I intentionally picked that song
this morning because the title of our message is The Cause and
Effect of Faith. The Cause and Effect of Faith.
If you'd like to turn with me to Galatians chapter three. Galatians chapter three. After asserting Paul's authority
God given authority and I must say that's important we realize
that the only authority we have is God's word that's the only
authority we have the Lord gave Paul. authority over these churches
in order to teach them, in order to preach to them, and gave the
apostles the ability to heal and do many works that we can't
do. So he's reasserting himself,
his authority that God gave him. to point to the heart of the
matter, the issue of the matter, that the Galatians were going
to the law either as part of their salvation or as evidence
of their salvation. And Paul is letting them know
very clearly, very plainly, you're not saved by the law. He actually
says, as a matter of fact, by the law shall no flesh be justified. No flesh shall be justified by
the deeds of the law. We know the law was given for
one reason, that everyone would be found guilty before God and
that would shut us up. All mouths would be stopped.
We wouldn't have anything to say about us that's good. To
continue his rebuke, Paul He's going to show them the cause
and effect of faith. He's going to show them Abraham. Abraham's gonna be one of our
topics we speak about and how that the Lord parallels Abraham
to all believers experience. So your experience of faith in
Christ was Abraham's experience. You heard the gospel and the
Lord gave you ears to hear. Once you heard that gospel, the
Lord gave you faith to believe. It's all simultaneous. And the
Lord gives repentance as well. So we know that we're sinner.
We know that he's the savior and we must have him. This is
the work of faith in the heart all by grace. Abraham is called the father
of the faithful. And he's going to show us the
pattern because Abraham, we know there was others that believed
the truth. They were the elect of God. Noah
was a good example of that. He was a preacher of righteousness.
But to my knowledge, no one else that I found, and this is going
to be Genesis chapter chapter 12 around there. So that's not
too far into the Bible is my point. You don't ever read where
the Lord actually preached the gospel to an individual. Now
he would have had to in order for them to believe, but it actually
says this in our text, God preached the gospel to Abraham. Then God gave him faith to believe.
And that's what he's trying to get across to these Galatians.
And that's what we need to understand is that it comes by the hearing
of the gospel, but that hearing ear is of the Lord. the seeing
eye as of the Lord. Scripture says, how can they
hear without a preacher? And how can he preach except
to be sent? And so the Lord has to do the
entire work, doesn't he? So, let's read our text, Galatians
3, verses 6 through 14. It says, even as Abraham believed
God and it was accounted to him for righteousness, know you therefore
that they which are of faith are the same are the children
of Abraham. In the scripture, foreseeing
that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before
the gospel unto Abraham, saying, in thee shall all nations be
blessed. So then they which be of faith
are blessed with faithful Abraham. For as many as are of the works
of the law are under the curse, for it is written, cursed is
everyone that continue with naught in all things which are written
in the book of the law to do them. But that no man is justified
by the law in his sight of God, in the sight of God, it is evident.
For the just shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith,
but the man that doeth them shall live in them. Christ hath redeemed
us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for
it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree, that
the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through
Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through
faith. titled this message The Cause
and Effect of Faith. I was gonna title it The Cause
and Effect of God-Given Faith, but I actually felt like that
was rhetorical because there's only one kind of faith that pleases
God, it has to be God-given. Lord's not looking, men say,
put your faith in Christ. That ain't gonna do you any good.
God's gonna have to give you perfect faith. God's gonna have
to give you the faith of Christ to believe. If he doesn't give
us that, we'll never believe. We'll never believe. Here we
consider Abraham. And we asked the question, when
we asked the question, who or what is the cause of faith in
Abraham? Who or what? And he just said,
Abraham believed God. In another place it says, Abraham
believed God. And let me see if I can find
that again. Even as Abraham believed God
and it was accounted to him for righteousness. There are several
places in the scripture that actually says those words in just different
ways, but something that's so important. Somebody said, okay,
so if he, if I believe, if I believe, then that means righteousness
will be accounted unto me. The cause and effect. That's
what I want to talk about this morning. That's, that's backwards. If
we think that way, accounted, Accounted means to reckon. Accounted means to be reckoned.
