spiritual lives. Just like the
frailty of our bodies and our minds, the economy, the government,
everything is at the precipice. Everything is at the precipice of falling apart. It's just a second away. No matter
how old we are, no matter what we do, no matter how healthy
we are, I mean, you're going to fall down in the hall and
tear your shoulder out. You're going to slip, throw your
back out. You're going to pick up some
weights, pop your knee. You're going to lay in the bed
and you can't move the next morning. Our spiritual lives are no different.
Our spiritual lives are no different. There's never going to be a time
where we're just going to sail through life and go, Oh my goodness,
my faith is so amazing. Everything is going perfectly
fine for me. And I have no doubts. I have
no fears. I have no frustrations because the Bible shows us all
over the place, you know, rejoice. It's a command. Rejoice will
have us in the Lord. It's a command. And yet we find ourselves not
rejoicing. The Bible would further say in
the negative, do all things without grumbling or complaining. And
then we complain about the fact that we're grumbling and complaining. And so we look in the mirror
and we think, well, everything's falling apart. I'm not good enough. I can't do it. And just when
I thought I had the Lord to depend on, now I don't even believe
that. That's been one of those weeks
for me, where unbelief was more powerful
than belief. Now, when you hear those words,
sometimes people go, what in the world? What's going on? You
don't believe that there's a God? Nah, man, we're way beyond that.
Those doubts are far and few between, but they're still there.
And we're way beyond, did Christ really raise from the dead? But
sometimes, Sometimes in the darkest places, you might have the deepest
thoughts of going, is this just a bunch of nonsense? But those
are short-lived for me. They might not be short-lived
for you. You may be struggling with those right now. But no matter where you are,
the doubt is the doubt. And we see in the Bible where, you know,
Jesus is teaching. This man comes up, said, would
you heal my son? Your disciples have tried to
do it and he can't do it. And Jesus answers the man and
says, if you believe, it's done. He said, I do believe, but help
my unbelief. The same breath, it's the same sentence, it's
one sentence. This man is confessing that he rests in the knowledge
that Christ can, but he still doesn't really believe that he
can. It's this seesaw, this dichotomy, this very strange and real reality
that we rest in. But it's not about the level,
the depth, the strength, the essence of our faith. It's everything
rests in the faithfulness of God. And so there's going to be times,
I mean, you know, how many times have you contemplated the reality
that, you know, if I could just walk with Jesus, like the disciples,
you know, oh, to see the miracles. The same thing that we would
say, man, if I were in Egypt to see this power, How could
these people not believe? We would be the same way. And
beloved, our circumstances, whether they be physical, emotional,
mental, relational, financial, political, whatever, they cloud
out our faith. So we're here in 1 Peter and
I'm standing here to confess to you that it's one of those
things where at the end of yesterday I'm going, am I trusting God
in anything? You ever had that? And maybe
it's different because I have to teach, I have to be here,
I'm obligated to stand here and I want to be here, even when
I don't want to be here, I have to be here. Not because I have
to be here, but I can't do anything else. Does that make sense? Brother Mike and I had that conversation
yesterday. It's just like, what is the call? It's an insane, impossible escape
to serve the Lord, even at great cost. But yet, I have learned that
being true about where I am spiritually is more powerful than posturing
as if I'm Dr. Tippins teaching you the lecture. Because I am struggling just
like you are. And that's okay. It's okay. Part of the trials that we never
escape is when we try to pretend they're not happening. And God has not ordained the
church to gather together as a family to pretend that we've
got it all together. but to be honest that we don't.
And some people say, well, what in the world, pastor, if you're
doubting, what does that mean for me? That means that, yay,
we're just the same. Don't put me on a pedestal as
a person, much less a pastor. Though I stand on one up here
just so you can see me when the room's full. Let's read the first five verses
together of 1 Peter 1. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
to those who are elect exiles in the dispersion in Pontus,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience
to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood, may grace and
peace be multiplied to you. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy,
He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. to an inheritance
that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven
for you, who, by God's power, being guarded through faith for
salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. I'm gonna continue.
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary,
you've been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness
of your faith, which is more precious than gold that perishes,
though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise
and glory and honor at the revelation of Christ. Though you have not
seen him, you do love him. that you do not now see Him,
you believe in Him and you rejoice with a joy that is inexpressible
and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the
salvation of your souls. Verse 10. Concerning their salvation,
the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours
searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person and at
what time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he
predicted the sufferings of Messiah and the subsequent glories. It
was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves,
but serving you. And the things that have now been announced
to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy
Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look." I have a tingle running up my
head right now thinking about that and getting into that, unpacking
the reality that what heaven is doing right now is rejoicing
in that that it looked forward to before the days of Christ. And our hope then, as Peter would
go on to say, is fully set on the grace of God. Now we've unpacked
this stuff, we've talked about it as a whole, and I'll remind
you that we've done this, and then we are unpacking these things
bit by bit, looking at the words, looking at the terms, looking
at the ideas so that we may know what we're reading. Why is that
important? Because when I say the word hope,
we get a thousand definitions from 50 different people. When
I say the word love, we get all these different ideas. There's
a science of that. There's a psychology of that.
