Bible Lesson 101

Defending The Faith

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2nd Timothy 3:16-17

3rd In A Series

‘THE FAITH’ is all absolute truth, and it is encoded in our Word from God, the Bible. ‘The Faith’ has been the subject of much controversy and has been used and misused as it was abused, by preachers and false prophets who have never been brought into the wonderful light of Biblical truth.

Sadly, we as people who are in such a hurry to do everything, have for whatever reason, elected to forgo our study of the Bible and we have listened to preaching that did not even come close to the faith. We became so lazy and apathetic and uninvolved with the Bible that we believed any half-truth that came down the pike (Romans 1:22-32; 21st John 1:6; 2nd Thessalonians 2:9-12; 1st Timothy 4:1-2). So for us to contend earnestly for ‘the faith’ or to protect the absolute truths that make up the Bible, we must first reacquaint ourselves with that truth (2nd Timothy 2:15).

Just in case you have thought in your mind, that you are not guilty of not studying the Bible, let me ask you one question and you answer it truthfully. How much time have you spent studying the Bible in the last week’ How much time have you spent watching the television or listening to the radio or just relaxing on the couch’

See what I mean, we allow ourselves to become so taken up with the devil and his devices that we neglect the only thing that can lead us to the truth and that is the Bible. The truth of the Word of God the Bible is the only way to gain heaven because that is the only way that we can get to our redemption, the cross of Jesus Christ (Romans 10:17).

With that said, I ask you now, are you ready to know the truth about ‘The Faith” Let me warn you at the outset of this lesson, I will reveal some truth to you that you will probably want to argue with, so I ask you to check what I say by what God has said because I will be using Scripture to prove everything that I will say. Keep your Bible handy and forget what you may have heard about the Bible and let’s know the Bible for ourselves.

Next, I would ask you if you believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. If you do not then I would ask you to lay your hand on your copy of God’s Word and pray and ask God to give you the light that you need to believe in His Word; because if you don’t believe it, and I mean every word of it then our lesson will have been in vain.

Then I would ask you if you believe in the God of the Word’ Do you believe that the God that is revealed in the Bible is the one and only God that exists’ Do you believe that He created all that we know including man, and do you believe that He is a Triune God (One God that reveals Himself to us in three distinct personalities, Father in heaven, The Son Jesus Christ who took upon Himself the form and flesh of mankind and quenched the wrath of The Father against our sin, and the Holy Spirit of God who applies the benefits of salvation to our lives)’

Do you believe with all your heart, mind and soul that He is working out His eternal plan in the lives of all men, both saved and lost’ Do you believe that this God will one day send His Son Jesus Christ to judge the quick and the dead and repay every deed’ If you truly believe all of that to the point that it affects the way you live, then we can move on to ask God to show us from His Word the Bible, what we should mean when we speak of contending for the faith!

Some might ask, well, is knowing and understanding and earnestly contending for the faith that important. I answer that and say, that it is the most important thing that anyone will ever be called upon to do; because it determines our eternal state. In other words, a person may just stumble blindly along through their life, never take the time or make the effort to study the Bible, and plead for an understanding of it all, but that person has, by doing nothing, decided to spend his or her eternity in hell.

I have told you before on numerous occasions, that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17). Remember now, we are saved by Grace ‘through faith, and we must hear and acknowledge the truth of the Bible to receive God’s gift of faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). If I were to ask you right now, where you preferred to spend your eternal life, heaven or hell, what would you say’ Unless you are a stone fool you would say that you wanted to go to heaven for your eternity rather than hell. It’s easy to go to hell if you want to, and Christ tells us how we can do that. It is by entering in at the wide gate and walking that broadway; but if we want to go to heaven we must enter by the strait gate and walk the narrow way (Matthew 7:13-14). The wide gate is the gate that is offered by Satan, who is the prince and power of the air here on the earth.