And I mentioned this to us before, reckoning your bank account is
whenever you go and you have, you remember balancing checkbooks,
anybody? Remember balancing checkbooks back in the day? I think my generation
was on the last bit of that. When we got married, we were
doing it, and then we got to stop. We were like, yay, glad
that's over with. That's what you would do. You
would check the ledger. You would see how input, output,
and you would calculate, and you would say, okay, the bank
says I'm supposed to have $100 in my bank account. I have $100
in my bank account. I have reckoned that bank account.
So what is the Lord saying here about Abraham? He's saying that
his faith, the faith of God given to Abraham, was because, not
the reason he became righteous, but it was because of righteousness
imputed to him. His faith is the same. He didn't
receive faith That in a lot of times we say, believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, but it's not our belief that saves us. It's
God that saves us and then gives us faith to believe. Do we see
that? And so that's reckoned unto his people. This righteousness
is reckoned unto his people. Therefore, Abraham believed God. It wasn't that Abraham believed,
Abraham was a pagan, he was a idolater, he was living in a strange country
and God came to him. You can read about him up till
the point, he only mentions his name a few times prior, but it
was all his lineage, all his, so it was so and so begat so
and so, so and so begat so and so, and so and so begat Abram,
and Abram, he didn't have any children at that time, but he
married Sarah, and so it's just a lineage. And then all of a
sudden, the next chapter, it says, and God hath spoke to Abraham
and said, get thee up out of the Ur, the Chaldees, go to Canaan. And that's what he did. That's
what he did. He said, for a nice seed, I'm gonna bless all nations. And Abraham believed God. Abraham,
why did he believe God? Well, because of the cause, the
cause of believing God, God, that's the cause. What is the
cause of faith? God is. I'm not the cause of
faith. You're not the cause of faith.
What is the cause of faith? God is. If I am to be righteous,
I must be found in Christ. If I am to be found in Christ,
God must be the doer of it. Now we know throughout scripture
in different places, our Lord's very clear. Somebody said, well,
maybe Abraham was seeking God. Maybe Abraham was praying. Maybe
Abraham was, he cleaned up his life a little bit. Something,
that ain't what scripture says. Scripture just says, God came
to Abraham. Lord told Pharisees, and you
hear me quote this often in John chapter five, Christ says, you
will not come to me that you may have life. And he tells them
why. He said, because my father's
word's not in you. You love not the truth. So if we're gonna
come to Christ, he's gonna have to put his word in us. He's gonna
have to make us love the truth. How does he do that? He gives
faith that just believes God. That's what he did for Abraham.
Why won't we come to Christ? Well, the flesh is enmity against
God. That word enmity means hostile. You know how two countries will
start feuding a little bit, and that feud will get heated, and
they'll start becoming hostile towards each other. Talking about
war, maybe they go to war. They're hostile towards each
other. That's what our flesh is to God. When? All the time. It never stops. When you're sleeping,
when you're awake, if you're breathing, your flesh is hostile
towards God. That's why the scripture says,
so then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. They cannot please God. So this
is evidence that he definitely didn't walk an aisle or say a
prayer or made Jesus his choice as men talk about. He didn't
do any of that stuff. Not at all. He didn't start living better.
The first cause of salvation is who? God. God is the first
cause of salvation. Very first. And I love the fact
Well, I'll read this first. 2 Thessalonians tells us this,
God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification
of the spirit and belief of the truth. God chose you unto salvation. He is the first cause. Election's
the very first cause of our salvation, God choosing to redeem a people. If faith is not freely given,
we cannot come to him. But we are made to believe. We are enabled to believe because
we've been saved. You know the verse we have on
our bulletin that I quote so often says, God saved us and called
us. What came first, the calling
or the saving? The saving did. The Lord's always seen his people
in Christ before the foundation of the world. The crucifixion
of Christ just had to take place in time. But we've always been
seen in him. God saved us first. in election,
then he saved us in time. We've been saved in time and
eternity. And then when the fullness of time comes, he comes to, just
like he did Abraham, he comes to a man, he comes to a woman
that's his, and he says, live. That's our hope, isn't it? Lazarus,
come forth. Lazarus didn't have anything
to do with that, did he? No, Lazarus was dead, he stunk.
