Now would you open your Bibles
to Genesis chapter 15. I remember many years ago being
told that we should make much of scripture reading in the worship
service. And one reason was this, if nothing
else goes right, at least the scriptures were read. And sometimes
I've gone away from here. Well, at least we got that done.
If nothing else of value happened, and often it's because I felt
like I preached and really didn't get anything said. Well, we read
the scriptures. The Lord can bless them from
that. Genesis 15 verse 1, after this, what's the this? Lot was Abram's nephew, Lot,
had been kidnapped. And Abraham and some other leaders
got their forces together and went back, went out, and they
rescued all those who had been taken away. He had also met Melchizedek,
king of Salem. And it had been a rather momentous event for Abram. And after this, after he'd refused
to take any of the spoils of the battle, the word of the Lord
came to Abram in a vision. Do not be afraid, Abram. I am
your shield and your very great reward. But Abram said, O sovereign
Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless, and the one
who will inherit my estate is Eleazar of Damascus? And Abram said, you have given
me no children, so a servant in my household will be my heir.
Then the word of the Lord came to him, then this man will not
be your heir, but a son coming from your own body, will be your
heir. He, that is God, took him outside
and said, look up at the heavens and count the stars. If indeed
you can count them, then he said to him, so shall your offspring
be. Abram believed the Lord, and
he credited it to him as righteousness. Message is going to be, what
is it to believe God? We'll stay in our chorus books,
and this time we'll turn to number 22, The Lord is King. Number 22, and we'll stand as
we sing. The Lord is King! Lift up thy voice! O earth and all ye heavens rejoice! From world to world the Lord
shall reign! The Lord Omnipotent is King! The Lord is King! Who then shall dare Resist his
will, distrust his care, Or murmur at his wise decrees, Or doubt
his royal promises. The Lord is King, child of the
dust, The judge of all, the earth is just. Holy and true are all
His ways, Let every creature speak His praise. Oh, when His wisdom can mistake
His might decay, His love forsake, Then may His children cease to
sing, The Lord Omnipotent is King. All parts of his dominion tie,
alike surveyed by his own eye. His world of ours and worlds
unseen, and in a boundary is between. Come make your wants,
your burdens known, He will present them at the throne And angels'
bands are waiting there His love messages to bear Ye rangy saints, exalt your strains
Your God is King, your Father reigns And Christ is at the Father's
side The Man of Love, the Crucified One Lord, one empire all secures
He reigns and life and death are yours Through earth and heaven
one song shall ring The Lord Omnipotent is King This morning, I'd like to address
the subject, what is it to believe God? We just read from the book
of Genesis chapter 15, Abraham believed the Lord, that is, and
there's the name of the Lord, Jehovah. Abraham believed Jehovah. and he counted it to him as righteousness. I believe when that's later quoted
in the New Testament by Paul, just says Abraham believed God
and it was credited to him as righteousness. The value of faith
cannot be overestimated. I know that There are those who
misuse the concept of faith. They see the word faith in the
Bible, so they know they have to use it. And in a sense, they
end up turning it into works, or a work, because they will
say things like, now God has done all he can, and all you
have to do is believe. and the things that God has done
will become effective for you. As though the effectiveness of
God's work depends on something that we can do. Well, that's
just not true. I think one of the reasons the
scriptures are so adamant about declaring God to be the creator
of all things, one of the reasons is it shows that nothing that
he does is ineffective as it is written. He said, let there
be light and there was light. He didn't say I would like to
have some light and I've made all things ready for light to
exist if light wants to exist. Nothing like that. He said, let
there be light and there was light. He said, let the seas
bring forth all kinds of swimming creatures and they did. Let the
earth bring forth plants, it did. Nothing that God says, nothing
that God does is ineffective. He has never left the success
of his most glorious work in the hands of natural man. Therefore, I've heard some faithful
brethren, they seem to diminish faith. They don't mention much
of believing because they are afraid that if you make much
of faith, people will think that faith is something that they
do in order to finish up the work that God only began. Well,
the problem is, with having that concern, none of the apostles
nor anywhere in scriptures can you find any diminishing of faith,
of the need for it, and of the value of it, rather, it was given
as an answer to how it is we are saved. The Philippian jailer said, what
must I do to be saved? And Paul answered him very simply,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Now, you
can't read something like that and say, but you know, faith
doesn't really accomplish anything. Mark wrote these words of our
Lord, he that believes and is baptized shall be saved. He that
does not believe shall be condemned. That's pretty straightforward. There are some, and it's partly
the fault of the churches they attend, but they are born into
the church. They're raised in the church.
