Bible Lesson 158

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God
Romans 10:17

‘Lord give me faith!?.to live from day to day, With tranquil heart to do my simple part, and with My hand in Thine, just go Thy way.

Lord, give me faith!?to trust, if not to know, With quiet mind in all things Thee to find,And child-like, to go where Thou wouldst have me go.

Lord give me faith!?..to leave it all to Thee, The future is Thy gift, I would not lift The veil Thy love has hung ‘twist it and me’.
John Oxenham

Perhaps it’s time for us and all of the world to wake up and smell the coffee, as the old saying goes. Maybe we ought to open our eyes and our minds and our hearts, and look back to the only truths that we have in this sin sick world today. I am speaking about a lot of things but it all revolves around one word and that word is faith.

Perhaps some of us think that we have faith and perhaps that is true but what kind of faith do we have’ Is it saving faith or simply faith that we want to believe is saving faith but in fact is a vain faith. Surely we all know that there are many kinds and degrees of faith and what we have lost in the civilized world today is what kind of faith it takes to be saved from God’s wrath to come, possibly sooner than we think.

We all enjoy being able to say that we have faith but in saying that most of the time and in the majority of cases, we do not know what kind and degree of faith it takes to know the forgiveness of our sins, our standing before God, and the fate that awaits us the moment we die. If I were to ask you and I am asking you, to stop for a moment before you read any further, and ask yourself, ‘Who is your Father’, what would you answer be’ I don’t want you to give me the pat answer, the answer that the institutionalized churches of our day has taught us to say when we are asked that question, I want you to examine your life and answer the way you should. Do not ignore my question, do some soul searching and answer truthfully.

Have you done that today’ Have you really set down the real facts of salvation and measured yourself by them, and will you now be honest with yourself. Who is your father’ You have to know, or at least you should know that there are two Fathers for all of us. Only two’God is the Father of those who have had true faith to the degree that it has put them to death with Christ and raised them up as new creatures, who no longer live after the flesh, but live ‘in Christ’ and live like He lived. The other father is the devil, Satan, who is the father of all those who have not received the gift of Grace and Faith, and been reborn by God.

Most of these who are children of the devil, are people who have been welfare recipients’ , people who want to know that they won’t spend eternity in hell fire, but just haven’t heard enough truth preached to know what it takes to be a child of God. Listen to me people there are people in the world today who love to read novels and magazines and newspapers, they use the internet and all the mobile phones etc to gain in formation on all sorts of things, but they know nothing of value because the last thing they want to do is to read and submit to the commandments of God the Father.

I want you now to stop for a moment and read from the gospel of John chapter 8 beginning at verse 30 and reading through verse 51. In verse 30 we find Jesus Christ, God with us, God in the flesh, and we see that He was preaching to a large group of Jews, and what did they do when they heard him preach’ They believed and belief and faith come from the same root word. They said we place our faith in Jesus. What do all the churches that you know about today do with people who say that they believe in Christ’ That’s right, they make them church members, and tell them that they are saved and safe for eternity; however that is not what the only mediator between God and man did, no indeed, what Christ did with those who in essence, walked the aisle and shook the preachers hand and said that they loved Jesus, was to place an ‘IF’ on them. God himself, said to these who had said that they believed’ ‘IF’you abide,(continue) in My word, then you are My disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free’.

Jesus Christ recognized true faith, and he knew that these people did not know the truth and might never accept the truth and real faith, and in about 13 more verses here in John chapter eight, Christ tells them what their real state is’.they are the children of the devil (John 8:44). These people had been conditioned to seek ways around the truth and they were adept at it. They really believed that simply because they were born Jews, that they were already destined for heaven but they were blind to the truth. What they wanted to do like so many today, who are church members and believe that because they have joined some congregation that they were saved, is they want to pin Jesus as some kind of medallion or medal on their cloaks as a good luck charm. It does not work that way, regardless of what you have heard or want to think. We have not been taught about what Faith is and how Faith really acts in the person who has been born again by God.