There's a theology of that. There's a philosophy of that.
There's an ideology of that. There's a practice of that. And
we can all be standing in the same place, but literally be
on a different planet when it comes to understanding what God's
word is saying. And it's not that difficult, but we've made
it difficult. And so last week, we talked about hope. We talked
about hope as, I can't remember exactly how I put it, but this
is the sentiment that I feel that the scripture teaches, and
I unpacked it this way to prove it to you, is that hope is an
underlying current that touches and intersects with everything
that we are and do in life. And we see this hope, and we
might say, well, I don't have hope today, and that's okay. Hope
will come and go. Peace will come and go. Joy will
come and go. But beloved, we live in hopelessness
when we take our eyes off our hope. And then the argument comes then,
it says, look here, God in His great mercy, His great
love, verse 3, has caused us to be born again. Therefore,
be blessed, God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We've
been adopted as children to share in the brotherhood of Jesus,
who is the Son. As siblings, to share the glory
of Christ. Not to join the angels, but to
stand with Christ. To be like Him in righteousness. The very thing that Lucifer wanted
has been granted to us by grace. Think about that. No creature has the power to
say, I will stand with God, but God has the power to say, you
will stand with me. We're born into this living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the power
and the purpose and the promises of God we talked about last week,
unto an inheritance that cannot fail, cannot be taken away. And we have this inheritance
and this hope today in this life and the life ever after. The
problem is we are often clouded by the life we live. It's very
easy. This is not easy to live. in
this life sometimes. But this promise is kept in heaven
for us and then we see in verse 5 who, you, who are being guarded
by God's power. And here's the phrase that we're
going to deal with today, through faith for salvation ready to
be revealed in the last time. And so what it does there is
it, depending on how you define faith, and you define hope, and
you define the love of God, and you define the promises of God,
you may misunderstand and think that this is saying, if you have
enough faith, you'll be guarded. And it's not saying that. Because we've got to understand
that faith is not what we exercise. Faith is something God does in
us and grants us. And then there is an implication
with faith in every aspect of our lives that flows from this
gift. And so what I want to do today
is I want to unpack the foundations of faith from the Old New Testament,
and then I want to synthesize this in a way that shows us what
Peter is saying. And I want to show you where
it can apply. 10 or 11 places in our lives. You know, 22 sentences. It's not going to take another
two hours. And I want to talk about the
implications of that. Then I want to revisit the point of Peter
at its core is salvation. Eternally. but it does have implications
today. So what does it mean to have
faith? Well, I simplify faith according to the Bible in its
context as this, a disposition of rest and that which we cannot
see because it has been promised by the one who sees all things. Well, how do we know we can trust
God? Because the narrative of history shows us we can, that
he's never failed, he's never lied, He's never forsaken. We see that in the Old Testament.
Four examples in the Old Testament. Four examples in the New Testament,
just to keep it simple. The foundations of faith in the
Old Testament, we see them, of course, in the Garden in Genesis.
But in Genesis 12, 15, 17, we see God promising something to
Abram, a covenant, a promise, a contract, that Abram is not
on the hook to keep his end of the deal. because he doesn't
keep his end of the deal. But he trusts and he rests in
the promises of God, no matter what he can see, even when he
can't see it and he doubts God and he takes matters into his
own hands, and Sarah takes matters into her own hands, and the two
of them do their best, but they're not faithful, but yet they're
called faithful because he who promised is faithful. The inception of faith in the
Bible is closely tied to Abraham and his belief in God's promises
despite what he could see, despite what was true according to biology. With his age and Sarah's barrenness,
he rested in the promise that was impossible. And the Bible
says that resting was counted to him as righteousness. And so we could say then, oh,
okay, so if I'm resting, I'm righteous. If I'm not resting,
I'm not righteous. No, it's not the essence of our
faith. That's not the point. Because
we see, and thank God we have the stories, we see that Abram
was not faithful in faith. He did not believe. He lied.
He deceived. He did all sorts of things. He committed adultery. He was a very bad person. He
was a very human person. And we need to understand that
this is foundational for realizing that faith is in the sufficiency
of God's promises, not necessarily in the sufficiency of our hoping. And that may be tongue-in-cheek
to you. It may seem like I'm just sort of playing with words
and I'm sort of maneuvering the ideas around a little bit. But
beloved, I'm telling you right now, it's deeper than that. Resting
in the promises of God is not a perfect thing. But the
promises of God are perfect, whether we believe in them or
not. And some people will hear me say that and go, oh, Pastor
Tipton said that you don't have to believe. Okay, whatever. You
don't have to believe all the time because you can't. You don't
have to have it right every single breath because that's impossible.
And if you're anything like me, there are times where you've
literally stuck your finger in the face of God and told him
you've had enough. When circumstances seem impossible,
God is faithful. See, Paul tells Timothy that,
right? When we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot
deny himself. So we see the Abrahamic covenant.