They're taught all the doctrines of the church. They learn them
well. They behave themselves appropriately. They become, somewhere
along the line, they make a profession of faith, which is not so much
a matter of something in their heart. It's just something they're
expected to do. So they do that. And then they reach adulthood. And they continue in that way. Maybe some of them actually do
believe, I don't know. But I know this, you're not born
as a believer. You are born dead in trespasses
and sins. And it doesn't matter what anybody
does to you. Doesn't matter what you do from
your own natural selves. Until, unless and until you believe
God, you are in a state of sin, in a state of lostness, in a
state of condemnation. A couple of weeks ago, or maybe
just last week, I preached on that the one who, the Lord said,
the one who hears my word and believes in Him who sent me,
he's crossed from death to life. You cannot arrive in the presence of God, faultless
and full of joy, simply assuming that you believe. There is a kind of faith that
is a natural faith, and it's just the result of having been
raised in religion. I've often, that is a religion,
maybe raised in a church. The kids raised in this church,
that could very well happen to them. They could be raised, well,
I've heard the gospel all my life. And it always seemed good
to me, so I guess everything's okay. Wait a minute, there must
come a time when A sinner hears from the
Lord, and I'm not talking about some kind of spooky hearing from
the Lord or anything like that. It's through the preaching of
the gospel. But the word of the gospel suddenly impacts him with
power. And he sees the truth of it in
a way he's not seen it before. And it's not simply a set of
doctrines that he masters. Suddenly it's a message that
masters him. takes over, and he believes. Without faith, says the book
of Hebrews, it's impossible to please God. That's why those
who put various states of grace between abject sinnerhood and
being saved, you know, I hear people, old timers used to do
this more than I hear people doing it today. Of course, you
know, I don't hear people Proclaiming much error because
I just don't hang around with anybody that doesn't believe
what we believe. That is, I don't hang around
with them on a religious basis. But they'll talk about morning
sinners and awakened sinners and all this. Friends, they're
just sinners. That's all there is. And there is no state of
grace that falls short of full, saving grace. You pass from death
to life. You don't pass from death to
barely alive, and then pretty sick, but maybe you're going
to make it. And finally, you're alive and healthy. No. Just as at the second coming
of the Lord, it says that He says, we shall not all sleep,
but we shall all be changed in a moment, in a twinkling of an
eye. Now that is kind of following
the same pattern as the new birth. It's in a moment, in a twinkling
of an eye. And at that point, a person believes,
but he believes in a way that he could never believe until
that point. You can believe all the doctrines
of the scriptures. You can hold that they're true and still be lost. Because it is not faith in a
set of doctrines that saves, it is believing a person. Moreover, the faith that saves. is not something that a natural
person, and by natural I mean somebody that has not been born
again, a natural person can't do it. The Lord said to some who are
listening to him, he said, you do not believe me because you're
not my sheep. They didn't believe him because
they had not been chosen by him. No work of grace had been worked
in them by the Spirit of God, and they were utterly incapable
of believing God in human flesh. And that's the state into which
all of us are born. However, in the preaching of
the gospel, we call on people to do what it's impossible for
them to do. When I preach the gospel and
there is, at least it's my intention, there's gospel in every message
I preach. When we preach the gospel, when
I preach the gospel, there is in it the implication, if not
the outright exhortation, for you to believe the gospel, believe
God, and through faith be justified, made righteous in his sight,
declared righteous by him, accepted by him, and blessed by him. I
don't preach the gospel simply to fill people's ears with religious
talk or make them feel as though they have fulfilled their religious
obligations in attending a church service. It's my intention, my
hope, that by the grace of God, when people hear me preach, they'll
believe the one whose message I declare. But the question then arises, what is it to believe God? We just read Abraham believed
God. He believed Jehovah. So I'd say this, the first thing
about believing, it's not so much what believing
is, but it's a prerequisite to believing. You have to hear from
God. Now, week by week you all come,
and I'm glad you do, but all I can guarantee you is that you'll
hear me. And that's not going to do you a lot of good unless
God puts his voice to my words. And thankfully, he does that. Because if all that was going
to happen when we meet like this is we'd sing some songs, read
some scripture, and I'd stand up here and deliver a message,
we may as well just go home. If God doesn't speak to us, we
will not have had anything valuable happen here. Now, he speaks through the preaching
of the gospel, and as I said, it's not some kind of spooky
thing that, you know, this identifiable experience. I think that the
believer can know that God has spoken through the preaching
of the gospel because his heart will give the amen to it. He'll
say, that's from God. But the Apostle Paul said of
one of the churches, when you heard us preach, you took it
not as the words of men, but the word of God, which it truly
is. So Abraham couldn't believe God
unless God said something. I mean, that only makes sense,
doesn't it? Now, there are some who like to argue the point of
well just how much does a person have to know, that is how much
from God or through the preaching of the gospel does he have to
learn before he can be saved? And you know, I think that there's, that's a mostly useless question.
