Celebrate Faith
Notes
Transcript
Celebrate Faith
Celebrate Faith
Cultural “Have faith” diminishes faith to wishful thinking.
But Faith is something that is divinely Biblical and distinctly Christian.
It’s such an important motif throughout scripture that we see it again and again and again.
Today I hope to address the topic of faith through a question-answer sort of style, beginning with the simple question,
What is Faith?
What is Faith?
Biblical faith is assuredness and certainty.
Faith defined by the Bible is a firmly-rooted conviction and a deeply realized truth that is settled.
Let’s take a look at what scripture has to say.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
For by it the people of old received their commendation.
By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
Think about that for a moment. How is it you know that God created the universe??? Were you there? Did you see it? And yet it’s something you believe in. How did you arrive at that conclusion?
Sure, we could lay out all of the proofs and evidences and build up a mountain of evidence that points to the hand of God working in creation. But then the other side of the argument will lay out all of their proofs and evidences to the point where there are “mountains” of evidence on both sides of the debate. Even if you choose one side, it’s intellectual assent. It’s a choice to believe one thing over another based not on faith, but on statistical probability.
Some people correlate faith to sitting in a chair. You go to sit down on it and it works for you. Or they correlate faith to the fact that a bridge will hold up when a car drives over it.
That’s all fine and well, but what I would propose is that it’s not genuine faith, but rather belief in statistical probability. Due to the vast amount of chairs around the world that are reliable when you sit down, and seeing as this is a chair, it is highly probable that the chair will hold up when I sit down on it. Or seeing as the bus ahead of you has already passed over the bridge, it is highly probable that your car will be supported when you drive over the bridge.
The world will try to cheapen faith and explain it in some sort of humanistic thinking, where the source of faith comes from you, from within.
But Biblical faith is not something that can be mustered or manufactured. It is a spiritual gift of assuredness and conviction. Certainty that is divinely gifted.
Read Hebrews 11:1 again.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Of things NOT seen. How can one have not just belief, but assuredness and confidence of the existence and reality of things that there are no proofs for? And yet it’s there.
Has the Lord ever given you special insight, special counsel, into the outcome of something? Such that you have a firm assuredness that the person you are praying for will be healed (and they are, though you haven’t yet seen it)? Or that the person you are praying for will be saved, though they have not yet made that confession?
This faith, this assuredness and confidence, goes beyond our natural human ability. It is not some sixth sense that is within us, it is divinely spiritual, a gift.
So faith, in its root form, is a certainty, a conviction, a confidence, an assuredness, of the existence or outcome of something.
And that moves us on to our second question:
Why is faith important?
Why is faith important?
Faith is necessary to know God.
Let’s take a look here.
Paul writes his letter to the Roman church, and he records this:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
(For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith). Now what does this mean?
Well, if I have interpreted this passage correctly, this means that the work of faith that God began in you upon hearing and receiving the gospel of Christ, begins to grow and spread in you.
It’s like a portal between you and God that has been activated. It starts at one point, the faith which God instills in you, and then it grows and expands to become wider and wider and as it widens, you begin to realize and trust with certainty the truths and promises of God.
(pause)
Have you ever seen a burning piece of paper catch fire from a falling piece of ash? The ash makes contact with the piece of paper, and it gains a burn point, and that burn point moves and spreads and eats its way out, much like a worm might eat its way around, until that circle of fire expands and expands and consumes the piece of paper. As the spark of faith that lights you begins that hole that burns into the spiritual darkness and corruption of your sinful heart that has blinded you, you begin to behold the beauty and wonder of the Lord and believe and trust in him with certainty. Though you do not see him, you believe in him and rejoice with great joy.
Faith is a tool which God uses to instill belief and conviction within the human heart so that he can be made known. Without faith, without that connection point, we would remain blinded. There would be no way to access God.
This is why faith is important.
We know from Romans chapter 1 that we live with debased minds, and that the truth of God is suppressed, although it is quite plain and simply made known.
It’s further explained that
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
If we are blind, then we need something to help us come back to make us see. If our minds are darkened and prone to error, then there’s no whim of human thinking, human ingenuity, that can reconcile us to the Lord.
It is why the Reformers like Calvin and Luther so emphasized Ephesians 2:8 that says
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
Grace alone through faith alone. The grace is God’s choice in giving you sight, the faith is the tool in which you receive God’s grace and come to accept it as your own.
