We're gonna open this morning's
service with hymn number 21. I like to do this at least once
a month, so let's all stand together. Hymn number 21, it's a great
hymn. Let's stand together. 21, oh,
in the, sorry, I'm sorry, in the spiral, spiral hymnal. The Father, and the Son, and
the Spirit, three in one, in eternal ages past, they doth
come and My Father chose His own in the
person of His Son, and ordained that I should be one with Him
eternally. God the Son agreed to come in
the flesh and keep God's holy law, and
retrieve me from the fall. I still love so willingly, so
does my great surety. For my price He offered blood, God the Spirit have we loved,
promised to come down in love, bringing life and peace and grace. He seeks the lost, heals the
lame, and He brings us to the Lamb. This poor sinner is secure, For
God's love it will be. It is sealed by God's own word,
by His Spirit and His blood. Blessed, holy, competent God,
guide and force my ties of love, ties of grace and ties of love. Please be seated. Good morning. I do love that hymn. I hope this announcement's not
too late for somebody, but there are some concrete curbs in the
old parking lot that are new, and somebody's already run over
them once, and it looks like they damaged their vehicle. So
we've tried to mark them this morning, but be careful. They're
on the other side of the old parking lot. The city made us
put some islands in there, and Tim Murray was so gracious to
bring his boys down this week and do that for us. But be careful
for that. RG Indiana, such a joy to have
you all back. And so very thankful. We love
you all. We're grateful. I'll introduce
Gilbert later, but Gilbert is visiting with us from India,
and he'll be bringing the second message this morning. So I know
you'll enjoy that and getting to meet him. And we'll have some
time together after the service at lunch. So look forward to
that. Bert flew back up to Lexington this week to have another infusion
and they tested his blood Friday and found out that he was not
able to receive the infusion Friday. So they've given him
some medication and he's hoping they're hoping to be able to
do it on Monday from what I understand. So I want us to pray that he'll
be able to have that done on Monday. And then Jennifer's last
round of chemo was not working so they prescribed a different
one and she starts on that tomorrow so if you all remember to pray
for her. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly
Father, thank you for calling us together,
bringing us from our homes and causing us to desire being here and hearing from you
and worshipping together and Lord how we delight in the promise
that you've made that you do inhabit the praise of your people.
Lord that the songs of praise that give to you all the glory
for our salvation are pleasing in your sight and Lord we We
thank you for the work of your spirit in our hearts that causes
us to want to worship you and to praise you and have some understanding
of the hymns that we sing and of the gospel that we hear. Lord, we pray that your Holy
Spirit would attend this service today and that you would glorify
Christ, that you would enable us to lift him up or that you
would speak hope and peace and truth and comfort to the hearts
of your people. Lord, we thank you for your hand
of strength that you've given to Robert and for bringing him
and Deanna back here to worship with us. And Lord, pray that
all our hearts will be would be encouraged today as we see
your hand of mercy there. We pray for our brother Bert
and for Jennifer and Lord, we ask that you would use the physicians
and medications to give strength and healing to their bodies. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. If you'll open your Bibles with
me to 1 Samuel chapter two, we're gonna go back a little bit from
where we've been over the last, a few weeks and consider one
verse out of Hannah's prayer. After Hannah had had her hopes fulfilled
in bringing forth Samuel, she offers a prayer of praise and
thanksgiving in 1 Samuel chapter two. And in verse nine, There
are three points in this verse that if the Lord is pleased to
help us this morning, I hope that it will give us assurance
of our salvation. I've titled this message, The
Evidence of Saving Faith. What is the evidence of saving
faith? Gilbert and I had a wonderful
conversation with a dear friend yesterday for several hours,
and he had a lot of good questions to ask, and every time we answered
them from scripture, he bowed to what he was hearing and rejoiced
in it. And after all was said and done,
having spent his life in religion, he said, how then do you know
if you're saved? And I said, well, I'm gonna preach
on that tomorrow morning. So I hope that it'll be a comfort
to him. He lives out, he drove two and
a half hours to be here just to spend some time with us yesterday
and went back home to Jacksonville yesterday. So, but this message
I hope will give some, some understanding as to what the Lord has told
us the evidence of saving faith is. And before we look at the
verse, I just want to make four simple points. And the first
one is that faith is a gift of God. Faith is not our contribution
to salvation. We come into this world spiritually
dead, unable to believe, and faith is the result of our new
birth, not the cause of it. And so that's the first thing
to understand about saving faith. The second thing to understand
about saving faith is that without it, no one will be saved. The Lord tells us that without
faith, it is impossible to please God, for he that cometh to him