And the reason for that, that it's a useless question, is this,
number one, no matter what the answer is, we're not going to
hold back from preaching anything that's in this book. And secondly, there's nobody
who knows everything except God. And we find in the churches there
was a lot of doctrinal error. And the apostle did not say that
because of this doctrinal error, they were not a church and they
were lost. The only one he questioned was the church at Galatia. And
that was because they were falling for that Jewish legalism. And
he said, I fear I wasted my efforts on you. But the point is, a believer
believes God, so no matter what God says, they'll believe it
when they hear it. We go out and we do the best
we can to, like Paul says, deliver the whole counsel of God. But we can't do that every time
we preach. There's only so much time. And what you take, for
instance, the day that Peter preached. on the day of Pentecost,
there wasn't a whole lot of the theology of the gospel declared
on that day. All he did was say, God sent
you, the Messiah, you rejected him, and that pierced their heart,
it pricked their heart, and they said, what must we do to be saved?
He said, repent. Repent of what? Repent of your
rejection of Jesus Christ. Repent and be baptized, every
one of you, because your sins have been forgiven. Now, that didn't have a whole
lot of systematic theology behind it, did it? That is declared.
You say, well, it goes on later to say he told them a lot more.
Well, I'm going by what the Spirit of God inspired Luke to write
down. And if more would have been necessary
for us to understand what must be preached in order that a person
can be brought to repentance toward God and faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ, if anything more than what is recorded was necessary,
the Holy Spirit would have had it written down. But there does have to be And
I've mentioned this several times. It's just a generalization based
on what we read in the scriptures and looking at all the apostolic
messages that are written down in the book of Acts and some
other places. It comes down basically to two
things. I'm a sinner in need of a savior,
and two, Jesus Christ is a savior I need. and a person believing that,
at least as near as I can tell, that would be accounted saving
faith, even if he does not understand all the ins and outs, you know?
A fella, I saw a little snippet
of one of his messages on Facebook, and he was kind of playing out,
you know, the story of when the thief on the cross appeared in
heaven. And of course, what he was telling
it, it's not like you get up there and then you're going to
be judged to determine whether or not you can get in or not. Judgment's
already been taken care of for the believer. But you tell these
fictionalized stories in order to make a point that says that
the thief on the cross there, he got up to the gates of heaven
and an angel asked him, OK, what are you doing here? He said,
I don't know. And he said, well, have you been
baptized? No. Did you go to the altar and pray
through? No. I don't know what you're talking about. And he
said, the angel, he said, I don't know what to do here. And so
he called an administrative angel, somebody up the line, you know.
And the angel came and said, Well, let me ask you some questions.
Okay, he says, are you aware of and firmly believe
in the doctrine of justification by faith? And the thief said, I never heard
of it. Well, did you apply to and receive
the acceptance of a A true church, a faithful church, didn't know
there was such a thing. Well, then why are you here?
The thief responded, the guy on the middle cross said I could
come. Now, some would say that's oversimplified. Quite honestly, I think we overcomplicate
things. Much of all the details of theology
that we feel compelled to present to people, those issues arose
because people brought error into the church and the apostles
had to deal with it. But the foundational gospel consists
of this. I'm a sinner in need of a Savior.
Jesus Christ is the Savior I need. And we come to Him and we call
upon God through Him. and are saved. And as we go on
through life, we find out more and more of how it was that he
saved us. And we become more appreciative
of what he's done for us. This business of believing God
begins with hearing from God, and then we're believing a person.
