faith. Now, if someone looked at your life, at my life, when they say, oh, there's a person of genuine faith, how would we even define that? I mean, all of us have times where we have doubts.

All of us have times where we struggle. All of us have times where we sin. All of us have times where we don't have a lot of faith. And yet, Paul looks at Timothy and says, here's a person with genuine faith. This is real. What you have is real. How would we even define genuine faith? I mean, you and I have faults. If someone looked at us, how would they define genuine faith?

Now, I don't want to talk about other people looking at you, and, you know, so let's figure out how to pretend we have genuine faith. We have a real problem with the very statement, right? Let's pretend we're genuine. But how do we exhibit genuine faith?

How do we exhibit genuine faith? If someone at work, someone at school, your neighbor, wanted to talk to you about God, and they look at you, and how do they see you? You know, sometimes people, when they look at maybe they know you go to church, they know you're sincere about it, they know you're involved, and they see your faith and they look at you and say, wow, you're like a spiritual giant.

I could never be a spiritual giant. I could never be like you. You have so much faith. How do we exhibit genuine faith? You have to have it to begin with, but I really want to talk about genuine faith in the context of helping other people because of genuine faith. We're going to talk about four things, four things that we could do to exhibit our genuine faith.

Now, these are maybe things you haven't thought about. Okay, let's see. If I'm going to have genuine faith, I need to pray more. I need to maybe keep the Sabbath more correctly. Maybe I need to clean up certain things in my life. That's not where we're going here. I want to talk about how you know and how you exhibit genuine faith to another person.

So we just walk around saying, have more faith. Here's the first point.

We aren't seen as genuine when we simply tell others when they're suffering, when they face trials, have more faith without telling them about our struggles with faith.

See, what we do is it's a pretense. Remember, this is genuine. The pretense is you just need to have more faith. I've had people come to me and say, yeah, everybody keeps telling me, I just need to have more faith, but I don't know how. When we struggle with or we go to somebody or somebody comes to us and they're struggling and we say, well, you need to have more faith. We have to, if we're genuine, we have to be able to say and deal with the reality and drop the pretense and say, bid there. I struggled too. Here's how God's helped me through it. Here's how God has helped me. You know, one of my favorite examples of faith in the New Testament is in Mark chapter 9. Let's go to Mark chapter 9. It's one of those passages I read quite often. You know the story in Mark 9 verse 14. The disciples were, a man brought a young boy to the disciples to cast down a demon so they couldn't do it. And so Jesus talks to them in verse, well, let's skip down to verse 19. Oh, faithless generation, how long shall I bear with you? Jesus says, bring him to me. Then he brought him to him and when he saw him immediately, the Spirit convulsed him and he fell on the ground and wallowed, folding at the mouth.

He asked the Father, how long has this been happening to him? And he said, from childhood, he often is thrown into a fire, into the water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. Actually, that statement alone deserves the sermon when it comes to faith. Have compassion on us. There is at the core of faith, a realization of your unworthiness before God. It's just a very heart of what real faith is.

So if we have genuine faith, we want to just tell everybody else to have faith, it's not genuine. We have to realize that we are going to and have, or we're asking for, compassion from God and our unworthiness to receive that. Jesus says to him in verse 23, if you can believe all things are possible, then who believes? Do you have the faith to do this? Do you believe that God will do this? Now, the man's response is so real. This is real. This is genuine. Immediately, the father and child cried out and said to him, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. It's so genuine because he recognizes I can only go so far. I want to have total faith total commitment, but I can only go so far. I believe, help my unbelief. That's genuine. There he is. There he is.

And we have to admit there are times that's us. And if our faith is genuine, and someone needs faith, we're going to say, let me read this to you, because I've been here too.

This is real. I've been before God. You know, we can all say this. And I said, I believe, but I can only go so far. Now, that's genuine. This is real. See, we get it throughout the pretense. Well, they won't think I'm a real Christian. If I admit that I struggle with my faith, no, they won't believe you are a real Christian unless you admit that you struggle with your faith. How can they? You're bigger. You're greater. They can't even relate.