must believe that he is. So this gift of faith is essential
for salvation. The third thing I want to say
about faith is that faith by definition is the absence of
works. Faith is not a work. If we make
a work out of faith, we look to faith as our contribution
to salvation, then We have denied the very essence, the very definition,
the very meaning of faith. Faith by definition is the opposite
of work. It is the evidence of those who
have no work, who are resting all of the hope of their salvation
in Christ. And this faith that God gives
never changes. You know, feelings change, assurances
change, and the reason why they change is because the object
of feelings is always changing. If the hope of our salvation
is based on evidence of something that's changing, then our hope
will always change. It will be up and down. But the
object of our faith is in an unchanging God, one who himself
is immutable, one who himself never changes. He's the same
yesterday, today, and forever. And so saving faith, true saving
faith, when God's pleased to give it, does not change. Feelings are looking to changing
objects. Faith is looking to an unchanging
object. And The fourth thing I want to say
about faith is that our warrant to believe on Christ is God's
command to believe on Christ. The paradox of faith is that
if we have saving faith, God gets all the glory. He gave it
to us. We didn't earn it. We didn't
ask for it. It was the result of the new birth. If we don't
have saving faith, that's all on us. Every bit of it. No one will be able to stand
before God on the day of judgment and say, well, you know, you
didn't give me faith. You didn't choose me. You didn't elect me. And you didn't regenerate me,
so how could I believe? Unbelief is the full responsibility
of the unbeliever. And so if we're saved, he gets
all the glory, and if we're not, we bear all the blame. Someone
might say, well that doesn't make sense to me. Well, the Lord
said in Romans chapter 9, after defining God's sovereignty and
salvation, the response of the natural man is, why doth he yet
find fault? For who can resist the will of
God? If salvation's of the Lord and
he's sovereign in it and he's already elected a people and
he's got to give me faith, then how can he blame me for not believing?
And the Lord answers that objection when he says, but nay, O man,
who art thou to respond to God? Who art thou to reply such against
God? So no man can blame God for his
unbelief. Men don't believe because they
don't want to believe. And the Spirit and the bride say,
come, come. That's our warrant to believe
on Christ, is God's command to believe. Freely, we come. In my hand, nothing in my hand
I bring, only to Christ on God's cross, I claim. We come just
like we are. Someone says, well, how do I
come? Just like you are. With all your sin, all your unbelief,
just like you are. Now, before we look at our text
in 1 Samuel chapter two, would you turn with me to 2 Corinthians
chapter 13? Because I want to, I want to
show you what the evidence of saving faith
is not. And there's a verse here in 2
Corinthians chapter 13 that has been horribly misunderstood and
misinterpreted by many. How many times you've heard someone
say, examine yourself to see whether you be in the faith. One translation, and they're
really not translations, you know, there's so many English,
what they call translations, they're paraphrases of God's
word. One of them paraphrased it like
this, test and evaluate yourself whether you are on the faith
and living your lives as committed believers. See if you are showing
proper fruits in order to know whether you have faith. The evidence
of faith, is not found in the way we live. You don't look to
the way you live. This world is full of plenty
of people that will give their shirt off their back to help
you. kind people, sacrificial people,
giving people. Over the history of mankind there
are people who have been burned at the stake and sacrificed their
lives as martyrs. Today we have people that commit
suicide, blow themselves up in the name of God. Well, let's look at this verse.
Look with me at 2 Corinthians chapter 13. We'll begin reading
at verse 3. Since you seek a proof of Christ
speaking in me, which to you, word, is not weak, but is mighty
in you. Now, here's the problem. The
believers in Corinth were looking to the outward evidences of faith
in their lives and they were resting their hope in the evidences
of Holy Spirit thinking that that's proof that we have faith
but the Apostle Paul doesn't have what we have. For though he was crucified through
weakness yet he liveth by the power of God for we also are
weak in him but we shall live with him by the power of God
toward you. Examine yourselves, whether you
be in the faith. Prove your own selves. Know you
not your own selves? How that Jesus Christ is in you,
except you be reprobate? Now what Paul was saying was,
you need to take a second, look at yourself, Corinthians. because
you're taking hope and comfort in the outward evidences of your
faith, thinking that you're strong and I'm weak, but have you not
examined yourself and see that your weakness requires Christ
to be in you? In other words, the evidence
of salvation is not the outward evidences of your strength. It
is the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in you. So the way in
which this verse is interpreted is just the opposite of what
it means. When the Lord says examine yourself
to see whether you be in the faith, he's not saying look at
your life and see how much outward evidence there is in your works.