We see the faith of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, where they
rest in the promises of God through their actions and decisions,
often in the face of great adversity. their lives underscore faith
is what I like to say is a generational legacy. Not a stoicism, not a
perfect spiritual example, but as a spiritual picture of the faithfulness
of God. Because were those people faithful? Was Isaac faithful? Was Jacob
faithful? Was Joseph faithful? Out of the
three, I mean, Joseph was absolutely probably one of the most faithful.
But he was also one of the most arrogant until God humbled him by the hand of his own brothers
who hated him. And then when that time comes,
because he is faithful to trust that God has his good, he does
not partake in becoming powerful and partaking in the ways of
Egypt to move in a political state to become something. God
makes him something out of nothing because God is showing his faithfulness. So in times when we are weak
and we can rest, that's the faithfulness of God being shown. And then
when the place of Joseph comes to the head of this famine and
his family who thinks he's dead comes to Egypt to get food and
to survive, Joseph is the co-regent. He's literally the hand of the
king. He is ruling Egypt. A Jewish man. And he gets the room cleared
and he confesses that he is who he is to his brothers and they
are horrified. And Joseph praises God for what
they did to him. He praises God that they hated
him and they were jealous. He praises God that they abused
him. He praises God that they sold
him into slavery and took his coat back to his father and grieved
his father and told him that he was dead. He thanked God and
he said, this is what God has willed. And you need to understand that
these things that are recorded in the Bible are not just for
us to see God working, but for us to see Christ in them. Joseph
is a type of Christ. Isaac is a type of Christ. So
therefore, Abram's and Sarah's life is to show us Christ. Just
like the Proverbs 31 woman, that's Jesus. Above all things, understand
the pictures and the narratives of the Old Testament. All of
them are pictures of Christ. Every single, and you don't have
to make a stretch to see it. It will be hated. It will be unjustly accused, Isaiah
says. And Joseph was hated and unjustly
accused, given unto death, that he may give life. to those who
hated him. And Joseph, with love and joy,
fed his family. And we see Moses. We see the
Pentateuch. We see the first five books of
the Bible, but specifically the life of Moses and the faith of
Moses in the Exodus. Was Moses faithful? No, he didn't
even get to enter into the temporary promise of the promised land
because of his hard attitude of disobedience and frustration
with the people that deserve to be flogged. And he cried out, these knuckleheads
are killing me, God, just, oh! God's like, okay, I'll smite
them all. No, no, no, no, don't kill them, I love them. I don't
know why, but I love these people. Forgive them, Father, they know
not what they do. Moses is the type of Christ.
And you don't have to take my word for it. Just read the letter
of the Hebrews. Just read Romans. Just read Galatians. You'll see
that I'm right because the Bible teaches these things. It's not counting pages and turning
things upside down and holding them into the mirror to find
the mysterious numbers that add us up to the right alphabet so
we can say who's what in the Bible. It's just literally narratives
and narrations and poems and teachings that are very clear
and explain it all. Remember, Old Testament theology
is trumped by apostolic authority. It explains it. Moses demonstrates his faith
by leading people out of Egypt. And he didn't believe, did he?
He even told God he couldn't do it. And then God shows that the unbelief,
that the human condition of the Israelites and the Exodus is
deserving of death, and they grumbled against God, and the
serpent comes to bite the Israelites, and they are dying. And the very
thing that God gave Moses as a guide and a comfort in this
impossible task was a stick. That's comedy, y'all. That is
the funniest thing that's ever been printed. I want you to go
tell the king whose kingdom that you're wanted for murder to let
all the people that establish his economy and rule go. Sayeth I, I am. I can't do that. Well, take your brother. He's
not going to help me. Here's a stick. You just take
this stick down. It'll get you where you need
to go. The stick turns to a snake and the stick Turns the river
into blood, and the stick is sort of like, it's a pacifier,
it's a security blanket. That's why the head of it was
stuck in the Ark of the Covenant. No, that's the wrong one, isn't
it? That's Aaron's staff. Either way, there's probably
somebody trying to keep that stick. But Jesus uses that stick. Because
when the Israelites were dying, God told Moses, you take this
bronze serpent, and you put it on the end of the staff that
I gave you, and you hold it up, and you declare
that all who look upon the snake will
live. And he held it up. The very thing
that caused them to die, they had to look at for hope. The
snake. It's just a picture of that.
Righteousness caused them to die. Justice caused them to die. The law has no mercy, but the
lawgiver is the mercy seat. And put himself as the serpent
to be hated and despised, but yet bit no one, killed no one,
hurt no one. They grumbled against him and
he died. And he died for them. And Jesus in John chapter 3,
as we'll get to, it'll be my first example of the New Testament
foundation of faith. He says, as Moses lifts up the
serpent in the wilderness, so must I, the Son of Man, be lifted
up, that all who look upon me and believe will live. See, Moses
wasn't about him. It wasn't about Israel as a nation.
It was about Christ. It was about knowing we could
trust in the absolute promise of Christ and that faith is this
really strange thing that sometimes is unworkable. Faith is not the solid foundation
upon which we stand. Christ is the foundation. Christ
is the rock. It's not obedience. It's not
belief. It's Christ. And Moses not only believed God
and did all this silly stuff, he saw great power. And Moses
believed and was put over the care of God's people. And they
hated him for it. They hated him for it. But he relied on God for provision.