We're believing God. And there may be things we don't
understand. In fact, there will be things we don't understand. But just because we don't understand
things doesn't mean we don't believe God. You know, a child
in the home, an obedient kind of child, there'll be many things
his parents tell him to do. He doesn't know why. He does
not have an understanding that doing things this way is for
your good. But because he believes or trusts
his parents, he just does it. Now you might be thinking, well,
where's that child? I never met him. Children do that some. They also
do the other. The older they get, the more
of the other they do. If you don't explain to them the wisdom
behind what you're saying, they're not going to follow along. But
that's why our Lord, Said, unless you be converted and become as
a child, you'll know why as enter the kingdom of heaven. Because
little children, they just naturally trust their parents for the most
part. And we trust our God. Secondly, turn over to Romans
chapter four. Romans four. Now, believing God is about believing
a person. It's not just a matter of believing
a set of doctrines, however true or however good your understanding
of those doctrines may be. Romans 4, beginning at verse 18, and this
is what we read earlier. Against all hope, Abraham in
hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just
as has been said to him, so shall your offspring be. Without weakening
in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as
dead since he was about 100 years old. and that Sarah's womb also did.
Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise
of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to
God, being fully persuaded God had power to do what he had promised. Now here's the second thing about
believing God. Believing God must always be
based upon the promise of God. There is no such thing as faith
apart from a promise. In the church that I was raised
in, anytime they wanted to do something, something that looked
as though it were going to be impossible or at least very difficult
to accomplish, they'd say, we need to step out in faith. Well, as a young kid, of course,
I didn't know the answer. But somebody should have said,
OK, what promise are you believing to make you move forward? And usually, it's interesting,
it had something to do about making the church bigger. Particularly,
I've seen this happen in building programs. The preacher and whatever
leadership, other leadership in the church, they think they
need a bigger building, a newer building, and all this. So they
get together all the facts and figures. I remember and give
you an idea of just how much money was involved. Again, the
church that I was raised in was going to build a new building.
And we needed to do something that was growing big enough that
it was getting crowded. But the building that they chose,
designed by an architect, it was going to cost upwards of
a million dollars. And that's like in 1974 or something like
that, 75. So yes, this was a big undertaking. And in order to get the people
to go get behind it, you know, they did all kinds of things,
but they would say, I believe that God's going to give us the
money for this, and we just need to step out on faith. And somebody
should have said, well, back up the bus here. Show me the
promise that says that if I want a newer building that will seat
more people, God will give me the money for it. Because until
there's a promise, there can't be faith. Faith always rests
upon the promises of God. And you know, for that very reason,
there are many who interject things which do not involve promises
from God and make them hindrances to faith. Some of you know that
by experience. I was thinking the other day
about some of the preaching I've heard this area, and it's as
though they set the gospel out, and they do a good job of it,
but they can't just leave it there. They build a fence around
it with a gate and then put a lock on the gate. Yeah, the gospel's
there, but you can't get to it. They'll say, yes, salvation is
by faith, you know, we're justified through faith and all that, but
you know, that's only for the elect, and you don't know if
you're the elect. I don't see anything in the Scriptures that
that's the proper way to approach this subject. Yes, there is such
a thing as elect. No question about that. And we
know this, only the elect are going to believe. But the scriptures
never do say, so you wait until you're sure you're one of the
elect, then you believe. No, never is anything even close
to that in the scriptures. I recall that scripture in John
6, it says, the Lord speaking, he says, all that the Father
gives to me, and that implies election, and later in John 17,
he says, they were yours, you gave them to me. So they were
the elect of God, entrusted to the hands of Christ, and so he
says, all that you have given me will come to me. Now, that's
not a promise. That's the Lord worshiping his
Father by simply declaring that God's intention in the gospel
shall be realized. And that's a wonderful doctrine.