We have to be able to exhibit the reality that when people need faith, we share with them, let me share with you the genuineness of what I've gone through. And here's where God has intervened. And here's what he's done. And here's where I've struggled. And I still have questions. I don't know about you. I'm going to ask you, how many of you have questions you want to ask God when you get there? I have nothing. That's real. That's genuine. I have some questions here, although I think when we get there, we're going to say, oh, that's really not that important. I think a lot of these questions aren't going to matter.

But it's genuine that we have them. It's genuine that we wonder. That's real. And that's what we should exhibit to others. You know, it's interesting. The New Testament writers are always talking about witnessing. Oh, it's a witness. That's somebody who saw something. And the New Testament is filled with failures of some of the greatest men and women of the Bible. And they didn't have faith here. They just didn't work out. They had trouble here. How many times you see Jesus walking with these disciples and saying, what am I going to do with you guys? You faithless generation. You just don't get it. Yeah, we do. No, you don't.

And then later you see them saying, we didn't get it. They become genuine in their faith.

And in that genuine use, there's a great humility that comes along. That means we can't wear faith like a badge of honor. I mean, we all should be able to show where God has done great things in our lives. But you know, you also have to admit sometimes when He did a great thing in your life, it's when you least expected it or gave up. Sometimes it's when you give up that He does something. When you lose your faith, you say, okay, let me help you out here. Then He doesn't. So we can't wear faith like a badge.

We exhibit faith to other people, genuine faith, by being genuine about our own struggles.

That brings us to point number two. We don't seem genuine. Of course, when we fail to obey God, we fall down, we sin, we do something wrong, and then people say, well, you're just a hypocrite. We're accused of being a hypocrite.

Now, we have to let others know in our faith that we're not perfect and we don't pretend to be perfect. Sometimes the accusation of being a hypocrite is hypocrisy itself.

God isn't done with any of us yet. Now, we have to tell people that. I'm sorry. God's not done with me yet. That's real. That's genuine. But you notice that the core of it is the humility. At the core of it is, he's not done with me yet. Bear with me here. First John. First John chapter one is one of the most positive statements to us when we are genuine, when we're honest with ourselves.

And then when we're honest with ourselves, we have to be honest with others. First John 1 verse 8. If we say we have those sins, we deceive ourselves. Now, remember, John was writing to the church. This is a letter to people in the church of God. John was not writing to the world. This is a Paul standing in the area of the area of the area, talking to a lot of pagans. He's talking to people who knew what sin was, people who had been repented, people who turned to God, and still were dealing with their fall human nature, even with God's Spirit. He says, if we have sinned, say we have those sins, we deceive ourselves, and the truth's not in us. If we confess our sins, He has faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. There's a real condemnation here, but there's also this message of, remember, we don't have to pretend to be perfect. We have to be honest, and we have to be able to say, ah, God's not done with me yet. Be quick to ask for forgiveness from other people, and be real quick to ask God for forgiveness. Chapter 2, My Little Children. John is an older man here at this point. He's probably the last of all the original apostles still alive, and he sees the church as his children. And the church had come apart. By the time John writes 1, 2, 3, John in Revelation, the church that they had seen come together was coming apart. In fact, in 3 John, John is not even allowed to come into a church where he had started the church. People didn't want him. Yeah, John the apostle. The one that was that close to Jesus Christ, that he, you know, he said he was the loved one, the one that the Lord loved the most.

My little children, these things I write to you that you may not sin. Now, there's a struggle against it. We're not fighting against it. We're to overcome sin, but sometimes we fail. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but for the whole world. See, he said, remember, it's for the world. But let's talk about us specifically, those who have responded. He differentiates me through the two here.