And we see all the prophets. All of them, the men and the
women of the Old Testament that God sent into the nations to
proclaim the good news. To proclaim the law, to proclaim
grace. We see all of them, what they
did is they proclaimed that promise that was given to Eve, the mother
of life. That inside of her was a seed
that only God could grow. And that from that son shall
the head of the serpent be crushed. And Adam and Eve believed God. They wore the clothes that He
made, not their own. The message of the prophets highlight
faith as resting in the future and the promise of restoration,
of justice, of rightness. And then we see the New Testament,
as I've already mentioned, in John. Of course, everything's going
to be somewhere in John's writing for me. But we see this restoration. We see the life and teachings
of Jesus present faith as belief in Him for salvation, a theme that is succinctly captured
in John 3, 16. And then the miracles of Christ,
the teaching, the parables of Christ, the interactions, they
emphasize this faith as a requisite for spiritual insight. as a requisite for miracles and as a requisite for hope. But it's a failing faith. I mean, it's always good to go
through the conversation with Nicodemus, right? He understood
it. He understood Messiah. He understood
that Jesus was Messiah. He didn't rest in Christ. He
had all the night understanding. He couldn't understand this idea
of being born of God, of just having a transformation of your
inner thoughts, or even when the thoughts weren't there, a
disposition of going, it's okay, Christ has me. Christ is the fulfillment of
faith. We see the healing narratives. And everywhere we go, I mean,
even the cripple at the pull of Bethesda. And Jesus says,
do you want to be healed? And he gives an excuse as to
why he's never been healed. It's always an excuse, right?
It's always something. Well, I can't do that. We try
to find fault with other people trying to help us. Because it's
certainly not, we want to be healed. But there's always something,
there's a circumstance or someone or something that's always in
the way. But nothing's in the way of Christ's salvation. Nothing
can stop it. You can't stop it. We can't stop
it. We can't be separated from the
love of God. The letters of Paul. exclusively discusses faith,
specifically in Romans and Galatians, framing it as a means in the
context of a necessary reality, but not necessarily the power
of justification. And sometimes we parse those
words and we even say them wrong or we mix them up or whatever
and some people say, wait a minute, so when I believe then God, no,
when you believe, you know that you've been saved by the faithfulness
of Christ. It wasn't all of a sudden magically
applied to us because we got it right, as we'll see. But that's how it's written.
That's how it's preached. But that's not how it's parsed. And the letters of Paul begins
to make a shift toward understanding faith is believing in the death
and resurrection of Christ and what it meant. You'd be surprised the number
of people every day that I talk to about the gospel and they
come back with some type of thing that would make them responsible
for their salvation. Well, I just need to have more
faith or I need to get my life right. No, you don't. You need to be still and know
that He is God and know that He has saved you. Because that's
what He said He did. Jesus says it is finished. Not, I hope y'all get this right. But that's how we live, isn't
it? I hope I get this right. And then we give up because we
can't get it right, and especially when times are difficult, we
throw our hands in the air, we leave the faith, we leave hope,
and we just go, well, I can never come back to my father because,
oh, what a fool that I am. But yet the very teachings of
Jesus say that the son who ran away and mocked the father and
wanted him more than dead, that the father was waiting and watching,
and they restored this boy. Luke 15. The general letters, Hebrews
11 has the hall of fame of faith, right? Summarizing Old Testament
examples to define faith as confidence in what we hope for and assurance
in what we do not see. Confident assurance is a really
good place to rest. But then James juxtaposes, juxtaposes,
James juxtaposes this idea of faith and works. And I remember
some of my first days in seminary going through letter studies
and people, professors saying, hey, now we've got a dichotomy
here, we've got a contradiction here. James and Paul are not
on the same page about justification, salvation. So therefore James'
letter may not even be authentic. And I'm like, so I read both
Romans and then James, and I read them again, and I'm like, what?
They're saying the exact same thing. One is teaching people
that because they have faith, they need to work that faith
out in obedience. And moreover, love and stop showing
favoritism for people. And if all we're doing is sitting
on our hands and we're not loving one another, then the faith that
we have is dead. It has no effect in the world
around us, like a dead cow. But even a dead cow, before it
rots, we can store it and eat it. but a dead faith is absolutely
worthless. Just like Paul says in 1 Corinthians
13, if we don't have love and we're seeking after our own well-being
at the cost of others, then we are worthless, like a clanging
cymbal, or like we put it in today's perspective that I often
teach that, it's like a child with a wooden spoon in a pot.
Yeah, it's funny the first three minutes. And you don't think you're a
murderer, just leave that on repeat for a little while. I thought you had kids. No, never
have. Don't know what you're talking about. James says that true faith manifests
something in actions. But I would say that it's not
just true faith, it's living faith. That's a better way of
putting it. And then we see John's apocalypse, which means revealed
things. Apocalypse does not mean the
end of all things and terror. It literally means revealed.
That's why we call that revelation. That's the English equivalent.