We're dead in trespasses and sin, we stink. Lord, you're gonna
have to come to where I'm at and tell me to live. You have
the words of power. Whom shall we go? The Lord told
the disciples, will you go away too? After everybody left him,
when the Lord didn't feed them, didn't give them what they wanted,
something physical. Some of them were like, show us a sign, do
this and that. And he said, no sign will be given but that of
the prophet Jonah. After the conversation was done, everybody
left except for the disciples. And the Lord looked at them and
said, will you depart too? And the disciples spoke up and
said, Lord, whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal
life. You have the words of eternal life. There's nowhere else to
go, you're it. You're the one. God comes to Abraham, his name
was Abram at the time. I should have probably turned
us back there. I've already told you about everything we're gonna
read, but let's turn back to Genesis 12 just to see that. Now it says at the beginning
here, verse one of chapter 12, and now the Lord had said unto
Abram. I know, we don't know when that
was. We have no idea exactly when that took place. We just
know that God came to him. If you read, as I mentioned before,
if you look back up, you'll see where they, that's all, it's
just lineage of everything, where he came from, his great-grandfather
and his grandfather and his father. It's just, that's all that it
is. Now it says, now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee
out of that country and from thy kindred and from thy father's
house and to the land that I will show thee." He didn't even know
where he was going. Lord said, I'll show you. I'll show you.
That's how a believer lives their life. Do we know that? We know
we press towards the mark of the high calling of God. We press
towards Christ, our hope, but often the pressing that we're
doing, we're in a dark land where we can't see. And we need him,
we need his light. He said, I'll show you, I'll
teach you. And I will make of thee a great nation and I will
bless thee and make thy name great and thou shalt be a blessing.
And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curseth
thee. And in thee shall all families
of the earth be blessed. So Abram departed as the Lord
had spoken unto him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was
seventy and five years old when they departed out of Haran. And
Abram took Sarai his wife, Law his brother's son, and all their
substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten
in Haran. And they went forth to go down
to the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came.
Lord says, get thee up, depart, leave, go, from your father's
house, from all the substance, everything that you know, everything
that, that's a, I don't know many people here has moved as
far as we move, but we came to a strange land, still America,
but it was a different culture, different atmosphere, a lot of
things were different. It was frightening. Like, well,
what if this? Well, what if that? And what the Lord does is he
teaches us. He says over in Isaiah chapter 40, when thou passest
through the fire, you won't be burned. When it goes through
the flood, they won't overtake you. I am the Lord. I will be
with you. That's what he says. Look to
him. And that's what faith does. That's why Abraham packed up
everything and left, because God told him to. Now, some might
say, well, This seemed like this was a contingent thing because
it's, God says, if you get thee out, I will make of thee a great
nation. Now, when the Lord says, I will
do something, That's not a contingent thing. That's not based upon
Abraham's acceptance or rejection in any way. Because if God says,
I'm going to do this, man cannot stay his hand or say unto him,
what doest thou? He's God. He's God, so he's saying
this, get thee up, this is what I'm gonna do. I've already determined
this before the foundation of the world. And you know what
else he determined? That faith that Abraham was given
when he preached the gospel to him. That faith that Abraham
was given that looked to Christ He said, truth, Lord, I'll follow
you. I'll follow you. God spoke to Abraham. Well, that's
where it starts, isn't it? What's the cause and effect of
faith? Well, the first cause is God. He is the alpha and the omega,
the beginning and the end of all things, especially his salvation,
especially his salvation. It doesn't say anything about
Abraham seeking, searching, desiring, looking, it just says, now the
Lord had said unto Abraham. So he came to him, the Lord appeared
to him, some way, shape, or form manifested himself and spoke
to Abraham. And he said, get thee out, get thee up, go. And
Abraham believed God. I love the fact that God told
him to go, therefore he obeyed. wasn't, I can't stress this enough,
it wasn't that he had option A and option B. When the Lord,
well, I'll put it this way. Those of you who profess Christ
is all, you can't help but just believe the gospel, can you?
You can't help but just know that it's your only hope for
salvation. You can't help but just know
that Christ He has finished work on the cross. If he did not accomplish
salvation, I have no hope of eternal life. That's what we
know. It's the same with Abraham. He was made to believe God the
same way. God's purpose, God's Will is
better than mine. I don't have a will. And he followed
God. That's what faith does. It just
looks to Christ. It doesn't look at what we can see with our natural
eyes. And that's what we get caught up with a lot, isn't it?
What we can see, which causes us emotions. It causes us doubts
and fears. Faith don't have those. Faith
looks to Christ. Faith, well, it has motion. I
love joy, peace, gentleness, meekness, but none of that, none
of that is, that's the fruit of the spirit, isn't it? Let's go back to Galatians 3.