Faith is a gift from God that comes to those who have experienced God’s Grace (Ephesians 2:8-9). Faith and belief are interchangeable words only if that belief is to the degree that it puts to death the old creature and raises up a new creature that walks (lives) in newness of life (Romans 6: 1-4). It is critical to our souls to learn about faith because we are saved by Grace through Faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). That gift of faith from God must and will be placed in the person and work of Jesus Christ on the cross (John 3:16-21; Acts 20:17-21; 2nd Corinthians 5:7; 1st Corinthians 2:1-5; Romans 5:1-5; Ephesians 1;1-14; Philippians 3:7-11; Acts 15:6-9; Acts 26:12-18; Titus 1:1-4; Hebrews 6:1-8; James 2:1-26;).

What do we think faith really means’ Maybe some who read this will say that faith is the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Are you satisfied with that scripture as your understanding your salvation’ Probably not, because for people who are for the most part Biblically ignorant, that is simply fairly confusing. We can know that in Hebrews 11:1 the word that translated as substance means realization, or reality of our knowledge that God has done a work in our lives and has given us assurance or proof of that work. The word that is translated evidence is one of the answers for our understanding faith because it points to the fact that faith has power and comfort and hope, yet we need to have a better understanding than that. The only way for anyone to really understand the scripture, including faith is to know the Word of God, the Bible.

We learn from many other scriptures what the grounds for our faith really is. First and foremost it is grounded on God and His eternal plan for man and on the person and work of God’s one and only Son, Jesus Christ. What those who ever gain true saving faith, will always do is, always at God’s drawing and His mind being in us, is that we will believe that God is who He says He is in His Word the Bible. Then once we come to understand who God is, we will always come to believe that He will always do what He says He will do. We always enter into God’s Grace (Salvation) knowing and believing that God is Sovereign. Nothing is beyond His power or ability. He is the Creator and we are His creatures. God is always good and nothing He does for us or to us is out of revenge or spite. God has laid down what those who are His Children will do and whatever He denies to us would be hurtful to us, if He were to allow it. We cannot and must not attempt to judge God for what He does or causes us to do, because everything that He does is fair and just and, will flow into His eternal plan for mankind.

Faith comes in many flavors and degrees. There is one saving faith that comes in salvation as a gift from God; however there are many other kinds of faith that we must know about to keep us from depending upon any faith except that faith that is God’s gift. There is little faith (Matthew 6:30) and there is great faith (Matthew 8:10). There is weak faith (Romans 4:19) and there is strong faith (Romans 4:20). There is true faith and there is vain (empty) faith (1st Corinthians 15:12-14).

There is faith that works (Ephesians 2:10). I am afraid that the visible church of our day has preached some kind of nebulous faith, a faith that is always ‘user friendly’, a faith that can be adjusted to fit a particular personality. The Bible never presents that kind of faith, rather the Bible says that true saving faith is always obedient, does not doubt; is a living faith, a faith that makes us whole, purifies our hearts, sanctifies us, justifies us, gives us access into God’s grace, leads us where we cannot see, works by love; and is a continuing faith. (Hebrews 5:8-9; Matthew 21:21; Romans 1:17; Luke 7:40-50; Acts 15:9; Acts 26:18; Romans 3:27-28; Romans 5:2; 2nd Corinthians 5:7; Galatians 5:6; 1st Timothy 2:15).

Some preachers and teachers have adopted the hyperactive idea that faith and works are never to be mentioned in the same sentence; but that violates the doctrine of faith. True faith always works and a faith without works is dead (James 2:14-26), The distinction must always be made that we are not saved by works, but by Grace through Faith; however those who are saved were saved to work for Christ (Ephesians 2:10).

True faith comes only to those who are truly saved, that means that there is a great difference between being reborn by God and being accepted into the membership of some denominational church. When God works in salvation, he always does a perfect work, and it lasts for eternity, who ever conceived the idea that God saves a person and gives them eternal life, but that somehow evaporates in the future’ Anybody that believes that needs to go back and really read and meditate on the word of God, the Bible. That kind of thinking goes along with the neo-orthodoxy that has infected the visible church of our day. These people want to believe that all roads lead to heaven, that Christ died for everyone, that God loves everybody and so does Christ, that there is really no need to read the Bible for ourselves, or worry about anything except our personal, fleshly needs.