So when we, through our weakness, sin and we repent, that's not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is to pretend that you're better. Hypocrisy is to justify your sins and to always compare yourself to others. And so, guaranteed, you'll always find somebody worse off than you are.

Now, if I'm going to go out here and I'm going to compare myself to some drug-dealing pimp, boy, do I feel good, that I can justify my sins. You see the problem with that? God says, what do those two things have to do with anything? See, God doesn't see anything that way. Wait a minute. You're comparing yourself to that person. What do you and him have? This has nothing to do with our relationship with God. So that's what we do. We compare ourselves to others. We justify our sins. That is hypocrisy. Because we're pretending. This is all about pretense. This is all about being genuine. It's all about being brutally honest with ourselves. And being able to, in that honesty, open ourselves up to others seeing us. I don't mean we all go confess our sins, everybody. But remember, we're talking about here, how do we exhibit genuineness, this genuine faith? Well, we have to realize when we do sin, we can't go into being hypocritical about it. I say, well, my sin at least isn't as bad as that sin. No, it's an honesty. This is bad. And we confess it before God. And it says, He is quick to forgive us. He is quick to forgive us. Luke 13. It's interesting here because Jesus gets very angry with this ruler of the synagogue. So, He's the rabbi of the synagogue here. Luke 13. Verse 10. Now, He was teaching in one of the synagogues of the Sabbath. Behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity 18 years, was bent over and could no way raise herself up. So, probably some birth defect or something accident who knows what happened to her. But for 18 years, she was bent over. She could not stand up. That's a difficult thing to live with.

She probably prayed over and over again. I mean, she went into the synagogue. She prayed. The elders had probably prayed for her. The rabbi had prayed for her. People had prayed for her. There were probably people saying, you know what? She must not have any faith because God won't heal her. For 18 years, she was like that.

Though Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said to her, woman, you are loosed from your infirmity, and He laid His hands on her, and immediately she was made straight. Now, you can imagine what that would happen. What if somebody walked in here and was crippled up like that? And we prayed for her, and all of a sudden, all those deformities are healed, and she stands up, and she's straight, and she's healthy. What would our reaction be?

Notice the reaction of the ruler of the synagogue. Verse 14, But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. And he said to the crowd, There are six days in which men ought to work. Therefore come and be healed all day, but not on the Sabbath day.

And the Lord answered him and said, Hypocrite. Now, why would He call Him a hypocrite? The man was quoting the law of God.

He was quoting the law of God, but he was misquoting the law of God.

He was ignoring all the Scriptures about God's mercy. But one of God's names in the Old Testament is the God who heals. He was misquoting the concepts of the love of God, the gifts of God, the grace of God. And God, He does those things. So He's misquoting the Scripture. Now let's face it. Jesus just made Him look bad. He's the ruler of the synagogue. This itinerant guy comes in here who runs around with these twelve guys, and He healed this woman. He just made Him look bad.

So what He does is He twists the Scripture in comparison. So He looks good. It's a pretense. He looks good now.

All right, should we do all that? Should we do all that? He's breaking the Sabbath. Jesus, if you go to read the rest of it, He's a little upset with the man.

He says, no, no, no, you know. You know if you had an ox in the ditch, you'd go get Him out on the Sabbath.

Now, if your horse broke its leg on the Sabbath, you would set it. If a human being broke their leg on the Sabbath, you would set it. These were all pharasicical arguments. The pharisees said, oh yeah, you would do all that. Because they had these arguments, what can you do with the Sabbath and not do with the Sabbath?

He said, wait a minute, wait a minute. If God would say it's okay to help a dumb animal with a Sabbath, how much more should we praise God who decides to help a human being made in His image of the Sabbath?

You hypocrite. He's a very angry one.

Now, because He quoted the law, but He's misquoting the law, so that He could continue to look good.

Us failing is a hypocrisy. Us hiding it and pretending we didn't fail.