Look at verse 16. I'm sorry, verse six. Even as Abraham believed God
and it was accounted to him for righteousness. And I've already
got ahead of myself. I was gonna talk about the word reckoning here,
but I've already told you what that means. Abraham believed
God because it was accounted unto him for righteousness. The Lord said, that's one of
my sheep. That's one of my sheep. And the Lord made him righteous.
How did he make him righteous? Well, he made him righteous on
the cross of Calvary. He made him righteous by the death of
his son. Now the issue with the Galatians here is they're saying,
go to the law. as part of your salvation or
as evidence of your salvation, you have to. If you don't, you're
not the children of Abraham. That's the issue right here.
You're not the true children of Abraham. The law wasn't even
given in Abraham's time. He wasn't looking to the law
for justification. That's why he said, the just
shall live by faith. The just, there's the justified. The ones
that the Lord had justified, they're called the just because
he is just and justifier of his people. Abraham believed God not for
salvation, and that's so important. We don't believe for salvation,
we believe because of salvation. What comes first, the life or
the breath of the baby? The baby comes forth from the
womb, baby's not breathing, but it's still alive, right? That
first breath is what? Evidence of life. Evidence. What's the heartbeat? Evidence
of life. What is our belief in the Lord
Jesus Christ? It's evidence of life. It's evidence of faith
given. In no way is it a work. In no way is it the reason. Our believing is not why we're
justified. And I'll say this, having faith,
having faith is not the reason that we're justified. We're justified
freely by his grace, therefore we're given faith to believe. Faith is the only way that we
can receive and understand that we're justified in Christ because
faith looks to Christ and not self. If we go about saying,
and he does say here that we're justified by faith, I understand
that, but here's what he's talking about. Well, I've already said
it mostly, but he's saying that in order for you to be justified,
you have to have faith. Otherwise, there's no justification
for you. But you having faith is not the
reason that you're justified. The reason you have faith is
because you've been justified. That's what he's clearing up
here because these Galatians, They're, they're in works, man.
They're looking, they're looking at what they do, what they, what
they don't do. And they have a righteousness
outside of Christ. And what does he say? And we'll
hear this the second hour, but what does he say to them? You
who do the deeds of the law, you're under the curse thereof. That's all that it can do is
curse us. Just curse us. Notice the next point Paul makes,
verse seven. Know ye therefore that they which
are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham, and the
scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through
faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, in thee
shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith
are blessed with faithful Abraham. Faith. is evidence that the Lord
has saved us. Now, we never look to faith.
We look to Christ. That's what faith does. We can't
get that confused because there's a lot of people, they make faith
a work. And if we're not careful, we'll
do the same thing. That's just what we do by nature. Our flesh
wants to have a job to do. Our flesh wants to do something
in order to have part in glory. Our flesh wants glory. That's
the problem. Our flesh wants glory. But faith is evidence
of being justified. That's what he's saying here.
We look to Christ alone. We look to Christ alone as our
justification. He justified his people freely
by his grace. This is the work of God. This
is the work of God. This is the effect of faith,
is believing God. What's the cause? God is. What's
the effect? Believing God. He gets all the
glory. Where's the glory for me in that?
I didn't choose to believe, he caused me to. I didn't make a,
I didn't, nothing that I have done. Matter of fact, he said
that, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according
to his mercy. That's how he saved us. So if I didn't do anything
to earn salvation, I didn't do anything as part of my salvation,
where is my glory? Paul said it best. He said, if
we glory, let us glory in the cross. Finished work of Christ,
that's where we glory. We don't glory in self and what
we do. For by grace are you saved through faith in that not of
yourself. That's as clear as it can be.
This is what Paul's telling these Galatians. It's not of yourself.
This circumcision doesn't determine your salvation, nor does it deter
your salvation, but looking to it is detrimental because you
have a righteousness outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. For
by grace are you saved through faith in that not of yourself.
It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
Here we have the cause of faith freely given by God's grace to
his elect. And the effect is we believe. We believe. We're made to believe
God, made that he is all our hope. Made to believe that Christ
is all our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. And how do we believe that? Is
that a choice we make? No, it's faith bestowed, isn't
it? It's faith bestowed. He told
Nicodemus, you must be born again. You must be born again. You can't
believe God unless you've been born again. Who done the birth? Think about our, I talked about
a baby already. What part did we have in our birth? Were we
helping at all? We were the hindrance. We were
the problem. We were the ones that causing
the pain, weren't we? Every one of us, what our mothers had to
endure to bring us into this earth. We didn't help. It's the same spiritually, brethren.