Satan is not Omnipotent, but God allows him to hold forth here on the earth since the fall of Adam. We can enter that wide gate and walk that broadway by no effort at all, and we will find ourselves forever in hell, that place of eternal flames and torment (Luke 16:19-31). I would remind you that you do not have to go there, but if you ignore the Bible and the God of the Bible, you can be assured that you will be there forever, and ever, and ever, and ever. You can, if you desire a relationship with a loving God more than you desire life itself, flee to the cross of Christ, and have your sins forgiven and be justified by His blood.

You will then be reconciled to God, and adopted as His child and given an inheritance in heaven (John 3:16-21; Romans 6:23; Romans 5:1-5; Romans 6:1-14; Ephesians 1:13; Ephesians 2:10; 2nd Corinthians 5:17-19; Ephesians 1:4-11). So, it turns out that knowing and responding to ‘the faith’ is the most important thing that any of us will ever have the opportunity to deal with. Have you desired to know God and be just before Him’ Have you ever felt that supernatural call on your life to serve God through His Son Jesus Christ, that desire so strong that you could do absolutely nothing else’ If you haven’t it is not too late for you to ask, seek and knock, asking God to give you the light of His glory (Luke 11; 9-10).

What is ‘the faith’ or what must you believe to serve God’ The answer is the Bible. With that said we can organize the Bible into an understandable form which is easy for us to understand, and will always comfort the people of God (Isaiah 40:1). Let’s begin at the beginning of man’s understanding of the Bible, and that is that none of us who are born of the flesh are alive. We are born dead in trespass and sin, and we are born into this world under the wrath of God; because we are unrighteous, unless and until God takes us into His family through our faith in His Son Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:1-9; Romans 3:11). In our lost and dead condition, we hate God and refuse to consider our condition before Him (Romans 8:6-8).

Everything that we do as lost men and women is sin, even those things that the world would consider to be good things because anything that is done that is not of faith (saving faith) is sin. We have been taught that if a person is a good husband/wife, father/mother, neighbor, and such, that they are alright with God, but that is not Biblical. The Apostle John, under the inspiration of God, tells us that unless we are born again (born from above), we cannot see or enter into the kingdom of God (John 3:3, 5). That old creature that was born with the nature of Adam cannot inherit the kingdom. That creature must be put to death and a new creature must be created by God, and that new creature is created in Christ and has newness of life, the life of Christ (Romans 6:1-14; Ephesians 2:10; 2nd Corinthians 5:17).

If we are born once, we will die twice (Physically and Spiritually), but if we are born twice, we will die only once (Physically), that means that unless we have been called by God, reborn, justified, and glorified we will miss heaven and go to hell. But if we take the time and make the effort to seek that new birth and receive forgiveness for our sins we will go to heaven (John 3:16-21; Romans 8:29-30; Ephesians 1:4-14). It is a tragedy that we have come to the point that we believe that reading the Word of God, the Bible, is not necessary. We carelessly think that as long as we go to church and hear preaching that we will be alright in the judgment; however that is far from being the truth. To be saved we must have a knowledge of God and God makes that clear in Romans 10:17, when He says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

What that means is that we must gain knowledge of God and ourselves in relationship to God, before God will supernaturally rebirth us and forgive our sin. The truth of the faith is vital to our ever making connection with God (John 8:28-32). For us to gain true knowledge of God we must read the Bible with the understanding that it is the inspired Word of God to us. Most people tend to read the Bible like it was a novel or a funny book, and with that mindset, they have no problem reading and believing or reading and denying the authority of what we read. God tells us plainly in Hebrews 11:6 that ‘He who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.’

We can do that only after we have evaluated our sinful condition and seen how far we are from what God created us to be. God sent His One and Only Son Jesus Christ to save sinners Matthew 1:21, He did not come to save the complacent or the comfortable but to save those who have seen their hopelessness and their extreme need of help that only God can give. I know that many have placed their souls in the hands of some man or woman who has attempted to reassure them that God loves everyone and that includes them, but we who are saved or lost cannot offer salvation to anyone because only God awakens a person who was born dead in trespass and sin, that takes a supernatural work of God.