And that's faith in the context of suffering, not just eschatology
or end times or last days. We are in last days. Since the
day Christ left, we're in last days. and this encouraging perseverance
and believing that in persecution and trials, we look forward to
God's ultimate triumph and hope. That's faith. So these are sort
of the foundations. What have I done? I've just shown
you eight different ways in the Old and New Testament that faith
is described. Now back to 1 Peter. Here we see Peter saying we have
a living hope and inheritance that is imperishable and kept
in heaven for us. And we who see the pronoun there
who are being guarded by faith or through faith. By God's power. We talked about that a little
bit last week, segueing into today's sermon, that this suggests
not just a belief or rest in what God has promised, but that
there is a protective promise. So it's not just that God has
said, you have eternal life, but God has said, I will keep
you in this life. I read out of 1 Thessalonians chapter four
to start the service this morning. And I did so because it's on
my heart, I wanted it fresh in my head when I got here. Because we see that there is
a grand promise. Chapter 4 and 5, yeah, chapter
4 and 5, I read all of chapter 4 and then partial of chapter
5. But Paul, writing this letter
with Silvanus and Timothy, talks and tells the brothers and the
sisters to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. He rephrases it
in a certain way, he says, so that you may please God just
as you are doing. Isn't that funny sometimes when
we get to, when somebody reminds us of something or encourages
us of something? And then we take offense at it because we
know we're already trying or doing it, but we feel like we're
getting in trouble rather than being encouraged. I saw one of
the kids last night talking with them for an hour or two about
just all sorts of things, and they said, in parting, going
to bed, Dad, just don't forget, you have to give it to the Lord. And that doesn't bite. That's
a blessing. It's a blessing. And then Paul goes on to say,
now concerning brotherly love, nobody needs to write to you
about how to love one another. You're doing it, but I want you
to do more of it. It's also in the introduction of the letter.
And I don't want you to be ignorant about what's happened to those
people who have died. God's promises are yea and amen. You don't have
to worry about who's died or whether or not you're going to
die or whatever, because we're going to live. No one really dies in Christ.
We just live in a different place. And that's where that entire
7,000 volumes of eschatological nonsense about raptures and third
comings and fourth comings and all these other types of things
come from because it's a multi-million dollar racket from the time of
Darby to the time of the 1920s and 30s on through some of the
other nonsense all the way up to some of the other guys that
are still living today that I won't call their names so you don't go look
them up. It's a marketing ploy, it's not
a theological instruction, it's a nuanced way of expressing it. And we know this because he goes
on to talk about the helmets that cover our chest and our
salvation and our minds and guard our hearts. And we're not gonna
be issued armor either. Do you have your armor? Oh, when I was a boy, I really
wanted a set of armor. Too bad that's not true. But
in chapter 5 of Thessalonians, verse 9, no, verse 8, but since we belong
to the day, let us be sober-minded, sober-spirited, having put on
the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet, the hope
of salvation. It's our mind, the renewal of
our mind, Romans 12, 1 and 2. God has not destined us for wrath,
but he has destined us that we will obtain salvation Through
our Lord Jesus Christ who died in the place of us and for us
so that whether we're alive or dead right now We are alive with
him. So see I don't make this stuff
up. I just say it Therefore encourage one another
and build one another up just as you are doing that's the point
But when our faith wanes, we can't do that. And we shouldn't
be guilty on it. We're being guarded no matter
what our faith looks like. By what? God's power. This guarding helps us believe every now and
then and rest every now and then that God is holding us. It's
like my daughter saying last night, you gotta give it to the
Lord. Absolutely. And you might say, what? Everything. My mental plate is so full, it's
ridiculous. And I know many of you probably
have more to deal with. The Petrine Epistles. The Johannine
epistles, the Pauline epistles, in other words, the letters that
Peter wrote, the letters that John wrote, the letters that
Paul wrote. Peter specifically, he highlights faith as something
that is refined and proven genuine through pain. And so we see the foundations
of the Old Testament narratives where these people, even though
they were failing, even though they didn't always believe, even
though they didn't make the right decisions, they persevered. We see it illustrated in Hebrews
11, that though they did not receive what they were hoping
for, they did receive it in Christ. And now they're awaiting for
us to be with Christ. So let's synthesize all this
before we get into some application. These nuances. Faith is, it's
not one of them, but faith is multifaceted. That's the first thing you need
to understand. I mean, that's what I've just taught you, but
you need to understand that faith is multifaceted. It's not just believing the gospel.
It's not just resting in the power of God. It's not just acting
out and living out. I mean, it's not just theological
things. It's many things. A trust in
God's character and promise. A belief in the redemptive work
of Christ. It's a foundational principle for understanding how
God relates to us as human beings. It's also a dynamic process.
I want you to listen to this. Faith is a dynamic process that
grows and it is refined as we grow and age in the faith. Faith is not a stagnant, one-off
thing. It includes doubts, it includes
pain, it includes unbelief. So now let's think about where
faith applies. This will be fast, so pay close
attention. Faith applies in our personal
lives as we are transformed by the gospel. It's not an intellectual
assent. I used to buy into that. It's
not an intellectual assent. Faith is not an intellectual
assent. The scripture disavows that.