We don't help God in any way. He doesn't need our help. Why
would he need a, why would he need dead dog sinners? Why would he need help from a
powerless creature such as us compared to him? He wouldn't.
He wouldn't. Thank God he chose to show mercy
and he chose to show grace unto Abraham and to all of his people
by coming to where they are and saying live Seek you my face
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and he was given faith to believe
and the Lord said that's because you're righteous I've made you
the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. That's what he did and When the Lord took Abraham up
to Mount Moriah, he showed him what was going to take place
on the cross of Calvary. He showed him that it was going
to be not his sacrifice. You can't even sacrifice your
son and God be pleased with that, Abraham. But Abraham obeyed God
by faith, takes him up to Mount Moriah. And what a picture it
is of our Lord and the cross of Calvary, even as they're going
up. the mountain, it says Abraham had the knife, Abraham had the
fire, but Isaac had the wood. Now, Isaac says, here's the wood,
here's the fire, but where is the sacrifice? What did Abraham
say? The Lord will provide himself
a lamb. He'll provide himself, and that's
what he did in Christ. He provided himself physically,
and he provided the only thing that would please him, which
is himself. But that knife is the sword of justice, and the
fire is God's wrath, and that wood he was carrying is the cross
itself. It's a picture, isn't it? He laid him on the altar
and he's going to, I mean, he was going to go through with
it. It's obvious. It's evident in scripture that he was going
to go because he believed God. God promised him, God promised
him that all nations would be blessed, that he was going to
be the father of nations. Now the Jews are caught up in
this thought that only the Jews are God's chosen people. That's
what they're thinking, but it's not a physical nation. It's a
spiritual nation. It's a spiritual nation. Well,
Abraham knew one of two things. Either God would give him another
son or he would resurrect Isaac. One of the two. And he probably
believed God would resurrect Isaac. Scripture is not clear
on that, but he told him the son that you have, that'll be
the one that carries on that is part of this as well. So he
believed God. And right before he's about to
kill him, The Lord said, don't do him any harm. Now I know that
thou believe. I know that thou believe. And
think about this moment because now he don't have to kill his
son, but they want to worship. Think about that. You know, they
want to worship. They turn around and they have a ram caught by
his horns in the thicket. I mean, Abraham was right. God's gonna provide himself that
which he's pleased with. The ram that has horns, that
represents its strength. It was caught by its strength.
And we see that the thorns themselves from Genesis chapter three, that's
the curse. That's the curse. The Lord, what did it do? And
I'm getting to the next message already. He was made a curse
for his people. He bore our curse on the tree.
That's all the picture there. But God showed Abraham how salvation
was gonna be accomplished, how he was gonna do it. And what
a beautiful picture it is. It's in Genesis chapter 22 that
all that came from. Our Savior had to die, had to
bear our curse, die, willingly laying down his life. That's
what God was showing Abraham. And because of that, we are freely
justified by His grace. Understand something, God didn't
make us stronger. He has made our strength. He
has became our strength. God didn't make us wiser, so
to speak. He is all of our wisdom. We don't
profess to know anything save Jesus Christ and him crucified.
The Lord didn't show us a way where we could become righteous
if we do something. He has made into us all our righteousness. He didn't show us how to become
justified if we did something. Christ is our justification.
He's made our justification. The Lord didn't teach us how
to do the deeds of the law, did he? No, because we just read
by the deeds of the law, no flesh shall be justified. No, he showed
us Christ who has made all our righteousness. He revealed that
he didn't make a way, he is the way. He's not a truth, he's the
truth. a way to have life, he is life
eternal. And to know him is to have life
eternal. Isn't that what he said? This
is life eternal that they may know you. They may know me, the
only one true God. This is the cause. And this is
the effect. of salvation for the Lord's people.
This is the cause, and this is the effect of God-given faith. God-given faith. Everything pertaining
to God can only be received by faith bestowed. Otherwise, we
are of all men most miserable, but thanks be to God. He gave
faith to Abraham and he gives faith to his people freely by
his grace. This is the cause and effect
of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, we ask that
you would take these words and bless them to our understanding
for your glory in Christ's name. Amen. Let's take a break.