You may ask, well, who does God intend to save and why does God save anyone’ The answer is that God saves those who he chose before the foundation of the world. God in eternity past, before He created anything else that we know of chose to choose a particular people, from every tribe, tongue, and nation, that He would create later. God did not choose anyone because they would be better in the world’s terms or smarter than average or richer or poorer, He chose without any regard of anything other than He wanted to save them. The question now becomes, how can we know who was chosen’ The answer is that we cannot know who was chosen until we see the evidence of salvation in people we observe.

Yes, it has become the chic thing to do in many churches of our day, to say well I choose to be a Christian, or I made that decision to be saved; however, that argues with the Word of God. God did the choosing and He graciously chose to allow you to agree with the choosing. We were born dying and going to hell the moment we first opened our eyes; however God chose to call some of us out of the sin of this world into His glorious light, but always remember that it was God and God alone whose Grace it is that saves anyone (John 15:16; Romans 9:11-21; Acts 13:48; Ephesians 1:3-6; John 15:5; Ephesians 2:1-9). We don’t know who is elect and who is not but regardless we are told to preach and witness to everyone who will listen (Matthew 28:19-20; Matthew 10:14-15).

The biggest part of the problem that exists in the minds and hearts of the people of our churches today is that we have thought to do what only God can do and that is to save souls. We have thrown off the constraints of the Word of God and the God of the Word, and we have gone off half-cocked to save the world. God makes it clear in His Word the Bible, that not everyone would be saved because not everyone would be interested enough to find that strait gate and walk that narrow way that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14, Matthew 13:1-23; John 10:7-16; John 17:6, 20). Our job as Christians is to know and obey the Word of God and if we do that then God will do the saving of those who He chooses. God tells us in Hebrews 5:8-9, that Jesus Christ died for those who would obey Him and we must know that those who are truly saved will walk according to the commandments of the Lord.

Our God is a God of grace and His grace is Irresistible (John 6:37), and that means that the creature cannot resist the Creator’s call on his life. That means that when we observe some people profess their faith in Christ, and join a church group; but later falls back into his old life of sin, that they had never been called by God and never saved. Making professions is easy, especially in our society of practiced connivance. We can make our mouths say things that our heart cannot validate. If I wanted to, I could make my mouth say to you that I am the richest man in the world but that would be a lie.

The old saying that goes, the proof is in the pudding, certainly holds here. God never begins the work of salvation in a person and then fails to bring that person into the kingdom (Philippians 1:6). That could be the reason that God had His Son, Jesus Christ to warn us in Luke 14:25-33, that we have to know and count the cost of belonging to God. Being a child of God requires the one who would be His child, to love Christ above anyone or anything in this world or any other, to be able to die to self which means we submit our lives to God through Christ, and that we live that crucified life that Christ lived (Galatians 2:20; Romans 6:1-4).

The Christian life is supernatural, a miracle that shines through the flesh to demonstrate the supernatural of God to all who see it. A.W. Tozer has said, ‘Our Lord died an apparent failure, discredited by the leaders of established religion, rejected by society and forsaken by his friends. It took the resurrection to demonstrate how gloriously Christ had triumphed. Yet today the professed church seems to have learned nothing. How much eager-beaver religious work is done out of a carnal desire to make good.’ The gospel is not supposed to be about denominational churches, it is about God and His grace and what His grace provided for those who will obey God. When God does something, anything, it means exactly what He said.