Faith involves the transformation of the whole person. It's something
that happens to us. It starts with a resting disposition
called repentance. That's what repentance is. Repentance
is not about putting away sin at all, ever, anywhere. Repentance
is a change of disposition, a change of mind. Something's happened
in my mind where I used to not even think about this, I used
to not even want this, I used to not even love this, or I used
to not even understand this, and all of a sudden I'm good
with it and I want it. A transformation. It's like singing a box with
flies all over it on the side of the road and someone says,
hey, go back and pick up that box. I don't want that box. Why would I want
that box? And then somebody tells you what's inside of it. I put two gold bars in the middle
of some ice cream and it fell off my truck and it melted. If
you could pick it up, you could have the gold. I'm going to get that thing. Your
perception's changed. Well, our perception can't change
when it comes to faith except the spirit of God does something. And faith transforms and impacts
how we approach our personal struggles, how we approach our
sin, how we approach our growing. It drives us to pursue life in
Christ, to want to walk in a manner worthy, to rely on God's strength
rather than our personal efforts. We also can apply faith in our
community, in our relationships. Beloved, faith extends beyond
the individual. It influences how we form and
function in the life around us with human beings. You know what?
This world, our existence, is for the sake of being with other
people. That's a picture of Christ, the
God of heaven, sufficiently, securely, perfect, with no want
or need, created the world and people that He may have intimacy
with them. This is a better display of His
glory. Does it make His glory any better? Does it make Him
more glorious? But now, wow, to behold, to see our faith,
just like the prophets and others, we are called to interact with the world and to
act justly and to have mercy. So I believe that faith helps
us to engage in society, in societal issues, from poverty to inequality
to overarching injustices. In what way? In the foundational
way that our faith and knowing the love of God pushes us to
love our neighbors as ourself, even and especially the unlovable
ones. Faith gives us endurance through
suffering and persecution. Faith gives us the power to go
out and serve others, like the Great Commission tells us to.
How do we do that? We teach them what I'm saying today. We take
the New Testament letters, and we take the gospels, and we take
the gospels out to the world or to the conversations we have
as much as we can. And when people ask, we invite
them to hear the story of this person named Jesus, who is the
God of creation, who came to be like us and took our sin on
himself, and now we are free. We are empowered by this faith
to go out and proclaim. Not the way evangelicalism has
done it. It's over. I'm just gonna say
that. Evangelicalism as a movement
has been over for a long, long time, and I'm not so sure that
it ever had a place in a biblically pure way, but it had a place
in God's purposes. There's nothing else to show
us that the patriarchal nonsense of all of this stuff has done
nothing but drive people further from love. We ought to live missionally.
Remember the first time you ever heard that? On mission. Being
on mission is where we are right now, present and available. It also applies to our intellectual
engagement and our apologetics. You know, you've heard me talk
about my hobby theology. Oh, wow. See, faith engages the
mind as well as the heart. Christians are called to love
God with all of their heart and their mind, which includes understanding
what they believe and why they believe and why it matters, but
not to the level and to the precision, and to the exposition that some
of us enjoy, but we also enjoy quantum physics, and chess strategies,
and history, and archeology, and law, and debate, and sometimes
just downright getting in a ring and punching people. Yes, there's
a science to fighting, and I can promise you I can show it to
you. But it's not about our salvation.
even the parts that are biblical. Our salvation is in Christ alone,
not in the knowledge, but our faith drives that, doesn't it? Our intellectual engagement strengthens
our faith and equips believers to address questions and challenges
from outside the community of faith, the church, in a way that
the scripture teaches us, which is founded in love, not nonsense
and knuckle-headed hatred. What do you mean? The Bible has
never called anybody in the faith to tell the world they need to
change the way they live. Because anybody can change their
lifestyle. And they can look the part and
stand before God, and the Lord will say, I never knew you, depart
from me, you worker of iniquity. John 3 is very important to that
understanding. Nicodemus was a very good man
with good theology, but he couldn't rest until he was born of the
Spirit. Faith applies to our personal
vocation. Do you know the word vocation?