That's hypocrisy. That's us comparing ourselves with each other to make ourselves better, to make ourselves superior, to justify, well, at least I'm not as bad as, that's hypocrisy.

So when people come and they say, well, you don't seem sincere. You don't have a genuine faith because you failed. No, it's not God who failed. And my faith isn't God. It's me who failed.

See, there's no pretense.

The third point. We don't seem genuine when we don't face the realities of how harsh God can be when He deals with evil in the Bible.

You know, there's lots of people say, oh, I've heard this. I've heard interviews where I've heard ministers say this. I've talked to people who have said this. I could never worship God of the God of the Bible. He killed little children. He actually told the Israelites to commit genocide. He did. You go kill all the Canaanites. Now you can't kill everybody, but there are certain tribes. They were actually told to kill everybody, men, women, and little children. And the Israelites went in and killed the men, the women, and the little children. If we're going to help people see the genuineness of us, we have to let them see. Yeah, that's true. He did do that. Well, how could you worship such a God? We have to begin to explain and understand ourselves that God, because of His perfection, because of His absolute righteousness and goodness, believes in justice. He also describes Himself as, I AM LOVE. Now we tend to think those are opposites, but they're not. There's a thing that bridges those two as part of the character of God, and bridges those two things together. You struggled with this? Well, we could go through 40 places of the Bible where someone's struggling with this. We're supposed to struggle with this. We're supposed to tell people, well, who are you to judge God? No, no, no, we're supposed to say, I know I've struggled with that myself. I understand. This helps us truly understand God. Abraham, remember the issue with Sodom? Well, and he says, I'm going to go down there. God says, I'm going to destroy that city.

And Abraham struggles with that. Well, wait a minute. Are you going to kill everybody? Let's go to Genesis 18. There's one thing here in this passage that's really, really interesting in how what Abraham says. Abraham says, well, are you going to kill everybody? What if there's 50 righteous people? You would kill the righteous with the evil? Okay, I can understand punishing evil, but everybody. Look at verse 16 of Genesis 18. Well, let's get down to verse 23.

And Abraham came near and said, that takes a little bit of courage. He's not challenging God. He's struggling with the concept. Would you also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are 50 righteous within the city. Would you also destroy the place and not spare it for the 50 righteous that are in it? Far be it from you. Now, this is... He understands God.

He says, wait, this isn't like you. This isn't how you revealed yourself. Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked. So if the righteous should be as the wicked, far be it from you shall not the judge of the earth do right. And you think, wow.

Now, if God was vindictive, He would have fried Abraham on the spot.

You know, wait a minute. Shouldn't you do right? This isn't what you've taught me. And God's response is, in verse 26, the Lord said, oh, if I find and saw them 50 righteous within the city, I'll spare the whole city for their sake. Oh, what if there's 40? Okay. Now, Abraham's thinking, I've got to work through this. He gets down to 10. What if there's 10? That's just don't worry about it. If there's 10 righteous people, I'm not going to kill anybody. Okay. He's struggling with this concept. Wow. God seems a little harsher. People struggle with this all the time.

And we're genuine when we say, I understand. But you know what the answer to this is?

The answer is, okay, if God is perfect and all evil, He hates all evil. And if every human being which He created is a mixture of good and evil, then in the mind of God, what justice is, I mean, if someone came into your house, came into your house, killed your children, raped your wife, and stole everything you had, did you have the right to ask for justice? According to the law, you do, right? The law of the land even says you can ask for justice. Well, what have we done to God?

We're all criminals. See, people have to recognize before the righteous law of God, I'm a criminal. You're a criminal. And justice, if there is any such thing as justice, He can demand our lives. And actually, He does.

The bridge, though, between justice and love, that's what grace is. That's what mercy is. It's the bridge. And that's what we see in Jesus Christ. Okay. To teach you this, He's going to give up being in heaven with me, God says. And my son's going to come down there and be with you, like you, and you're going to kill him. You're going to kill him because it's in your nature to do so. You're going to perpetrate the greatest evil on me that can be done.