When God saves a person, that person becomes a new creature, in Christ, and that is always evidenced by the newness of life (Ephesians 2:10; 2nd Corinthians 5:17; Romans 6:1-4). Sadly, too many pastors, teachers, evangelists, and laymen have felt the need to teach that man is the center and the focus and the subject of all things instead of teaching that it is God and His decrees that we should be teaching. Churches throughout the world have found what people want and what people think that they need and they have violated the Word of God to be able to assure people that it their felt needs and their problems that God is concerned with salvation. We tend to offer God to anyone who walks the church aisle, shakes the preacher’s hand, and professes a faith in Jesus Christ. Without a question, most are accepted into fellowship and given church membership on that basis.

Ask yourself, have you ever seen a person who walked the aisle denied membership in the church’ The church was based upon ‘The Faith’, and by that I mean a faith that was initiated by God in heaven, and demonstrated an understanding of what salvation was all about. This easy believism or cheap grace preaching in the church has flooded the church with people who are not saved but think that they are because the church has assured them of their salvation. We take people into the church and fellowship with them in Christ based on their pocket-change and their spare time. They come to church and sit and listen to preaching but never really apply anything it says to themselves. Have we helped or hurt that person that we tell them that they are saved, without the benefit of demonstrated newness of life. The answer is that we have not only hurt them we have sentenced them to hell. The church in many cases has become a holding cell for hell (Romans 2:5-11).

What then is the answer for us as the people of God, or is there an answer. The answer is that the answer is for all of us to reexamine our lives, hearts, and souls to ascertain, whether we are in Christ. Now we have to know that when we are saved, that we are recreated ‘in Christ’ and that we have been radically changed. If you cannot define that or find a place where you can mark your old life dead and new life raised then you need to begin to seek God.

The blind cannot lead the blind, because when they try that, they both fall into the ditch. There is a great need for remedial Bible study and that goes for all of us. Many times the person who seems to know more Bible verses is the person in most need of salvation. Anyone can learn specific verses and I recommend that to everyone because the Psalmist has said in Psalms 119:11, that ‘Thy Word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee.’ We should learn the Word of God and commit it to memory, but we should have an organized theology, that we have gained from a concerted study of the Bible.

When we speak of ‘the faith’ we must remember that it all starts with God creating the heavens and the earth, that the first couple Adam and Eve were created in a state of innocence and would have lived forever if they had not disobeyed God and eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When our great grandfather and grandmother fell into sin, their nature was passed along to their children forever. We are born into this world dead in trespass and sin and under the wrath of God; but God who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loves us, even when we were dead in sins’.’ has made the way for us to be justified and stand in the judgment. God provided the penal judgment for sin as death, both physical and

Spiritual (Romans 3:23; Romans 6:23). God also provides that penal substitute, who was His One and Only Son, Jesus Christ (John 3:16-21). I would remind you that before God created the heavens and the earth, and Adam and Eve or anything else, He elected a people from every nation, tongue, and tribe to be saved. God did not mark those who are chosen and nobody knows them except God. Christ came from heaven and took upon Himself the form and flesh of man without sin and lived and went to the cross where all of us should have gone to save those who would obey Him (Hebrews 5:8-9). True Salvation initiates two things first, we are imputed the righteousness of Christ; but it does not stop there instead it goes on to include the actual living out in daily life that righteousness of Christ (Romans 8:1-17).

I hope and pray that you won’t allow the devil to trick you into questioning God about His election, but will rather, ask yourself, can you or will you obey what God has said in the Bible. We cannot make up our own God or our own Savior. There is one God, who manifests Himself to us as Father in heaven, Son, Jesus Christ who died for us on the cross, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ came in a supernatural incarnation, through the womb of a virgin, he bled and died on the cross and was buried in a borrowed tomb and on the third day He arose and now sits in heaven on the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us.

The Bible is the inerrant Word of God and we who are obedient will believe it’s every word. You cannot change anything in God’s Word the Bible. We who are willing to submit to God through Christ will be saved to the uttermost. Can you believe ‘.can you obey’.then throw yourself on God’s mercy and grace, and the work and person of Jesus Christ as being sufficient for your forgiveness and reconciliation to God.

Until next time,

may God bless and keep you

This is Bro. Bob