They do not believe in hell but they will spend eternity there unless they seek the face of God and He saves them by His Grace. I often wonder how some of these false prophets, and I don’t have any problem and do not hesitate to call them what they are, can ever claim to preach the Word, when what they do is to pervert the Word of God. Any true Christian knows that what they do is always an offense to God. These who preach dreams that they desire to see everybody fooled by, are agents of Satan and you will know them by their fruits (Matthew 7:15-20). As my Grand Father used to say, when he saw a man that was not a good worker””He is too nervous to steal and too lazy to work”. I believe these who preach false doctrine are too nervous to really preach, and too evil to work. You will find God condemning false prophets, false teachers and false Christ through out the Bible. The Bible teaches us that real saving faith is evidenced by our being ready to maintain it until death (Revelation 2:10).

When it comes to true salvation and the gift of Grace and Faith, it is all God and none of us. After we are saved, reborn and obedient, we begin immediately to serve God by seeking and obeying His Word and Will. What we do is evidence of our real salvation. Those who are simply pew warmers are welcome in our midst but they are not part of our Group. Church has seemingly taken the place of God in many places today. It is not about God and our Worship and adoration of Him, it is about our showing up and claiming a seat in the congregation.

There are so many who have no problem coming and singing (or lip synching), ‘Standing on the promises of God’ ‘.however what they are willing to do is sit on the premises! Some of you who read this will probably say, that I am being mean spirited but what I am doing is yelling at the top of my lungs at these who are headed for the judgment of God and hell for eternity to change their ways. That is more like love than being mean spirited. Listen’especially you who minister, you cannot save a single soul, that is all God’s business. Your job is to obey God and preach what He has said. God makes it clear that the lost people will never appreciate the real gospel, but He tells us to preach it to them anyway. Too many today want everybody to love them and speak well of them; however Jesus Christ said that we should be blessed when people “revile and persecute us, and say all kinds of evil against us falsely for His sake” (Matthew 5:11).

We seem to have adopted a different Bible, a Bible and a God that can not keep us from what He hates most, sin. We like this impotent god that we have made up because he resembles us so closely. That just goes to prove that we have been blinded by the devil and we cannot approach the Great I Am! People who believe that kind of lie, and there are millions, have that vain faith, that we mentioned earlier. Saving faith is believing and trusting in God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, and what the Bible has to tell us about them. Faith is not a tentative and timid intellectual assent to the doctrinal teachings of the Bible, it includes that, but it is a radical commitment to God, through Christ. It includes total commitment and submission to obey His Will. It is presumptuous for anybody to attempt to teach anything else; and that includes Oprah in my opinion (Matthew 5:17-20; Matthew 10:32-39). You may wonder how this cloudy, and tepid stuff we are hearing from our pulpits today began. It did not begin yesterday, but it has been going on since the Church began. It has grown to the point, that today it is hard to recognize what we hear from our leaders.

As far back as 1871, that great old preacher Charles H. Spurgeon said this about it ‘ speaking of the necessity of being born again, Spurgeon said’ “ye must be born again” is as much a truth as that clear gospel statement, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” It is to be feared that some zealous brethren have preached the doctrine of justification by faith not only so boldly and so plainly, but also so badly and so out of all connection with other truth, that they have led men into presumptuous confidences, and have appeared to lend their countenance to a species of Antinomianism very much to be dreaded. From a dead, fruitless, inoperative faith we may earnestly pray, “Good Lord deliver us”, yet may we be unconsciously fostering it. Moreover, to stand up and cry, “Believe, believe, believe,” without explaining what is to be believed, to lay the whole stress of salvation upon faith without explaining what salvation is, and showing that it means deliverance from the power as well as from the guilt of sin, may seem to a fervent revivalist to be the proper thing for the occasion, but those who have watched the results of such teaching have had grave cause to question whether as much hurt may not be done by it as good.” I say that same thing in a little different way, not that I challenge this preacher’s preacher (Spurgeon) at all.