We killed His son. And then He resurrected him and said, now I'll teach you about love.

Now I'll teach you about love. Because I'm not giving up justice. I'm going to let Him die for all of you. And what the thing is, Jesus did that. He said, I'm here to die for you.

I am the Passover lamb. This is the only way to teach you this. That justice is real. Good and evil is real. And love is real.

And so this thing about, well, you know, I just don't get this God, this harsh God, this mean God. I don't get all this. And He said, these love and you people can't be genuine. Oh, yeah. Because we recognize we're not getting what we deserve. We recognize that. Oh, no, I'm not getting what I deserve here. And of course, we can explain the whole plan of God, then the resurrections. I mean, there's this whole huge concept. This is what God is all about. It's about everybody having an opportunity to be in His family. That's what God's all about. But He lets us have free will, and this is the problem we have.

So to be genuine, we have to say, yep, we understand sometimes this seems harsh, but it's not if you try to see it from His viewpoint. From His viewpoint, this is wonderful. And for us, it's the only thing that we can have. It's the only way that we have. It's the only path to salvation. Otherwise, we would become totally evil, and we would be worthless, and we could not go into eternity. And the fourth point, the last point, we don't seem genuine. When we pretend, we always understand God's ways. Never meet somebody who always has God's answer and explanation for everything, even when it doesn't make sense. And their explanations don't make sense. The bottom line is, we don't always understand. That's what faith is. If we always understood, it wouldn't be faith. Faith is, I don't always understand, but I have to trust. I have to trust. One of my favorite Psalms is Psalm 139. Psalm 139. David is talking about the greatness of God, the greatness of His way. Psalm 139.

He says in verse 1, O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know, by sitting down, by rising up. You understand my thoughts afar off. You comprehend my path and by lying down. You are equated with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You have hedged me behind, and before you have laid your hand on me. At verse 6, he says, Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I can't get it. He goes on and talks about, okay, I go to the highest mountain, and you're there. And if I could go to the deepest part of the sea, you're there.

And this is too big for me. It's too high for me.

Part of our problem is sometimes we just don't have enough wonder at all at the greatness of God. So we think all his ways are going to make sense to us.

It'd be like you as an adult making sense to a two-year-old all the time.

Look how frustrated two-year-olds are because they can't eat five Snickers bars.

And you can explain it all you want, and it's not going to make a big difference.

There's some problem with you. You're holding me back from what I want, what I need, what I deserve. I'm two years old.

Right?

Well, that's the way we are with God. And that two-year-old, well, it's even more with a 15-year-old.

A 15-year-old decides their parents are the stupidest people in the face of the earth. How did my parents get so dumb?

They must have been smart when they were 15, back when they rode horses and, you know, rode in wagons. But how did they get so dumb?

See, that's the way we are with God. It doesn't make sense. Well, of course it doesn't make sense.

We're little kids.

And sometimes dad says, look, son, do what kind I told you to. That's all you're ever going to understand. Just do it because I told you to.

We have to be willing to admit, I don't get everything. I don't understand everything. I can't even explain everything in the Bible. And this is my life. This is what I do. This passage in the Bible, I've studied and studied and studied and still don't know entirely what it means. I'm learning all the time. But, see, we're not genuine if we can't say that. If we have to, I'm going to tell you how to take a great weight off yourself, trying to pretend with all your neighbors that you know everything in the Bible. That's a heavy burden to carry because you've got to pretend all the time you do.

There's okay at times to say, I'm not sure what that means. I can tell you what I don't know what means, and it's a lot, but I'm not sure what that means. Or I'm not sure why God did that.