that God has done a work of grace for you, examine yourself to
see if you're weak enough and sinful enough to need Christ
alone for the evidence of your salvation. That's the meaning
of this passage. And so, you know, The Lord's not saying go around
and inspect each other's fruit and figure out whether or not
you're saved by, you know, by the changes that have taken place
in your life. Oh, I pray the Lord to change
us. And I know he will, you know,
but we're not in any way. We're not in any way. And God's
people don't need to hear this, but we're not excusing sin. And
God's people hate their sin. They would never sin again if
they could. That's not the point here. The point here is that
the evidence of faith is my weakness and his strength. That's the
evidence of saving faith. And that I can't find any hope
or comfort in anything that that is manifested in my life for
my salvation, that the evidence of saving faith is Christ in
me. He is our hope of glory. All right, let's go to our text.
1 Samuel 2, verse 9. He will keep the feet of his
saints. The evidence of saving faith
is that we rest all the hope of our salvation in his faithfulness. In his faithfulness, we are as
dependent upon him to keep us as we are for he to save us. And therein is the evidence of
saving faith, not my faithfulness. The scripture
says, if we believe not, yet he remaineth faithful, for he
cannot deny himself. He cannot deny himself. When
the child of God looks at themselves, all they see is their sin. And so Here, Hannah is saying that the
evidence of my salvation is his faithfulness toward me. Listen
to Psalm 121. He will not suffer thy foot to
be moved. He that keepeth thee will not
slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel
would neither slumber nor sleep. And Peter put it like this in
1 Peter 1. We are kept by the power of God
through faith. And what is faith? Faith is resting
in and trusting in and relying upon the strength of Christ and
the finished work of Christ and the person of Christ for our
salvation. Faith is an acknowledgement of
our weakness and our inability and our lack of evidence and
and it gives to him all the glory for salvation. So we are kept
by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed
in the last time, wherein you greatly rejoice. So here's the
evidence of saving faith. Faith trusts his faithfulness.
John chapter 10 verse 28 says, I give unto them eternal life,
and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them
out of my hand. My Father which gave them unto
me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out
of my Father's hand, and I and the Father are one. So here's
the evidence of saving faith. Not my determination to remain
faithful, not my work to show the evidences of my faith. Believers don't compete with
one another like they do in religion to see who's more faithful and
more spiritual and more holy. Believers esteem one another
more than themselves and And every child of God believes themselves
to be the chief of all centers, amen? I mean, it's just that
way. And that's the evidence of saving
faith. And Hannah's saying here that we rest all the hope of
our salvation in his faithfulness alone. His name is called faithful and
true. We didn't do anything to gain
salvation and we can't do anything to keep it. It's his faithfulness. He will keep the feet of his
saints. David put it like this in Psalm
17. He said, Lord, keep me as the
apple of thy eye. Hide me under the shadow of thy
wings. being hit under, you remember
the mercy seat that was on top of the Ark of the Covenant and
there was a gold plate there and then the cherubim were set
up and they had wings that covered the mercy seat. And so to be
under the shadow, and God said to Moses, He said, this is where
you put the blood and here I will meet with you. And that mercy
seat is Christ. And God says, I'll meet you in
Christ. And this is the only place I'm
going to meet you, is in him. And the imagery there of that
arc is that the wings of these angelic hosts were covering the
mercy seat. And so David said, keep me under
the shadow of thy wings. Keep me in Christ. Keep me looking
to Christ. Don't let me look anywhere else.