I'm glad that all that the Father gave to the Son will come to
the Son. There's no doubt about it. But the next words from the Lord
were words of promise. He said, he that comes to me
I will in no wise cast out, reject. Now, I'm glad that all that the
Father gave to the Son will come to the Son. I glorify God for
that truth. But there's nothing for me to
act on in that, is there? That's just a statement of spiritual
truth. But He that comes to me will
in no wise cast out." That's a promise, and faith lays hold
of promises. There are some who have at least
a natural desire for God's salvation, but they are hindered from going
because they think, I'm such a sinner, he'll never have me. He'll never accept me. The preacher's
been telling me how bad I am, and I'm pretty convinced. For
all my life, he's been grinding his heel in me about how worthless
and useless I am. Well, it's true. But here's the problem. What
you are has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Christ
will receive you. He said, he that comes to me
will not reject. That's something I can get a
hold of." And then people, you know, that
for whatever reason they have a hard time with the concept
of grace, they say, well, how can you reconcile the sovereignty
of grace with the Lord making such a free and open promise
like that? My thought has always been, not
always, eventually my thought came to be, why are you worried
about that? Can't you leave God's things
for God to settle and figure out? There's a promise in there. Do
you want God's salvation in Christ? Do you want that? Well, leave God's sovereign election
to God. That's up to him to take care
of. There's a promise in front of you. Lay hold of it. And I've
illustrated it this way. If the local bank put an ad in
the paper and said, we have chosen 1,000 people from Sioux County,
and we will give to everyone. I mean, we're going to put it
in their account. We're going to give $1,000 to
every one of them and nobody else is going to get it. And
then after that, they said, anyone who's at the door of the bank
Monday morning at 9 p.m. will receive $1,000. Now, are you going to sit there
and say, OK, now how's it going to be that they're going to work
it out? That they've chosen 1,000 people, and those people and
those people alone are going to get the money. And then they
open it up and say, anybody who shows up at the front door gets
$1,000. You know what I'd be saying? I'll let them figure
that out. I'm going to be there Monday morning. You see what
I mean? Faith rests on promises. There
must be a promise to believe And faith will not let the other
aspects of truth hinder laying hold of the promise. Faith, believing God, the focus
is always on Christ. Look over at 1 Peter chapter
two, excuse me, 1 Peter chapter one. And this is a very, very important
aspect of believing God. First Peter chapter one. Well, I may have done it again. I hate it when I do that, folks.
Go to the trouble, look these up and then write down the wrong
one. Give me just a second, I might
find out what I was looking for. Well, I can't find the exact
scripture. It's in one of the letters from
Peter, but it says, through him, that is through the Lord Jesus
Christ, do you believe in God? There's no such thing as believing
God. without believing him through
the Lord Jesus Christ. While God is the one we believe,
our focus in faith is Christ. They say, well, Christ is God.
I know. And it's just one of the mysteries
of things, and yet Sometimes Christ is set forth as distinct
from God, as the mediator between God and men. But that's, I mean,
we're dealing with a being that doesn't exist within our framework.
We're going to run into some stuff we can't get figured out,
but I know this. Every person who believes God,
his eyes are on Christ. Through him, we do believe in
God. To come to God any other way
brings certain death. Only through Christ can a person
approach God in faith and be received. And then back in John
6, verse 40, our Lord said, He who sees the Son and believes
in Him, he'll be raised up in the last
day. Now, I've seen translations say, you know, beholds the sun
and this. The word there that says he that
sees the sun, it's a Greek word. We get our word theater from
it. A place where you gaze at something carefully and understand its
significance. In other words, you perceive
who Christ is. You know something of what he's
done. In particular, his ability to save to the uttermost them
who come to God by him. He who sees the son and believes
him, trusts him, casts his soul upon him. He'll be raised up
on the last day. And then if you'll turn to 2
Peter chapter 1, and this will be the last thing,
to believe God is to believe Him and trust Him for all things
pertaining to life and godliness. Verse 3 of 2 Peter chapter 1,
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and
godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own
glory and goodness. To believe God, we must believe
him through Christ. And when we believe him through
Christ, Through the knowledge of Christ, we are given absolutely
everything we need. In fact, we are given everything
we could ever make use of. So many people think they're
supposed to bring something to the table. Brother Spurgeon drew an illustration
from his own experience in life of of this that said a widow
in his church invited him to come visit with her, you know.
And so he showed up, and he knew she was very poor. And, you know,
when people, particularly when they invite the preacher over,
they figure they've got to have something to give him, you know. And he
didn't want this woman to feel embarrassed that she had nothing
to give him. And so he'd gotten some cookies or something like
that and put them in his coat pocket. And when she stepped
out of the room to get tea or whatever it was they were going
to have to drink, he reached in his pocket and he set them
out on the table. And she came in with that tea, saw those cookies
sitting there. She didn't say a word. She just
went, shoved them off the table, put the coffee down. And he said,
nothing from me was going to be accepted. And when we believe God, if we
do try to set anything on the table, God's going to shove it off.
Sometimes that hurts. I imagine maybe at first it kind
of offended Spurgeon. Why'd she do that? Well, then
he understood. She invited him over. She was
going to be the provider of everything, and God is going to be the provider
of everything in this business of salvation, or he's not even
going to invite you over to the house. What is it to believe God? It's
to believe a person. It's to believe his promises.
It's to believe him through Christ. And it's to trust him for everything. Heavenly Father, Make this message useful in the
hearts of those that have come. May it glorify your name. Amen.