And there's all the time I sit with people and say, I don't know why God did that. I can only tell you what He tells us. And what He tells us is this. And you go to the Scripture, and there is maybe a word of comfort or some understanding or some help that says, trust me, I know what I'm doing. And there's a great comfort in, okay, I don't have to always know. I just have to trust. Yeah. So our genuineness means that we don't have to pretend we know everything. We don't have to pretend that we're an expert on everything. We don't have to pretend we understand everything God knows and does. We just say, but I trust Him. But I trust Him. Isaiah, Isaiah 40. Isaiah 40, verse 28. Let's go down to verse 27.

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel? My way is hidden from the Lord, by just claim is passed over by God. Now verse 28. Have you not known? Have you not heard the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator, the end of the earth? Neither faints nor is weary? Haven't you heard? Don't you know that God never wears out, never gets tired? He's always there.

He's never walked away. He's never stopped carrying out His plan. It feels like it sometimes, but He hasn't. And then look at the rest of the sentence. There is no searching of His understanding. Haven't you heard? He's a whole lot bigger than us.

You can't even begin to search what He understands, what He knows.

And we need to tell people that. We need to exhibit that, because only when we're willing to say that are we genuine. Only when we're willing to say, yeah, I struggle with that too.

Then we become real. We're real because we're honest with ourselves, we're honest with God, and we're honest with other people.

Now what God has given us is enormous. The understanding we have, the understanding you have is absolutely amazing. It is amazing what God has given you.

Don't hide that. Just be genuine about it.

But Paul wrote that he witnessed a genuine faith in Timothy, in Timothy's mother, in Timothy's grandmother. It's not like these people were trying to show it off. Oh, I'm going to go down the street today and show how I'm a genuine Christian.

You know what I mean? They didn't think in terms, oh, I'm going to show everybody I'm genuine. I mean, at that point, you're not genuine. It came from them because they were honest with themselves.

They were honest with God, and therefore they were honest with others. At the corner of their faith was this humility that allowed them to be this way. It allowed them to do these things.

It allowed them to share with others their own trials and struggles. They'd been there, understand. Maybe I don't understand that, but I had a friend that went through that.

You know, I've asked God that question myself. They were able to share with others their own trials and struggles. The first point. The second point is they didn't pretend to be perfect. They didn't have to pretend to be perfect. They admitted their weaknesses and that they were dedicated to growing and overcoming because God wasn't finished with them yet. That's genuineness. That's real. We're all attracted to real people. We're afraid being real will make us weak. The truth is we're attracted to real people because of their strength. Because at the heart of that humility is a faith in what? Not a faith in themselves. Oh, look what my faith did. It is a faith in God. Oh, look what God did.

When we start talking about, look what my faith did, well, that's ungenuine.

Our faith is in what God does. That's genuine. The third point, they were willing to face the severity of God towards sin and His mercy.

They didn't see those as opposites. They understood how they came together. And it is God's right and it's God's responsibility to judge sin and to offer forgiveness because that's part of His character. That's how He reveals Himself. That's who He is. He's going to do both of those things. And the fourth point, they would have been willing to admit, there's time they say, I don't know what God's doing. Let's sit back and see.

You know, I'm frustrated too because I can't figure out why God isn't doing this or that.

Frustrates me, but then He, as you hear me say all the time, He's never asked my opinion. He never has, never will. It's okay. We don't get it sometimes. What in the world is He doing?

Well, let's follow along and find out because whatever it is, I guarantee you, it's more wondrous than anything you and I come up with.

It just needs to be more uncomfortable than we want.

There's the rub. It's more wonderful than what we can come up with, but it's more uncomfortable than what we want. I like comfortable, and the older I get, the more I like comfortable.

I like my little house in the country of Tennessee that I've never ridden.

It will never pay off. I'll die before I pay it off. But anyway, I like my little house in the country of Tennessee. It's not always comfortable, but it's a grand journey.

What is important with Timothy and Lois and Eudice is what's important with us. They trusted God. They trusted His greatness. They trusted His goodness. They trusted His mercy and justice as exhibited in Jesus Christ. And in the end, they knew it was a journey. And in the end, they trusted in His salvation.