This is the evidence of saving faith. The Lord Jesus Christ was faithful
to his father. Ephesians chapter 3 verse 12
says we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith
of Him. We have access to God and we
have boldness to the throne of grace and we have confidence
of God by the faith of Christ. And that's what faith is. Faith
is resting our hope in His faithfulness. Not in ours. Not in ours. We are sealed by the Holy Spirit
to the day of redemption and the Holy Spirit. Every time and
child of God, we are so prone to take our eyes off of Christ
and we're so we're so prone to try to find comfort and hope
and peace and rest somewhere else. Thank God for his Holy
Spirit. that continues to point us to
Christ and continues to cause us to find all our hope in him. The second thing Hannah says
in our text is the wicked shall be silent in darkness. Now the
word wicked there means hostile to God or guilty of a crime. What higher crime is there than
the crime of unbelief? And the Lord says the wicked
shall be silent in darkness. Now we know that in the darkness
and separation of hell the wicked are not silent. The Bible says
that there's weeping and wailing and the gnashing of teeth. The
wicked that are hostile to God now and hostile to the gospel,
whether they be religious or irreligious or not silent, they
continue to speak blasphemous things about our God and profane
things about our God. They continue to speak his name
in vain. They empty it of its meaning
and of its glory. So what is the Lord telling us
here? Well, two things. Number one,
those that are hostile toward God and guilty of the crime of
unbelief are silent in darkness to the child of God. In other words, when you hear
their opinions, and their blasphemies and their false gospel, what
effect does it have on you? Does it tempt you to think, well,
maybe they have some truth and maybe I don't? Or does it not
accentuate the gospel more so for you? Does it not cause you,
you see, the voices of the wicked are silent in darkness to the
child of God. They don't tempt us. The false
prophets don't tempt us to believe a false gospel. When we do hear
them, it only confirms more to us the truth of the gospel that
we believe and the Christ that we believe on. Is that not true
for you as a child of God? If a person is tempted to think,
well, you know, maybe they have some truth, then that voice is
not silent in darkness to you. 1 Corinthians 1, the wisdom of
this world, God has made to be foolishness to the believer. That which is foolish to us is
their wisdom. And that which is wise to them is our foolishness. The wisdom of the world is foolishness
to us. Their voices are silent in darkness. But secondly, the second meaning
of this second, this is the evidence, so we're talking about the evidence
of saving faith. are the voices of the world silent
in darkness to you. In other words, the Spirit of
God has convinced you that what God has said is true and anything
that's contrary to what God has said you know is a lie and you're
not swayed by it. It only serves to reinforce the
truth of what God has taught you. And so the voices of the
wicked are silent in darkness to you. But secondly, child of
God, you have an unbelieving flesh. You have an old man that
raises its fist against God. And it's a high crime that we
are continually dealing with. We've sinned and in this is continuance. What was the other definition?
Hostile to God. How much our flesh is hostile
to God. And yet, when God gives saving
faith, when God enables us by his grace to look to Christ, All the voices of the accuser
of the brethren are silenced in darkness. Our conscience is
quieted when we're able to look to the one who has successfully
put away our sin by himself once and for all. In other words,
when God gives me faith to rest my hope in Christ, I know that
those that those voices of accusation that come against me. You see,
we always live in Romans chapter seven and in Romans chapter eight.
But the child of God's living in both places. We're a contradiction
to ourselves. What did Paul say in Romans chapter
7? The will is present with me, but how to perform that which
is good, I find not. When I would do good, evil is
ever present with me, a wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver
me from the body of this death? Then he says this, thanks be
to God through Christ Jesus, I am free. I'm free. You see, when we're able to look
to Christ, we're not looking to our sin. We're looking to
Christ. There is now therefore no condemnation
to them that are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh.