Look it up if you're into words. It means divine call. That's
the literal definition of vocation. Divine call. So whether you're
working as a pastor, or whether you're working as a doctor, or
whether you're working at the coffee shop, if that's your vocation,
God has called you to it. Do it as unto the Lord. See? The faith informs understanding
of work. Viewing our jobs and our service
as a place to serve God and contribute to the common good. I mean, in my mind, I see all
work as sacred, as done under the Lord, Colossians 3, 23 and
24. So this challenges this secular-sacred
divide in my mind. So that when we work, we pursue
excellence, we pursue integrity, and we pursue service in everything
we do as an expression of our faith that's under the Lord. Work is not a means to an end,
but part of God's purpose of showing His self. But, all of those things being
true, it's not the centrality of faith, is it? The centrality
of faith is our eternal salvation. In Paul's writing to the church
of Ephesus, he says in Ephesians chapter 2, 8 and 9, for by grace
you have been saved through faith and this is not of your own doing,
but it is the gift of God so that no one can boast. So you
might say, well how do I muster this faith? You can't, it must
be granted to you. Salvation is entirely a work
of grace. Received through faith. What
does it mean received? Understood. Accepted. Grasped. Not applied. We don't apply salvation to ourselves
in any way. God has done that in Christ. Faith understands these things. We are justified before the Lord
because he said that we are in Romans chapter 3. But now apart
from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known to
which the law and the prophets bear witness. This righteousness
is giving through faith in Christ to those believing ones. And
I paraphrase there for emphasis. So we're declared righteous before
God and we know it. Why? Because of the faithfulness
of Christ, because of what He accomplished. Without faith,
it is impossible to please God. Without trusting in His faithfulness,
without resting in His promises, we can't please Him. We can't
stand righteous before Him, because if we are trying to establish
righteousness, even in our believing, I've got to believe more, I've
got to serve more, I've got to do more, I've got to be more,
then we are not resting in that moment and in that breath in
His righteousness. So faith pleases God because
faith is God pleasing Himself in justice. Let's see that for
a second. What do you mean? God put forth
Christ to be propitiation, to satisfy His wrath. Romans 3. So we rest. We rest. So the promise of entering,
chapter 4 of Hebrews, the promise of entering into this rest still
stands. Let us be careful that we don't
fall short, that we don't have a heart of unbelief. So even the Exodus was a picture
of God's faithfulness. We don't believe, we don't believe,
we don't believe, we don't believe, and there's a picture there.
Why did they walk around four decades? Because as they continued to
grumble in God's purpose, He showed that even amongst the chosen
people, there will be a chosen people. What does that mean? That God's love is the ultimate
decider. God's love is the ultimate power.
God's love is the ultimate mercy. God's will, and He's promised it to us, beloved,
that we would rest. We rest. We're in the desert.
Just rest. Okay, just rest. Just relax.
God's got it. I don't like what God's providing.
This manna is not good. Well, you want to go back to
Egypt, be a slave? Yes, because the food was better.
Can you imagine? That's the picture, though, isn't
it? We'll go back to doing our way. We'll go back to the law.
We'll go back to the obedience. We'll go back to church life. We'll
go back to cultural Christianity. We'll go back to this. We'll
go back to the Ten Commandments. We'll go back to whatever it
is. We'll go back to covering our heads. We'll go back to reciting
rote prayers. And look at the world. We'd rather
go back to doing the things that we can control and that we know
that we have there for us, even when they are leading to death
and bondage, rather than trust in the freedom that comes in
the unknown of what God has promised, because it's a scary place out
here in this world that we don't belong to, in the darkness that
we can't see into, but we are light, so peer into it and see
the light that sits there. Who is Jesus Christ the righteous? We rest, and we rest in the righteousness
of Christ. In Philippians chapter 3 verse
9, Paul says, and being found in him, not having a righteousness
of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through
faith in Christ Jesus, the righteousness that comes from God through faith. Faith doesn't give us this righteousness.
Faith sees this righteousness. Faith rests in this righteousness. Faith believes in this righteousness. Faith stands up and walks in
this righteousness. Faith in Christ is trusting His
promises. And we can rest in the work of
God. In John chapter 6, oh, what a full, full narrative. Specifically when he has fed
the 5,000 and they follow him to Capernaum and they find him
there the next day. Remember when he teleports the
boat three and a half miles across the sea. And the disciples are
just like a bag of potato chips. They're just dumb. And we would
be too. They're just dumb. I love it. I love that God used all these
dumb people to show his patience. All these posturing mansplainers.
Peter, the king of them all. Thomas. I tell you what, I ain't
gonna die, I ain't gonna believe unless I, and then the man shows
up. I almost sometimes feel like
Thomas double bolted the door so Jesus couldn't get in there
to prove him wrong. So he walked through the wall. Jesus didn't get on to him. What's
wrong with you, you idiot? You're so stupid. No, Thomas
was so human. He didn't get on to Peter when
Peter denied him three times. What's wrong with you? I thought
you were my guy, man. I thought you had my back, man. You're not looking
after me. I'm alone. I'm dying. I'm pleading
with the Father not to kill me. And I'm sweating blood in there,
and you go to sleep, John? No, that's not what Jesus did. Jesus didn't do that. Jesus did
not curse these people for their humanity. That was already done
by the law. He freed them from it in His
humanity. Let that sink in for a minute. That's a good story, y'all. That's
the gospel. So he says to Peter, just feed
my little sheep. Feed my lambs. Love me in the best way you can.