We have lost the art of teaching and instead we have begun to tease the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we have led and allowed men, women and children to profess beliefs that they can never really be defined or is never lived out to any extent. God does not save people to do nothing further than attend a church, pay something and call it tithe, but never go past the elementary principles of religion, never producing any fruit whatsoever (Hebrews 6:1-3). In fact many of those who can point to a church-letter, have no idea about and most don’t really act as if they are interested in doing what Christ demanded of those who say that they are a part of His church. Multitudes of these ‘professing but not possessing’ church members have no intention of ever reading and studying the Word of God, the Bible, and therein lies their problem; because there is so much untruth being spewed from pulpits today that even the saved person has to be careful not to believe some of the ideas that prevail in our churches. Just stop and look at what is going on in America today, we cannot make up our minds whether we should worry about other religions that are so prevalent in our county, that for the most part we go along to get along. Christianity is not a religion that can ‘go along to get along with other religions. We do not fight other religions, but we do not get into the boat that they are riding in. We invite them to change their religion and get into God’s boat.

Now, we have said before that when God truly saves a person and makes them fit for heaven, God radically changes that person. They are changed from the inside out, not from the outside in; because it is God that does the work and not us. Salvation does not change the way we look to others but it definitely changes the way we look to God. There are many people who never sink to the depths of depravity before God saves them; however everyone who does not have saving faith are unbridled sinners and everything that they do is a sin. You may not want to believe it but if an unsaved person goes to church that is a sin. If they pay a tithe that is a sin, if they pray that is a sin and everything else they do is sin, because God tells us in Romans 14:23b, that “whatever is not from faith is sin.” Before true salvation, we looked like evil people to God because we were evil, but after the rebirth, we look like God’s children. Before God reaches down to sinners and gives them the gifts of Grace and Faith, we look like pagans, rebels and we love evil rather than good. But after the rebirth and our obedience to God we look like His One and Only Son Jesus Christ.

We must dispel this notion that a person can make a decision to better him/her self, or look better to each other, or even join a group, by walking an aisle and shaking a preacher’s hand and be baptized and consider themselves saved and a child of God. That is getting the cart before the horse, and that may be alright after we have really been saved, but no man is ever saved until and unless the Lord decides to save them. There are marks of true faith that will indicate to other saved people that a person has been reborn. It is not true, as many believe, that people should join a church, and then get saved! It just does not happen that way. True salvation requires true repentance, and that will always bring with it the realization of the sinners past and all his sins and his godly sorry for having offended his God. Repentance is born of Faith and there is no saving faith without repentance. Now, since we are on the subject of repentance, how many times have you heard that word ‘repentance’ from your pulpit lately’

Chances are not often because it is not preached much in our time. God did not send His One and Only Son Jesus Christ to die to redeem a bunch of people who are too good to require repentance and radical change in their lives. In fact, we are told by the Apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that in salvation we are taught by Grace which comes with Faith, that we are to deny ungodliness and worldly lust, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age (Titus 2:11). True saving faith is like a tree going in the person who has saving faith and that tree will always produce fruit, and Galatians 5:22-23 lists that fruit for us (love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control), then we are told in Ephesians 5:9, that that fruit is found in all goodness, righteousness, and truth.

Note that it is fruit, not fruits, which means the Christian has all of those things in some degree. The child of God is a child of light and they walk as children of light because they have the seal of the Holy Spirit as light in us. In closing, let me remind you that Faith is a verb and it acts on what it knows. Some examples of what faith will do are to found in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, and it should be evident that faith carries with obedience, excitement, adventure and strength and all of these are gifts from God. Read the eleventh chapter through and meditate on what it says, then you will see that God does not save us to sit’.but to go with His word to the whole world.

Until next time,

may God bless and keep you

This is Bro. Bob