In other words, they're not looking to fleshly evidences for the
hope of their salvation, but they walk after the spirit. They're
looking to Christ for the hope of their salvation. And those
voices are silenced in darkness for the child of God and he's
able to rejoice knowing that God buried those sins in the
depths of the sea. He has covered them by the blood
of Christ. God says, I remember your sins
no more. They've been put away. And so,
child of God, the evidence of saving faith is that God continually
moves you. From Romans chapter 7, as you
are prone to look at your sin and be so distraught by it, and
be so fearful by it and lose your hope and your confidence
as a result of it. And all the voices of conscience
and all the voices of hell are causing you to delve deeper
and deeper into the blackness and darkness of your sin. And
then the Spirit of God shows you Christ and what he's done
and what he's done in putting away your sin. and how he satisfied
the law of God and how before God you have no sin. You have
no sin before God and you're free. You're able to rejoice,
you're able to rest, you're able to delight in Christ. And so
herein is the evidence of saving faith. Our hope is in his faithfulness,
not ours. the wicked, whether it be the
voices of the world or the voices of your own conscience, are silent
in darkness when God gives faith to rest in Christ. Thirdly, and by strength shall no man
prevail. By strength shall no man prevail. The evidence of saving faith
is that we have no confidence in the flesh. I'll not share my glory with
another, the Lord said. I'm going to get all the glory
for your salvation. And so the evidence of saving faith, as
we saw in 2 Corinthians chapter 13, is not testing yourself to
see if you're in the faith by finding evidences of salvation
in the way in which you live, but it's acknowledging your weakness
before God. Paul went before the Lord in
2 Corinthians chapter 12, and let's turn to that passage. Turn
to 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Look with me at verse seven.
And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance
of the revelations that was given to me, a thorn in the flesh,
the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted
above measure. The Lord doesn't identify what
that is because every child of God knows what their thorn in
the flesh is. It's sin. It is sin. And it's the tendency that we
have to depend upon ourselves to fix all the problems of the
world and to be in control and to present ourselves acceptable
to God apart from Christ. For this thing I besought the
Lord thrice, three times that he might depart from me. And
he said to me, my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is
made perfect in your weakness. My strength is made perfect in
weakness. Most gladly, therefore, will
I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may
rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in
infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions,
in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am
strong. What did Hannah say? Go back
with me to our text. For by strength shall no man
prevail. By strength, the evidence of
saving faith is my inability to do anything to save myself
or to win God's favor by my own strength. His strength is made
perfect. You remember Gideon? Lord told Gideon
to go to amass an army and attack the Midianites. And so Gideon
got together 32,000 armed men and was going against the Midianites.
And the Lord looked at Gideon's army and said, too many. And the Midianites outnumbered
that. So the Lord said to Gideon, he said, tell your army, if anybody
is afraid, to go home. 22,000 of them went home. So
now Gideon's got an army of 10,000. And the Lord looks at his army
and he says, too many, send them down to the river. And those
that get on their hands and knees and drink the water out of the
river, uh, uh, send them home. And if any of them take the water
and put it in their hand and lap it like a dog, those that'll
be your army. 300 of his 10,000, uh, picked
up the water and lapped it like a dog. And God said, now that's
your army. Lord, 300 men. Have you seen the Midianites?
They encompassed the entire valley. What are we going to do? 300 men? And the Lord, you know the rest
of the story. The Lord took those 300 men and Gideon told them
at a certain time, you blow the trumpets. And they surrounded
the Midianites. 300 of them around this huge
valley and multitudes of enemy. And the Lord said, you blow the
trumpet and they had torches and the torches were inside of
clay pots. And the Lord said, when you blow
the trumpet, you take and you break the clay pot and you show
forth a light of the torch that's inside the clay pot. Well, you
do see the imagery there. The trumpet is the declaration
of the gospel. The clay pot is what we are in
our flesh. We're men of clay, we're to be
broken before God and the light is Christ. And when the Midianites
saw these 300 men, I guess they thought that every one of those
trumpets and every one of those torches represented an army because
they turned against themselves and they destroyed themselves.
And Gideon's army didn't have to do anything. Who got the glory
for that? How many examples we have of
that in our own lives. I'll not share my glory with
another. That's why Paul said, I can do all things through Christ
who strengthened me. We are completely dependent.
upon his strength. The evidence of saving faith,
brethren, let's go back to our text. Number one, his faithfulness,
not mine. That's my reliance, that's my
dependence, that's my hope. He will keep the feet of his
saints. Number two, the wicked shall be silent in darkness. And that's the wickedness of
the arguments and opinions of men against the gospel in this
world, and that's your own sin. That's your own sin. When God
gives you grace to look to Christ, it's the only comfort you have
that that sin doesn't exist. It's been put away. And by strength, shall no man
prevail. Saving faith relies upon his
strength alone and has no confidence in the flesh. Does that describe
your hope? I hope it does. All right, let's pray together.
Our Heavenly Father, thank you for your word and Lord, we pray
that in our weakness, that your strength
would be made perfect, and that Christ would be exalted and glorified
in all of our salvation. For it's in his name we pray,
amen. Thank you.