It's not going to be perfect, but my love for you is absolute
perfection. And perfect love will cast away
your fear. Just feed my sheep. Peter wrote this letter that
we may be fed the love of God today. And when Thomas He just says,
hey, Thomas, look at my hands. Look at my side. Thomas falls down, he says, you
are the God of me. The Lord of me. And he walked with him. In the cool of the day in the
garden where they walked in the intimacy with God. And then when
sin came into the garden their eyes were opened and they were
like God and they could see good and evil. And they saw that their
motivations, that their power, that their ability, that their
intelligence, that their seeking of wisdom did nothing but bring
death. Because the law has no mercy,
but the one who is the law giver became sin that we might be his
righteousness and he has declared us that. And so now when we are
knowing Christ and we rest that He knows us, we get to walk with
Him without shame, without guilt, without oppression, without favoritism. Faith is a work of God. Back
to John 6. Finding and he says they said
where'd you go? How'd you get here? Tell us how
we can never lose you again. We want to follow you And he
says you're seeking me not because of who I am and what I do And
what I came to do, but you seek me because you want what I will
give to you for your stomachs Times is hard a happy meal is
expensive. I give it up free bread and fish unlimited And
they travel over here for these mandated meals, temple
things, and all these pompous guys stand around blowing smoke,
blowing fire, cooking meat, taking up offerings, selling doves at
an elevated price. Gotta have it. Jesus says, they asked Jesus,
so what must we be doing then to do the work of God? What must
we do then? Okay, Jesus, we're doing all
this stuff, so you tell us, what brings that question? He says,
do not labor for the bread that perishes. Do not labor for this
world, but understand this world through the bread that doesn't
perish. Work for that. See how that application of how
our faith applies to all these areas? It's just succinct, and
if you don't see it, it's probably my fault, because maybe it's
just not clear enough in my exposition today. I'm tired. Then they ask, what must we be
doing to do the work of God? Tell us what to do. And Jesus
says it. It's such a wonderful way. I
mean, it's just it's not impressive. It's amazing. It's how I feel
about people that I love. They don't impress me. They amaze
me. An impression can be just an outward appearance, but an
amazement is to the core of the soul. And Jesus says, this is
the work of God. that you believe in me. I thought we were. We followed
you over here. All those boats that just somehow got blown over
here for that storm so we could all come over here. That happenstance,
you know, all that. Now we're over here and we do
believe in you. We believe you're going to give
us some more food, man. That's why we're here. You said it yourself.
But what food do you have? that you're talking about, I
don't get it. I am the food that comes down from heaven and then
everybody's like, I'm out, I'm out. This guy's nuts. Believe in the one he has sent,
Jesus says. Faith is not a human decision. Faithfulness is not a human effort. When we are weak, and we can't,
and we don't, He does. And then He does in us and through
us, and we go, wow, He's faithful. And then we're better equipped
for the next time, when the holes of life, and the pits of life,
and the trials of life, and the strife of life hit, and we go,
oh, I gotta be faithful, and then we're not faithful. We're
faithless and he's faithful. And then we're brought through
it again and then we're prepared. Wow, next time it's gonna be
better. I'm gonna be stronger. No, next time he's gonna be as
strong as he was the first. It's not about us being strong,
beloved. The greatest power that we have
as human beings is to recognize our inability to have strength. God, I wish I'd learned that
a long time ago. but in His purpose, it's a very novel idea for me. It's not novel information, but
it's definitely a novel wisdom. It's very new. So these scriptures that we've
talked about today affirm that faith is a supernatural work
of God and it involves a restful assurance in God's promises characterized by a change of
disposition and self-reliance. So if you want to see an active
reality of what repentance should be understood as in the context
of trusting Christ, it's a turning away from, if you want to use
it that way, self-reliance. And it allows us hope in the
face of all things. The Holy Spirit sent from heaven
taught us these things about Christ, taught the prophets these
things, now teaches us these things through these writings. And the one who is sent from
heaven is the faithful one into which all of the angels look.
All the angels look. Now do you see this sandwich?
Do you see what's in the middle of it? What comes out of it?
Christ is in the middle of it. He's the whole morsel. He's the entirety of it. And
what comes from eating this bread, from eating this hope, from focusing
in this way, is joy. Even when it's inexpressible. And that's where we'll be next
week. to see that the joy of the Lord, even when it's inexpressible,
is powerful to affect us in a positive way. So let's pray. Lord, I thank you for humility.
Lord, I pray. There's so much stuff in this
letter as we go get to it that I tremble to discuss. I tremble to discuss it because
I am not faithful to trust in it sometimes, all the time. But when I do, I praise you for
it. Lord, I'm also learning just
how wrong I've been in some things. And Father, I'm learning just
how blind I've been about some things. And so, Lord, by Your
grace and Your perfect timing, I pray that You would teach us
as a family to understand and to apply Your Word in a way that
we've never done before, by faith, not by works, not by structure,
not by system, not by framework, but by faith. And in doing so,
we trust in you. When we make the wrong choice,
we can trust that you are not mad with us, you are not angry,
you will not condemn us, but you'll carry us through, you
will teach us, and you will put us on the right path. And Father, we also know that
it is okay to struggle. It is okay to suffer. It is okay
to be in need. For in those moments, you are
strongest. And then we can be part of that
strength with those around us, Lord. As Jesus has shown to us
in Scripture, He is the creator of all things, yet He became
nothing and died on a cross as the weakest of all things. That
in Him we may live and that in His weakness we have strength.
So as we take the table today, Father, help us to remember the
body of Christ broken, and the blood of Christ shed, so that
we may stand with You. In Christ's name.