We need God’s grace, we cannot accomplish salvation on our own, we are completely blinded, and faith is the means by which that grace can be brought to us. That’s why it is so important.
How do we obtain faith?
How do we obtain faith?
Faith comes by Hearing and Receiving
Let’s read Ephesians 2:8 one more time:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
How do you obtain faith? Is it something you can manufacture? Is it something you can generate if you are holy enough, if you are faithful enough? No, it’s not.
And this is where I think our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters have got it wrong. They try to generate faith and holiness by the things that they do. They put works before faith. But looking at scripture, is faith something that you can do to gain more of?
No, instead we are told it is NOT a result of works, it is the gift of God. The whole process of grace and salvation through faith is generated and given BY God. (pause)
Well, what does this process look like? Faith is instilled in us when we hear the word of the Lord and we receive his gift.
But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);
because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
Notice the correlation between the word of God and of faith … so much so that here the gospel is even described as the word of faith. The confession of Christ is not separated from belief. The word is not separated from faith, instead they work in tandem as one hears the word of God and receives his gift of faith, that faith grows and inflames into a confession that is evidence of one’s own salvation.
It’s explained a bit further:
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
Hearing the word, hearing God’s offer, and accepting his gift.
When we celebrate Christmas, what are pictures that we have of faith?
Well, we have a few pictures of this part of faith.
Ever wonder why there are so many bells that pop up around Christmas time?
It’s because Bells are a noise that announces something- Specifically, bells symbolize the announcement of the arrival of Christ. They are symbolic of the word being proclaimed and made known.
Also another way we celebrate Christmas is through the giving of presents. Of course presents are symbolic of the greatest gift of all time, the gift of Jesus Christ.
When we see these things, the bells, the presents, we should be reminded of these important spiritual truths, of hearing of Christ and receiving him, having a faith and a belief in him.
That leads us to our third question,
What do we place faith in?
What do we place faith in?
Jesus is the Source of Our Faith
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
Note: The Gospel of John never uses the word faith … instead for him, the words ‘believe’ and ‘faith’ take on the same meaning. And it’s important that Jesus is the object of our faith … without him faith would not exist. Without substance to the belief, something actually backing it, it would not exist.
Think of it this way:
Faith is like the current of electricity that turns a light in a room on.
You walk into a dark room, flip on a light switch, the current of electricity is sent to the light and then the room becomes lit.
God is like the one flipping the switch, Jesus is the switch that is activated, which in turn sparks the faith in your life to send that current of assuredness and belief to you so that you light up and can see fully.
Scripture puts it this way,
looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Jesus is the founder and perfecter of our faith. Without him, our faith would not exist. And with him, our faith is perfected. It continues to grow and expand.
What causes you to be doubtful and to fear in the Christian life? Is it not when you, like Peter who was walking on the water, take your eyes off of Christ and you become distracted by the things of this world?
You see, the opposite of faith is fear and uncertainty. It is anxiety and worry, doubt and unbelief. Once we remove Christ from the equation there’s no more light switch that’s keeping that light on. Instead, we return to the darkness in which we lived once before, and we can begin to feel lost.
The key to gaining confidence and trust in God is looking to Jesus Christ.
And Christmas, when we gather to celebrate, reminds us to do just that. It refocuses our distracted minds back onto the one who truly matters.
Not only does the name of Christmas draw our attention to Christ, but we have a few extra symbols of this as well in our decorating.
Star on top of the Christmas tree- reminder of the one who came into the world, the peak of all creation, the thing to which our eye is drawn upward to. He is the one which we behold and focus upon, and as we focus upon him our faith is ever increased.
(pause)
That leads us to another important question,
Who can have faith?
Who can have faith?
Faith is available to all who believe.
Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith.
If we lived by good works, trying to please God all the time by the things that we do, it would create a class system and give us reason to boast over one another. Jesus said, if you were trying to enter heaven based on what you do, your righteousness would need to exceed that of the Pharisees (who were themselves stalwart legalists following the law to a T). In other words, you’d need to do more than the most religious and devoted person you can think of.
But that’s not the path to salvation that God has laid forth. Instead we live by the law of faith.
Faith is open and accessible for all.
There are many reasons people put forth as to why NOT to celebrate Christmas.
“Well, technically Jesus was born in the summer and not the winter, so I’m not going to celebrate it in December.”
or “Christmas is just a pagan holiday that was morphed into Christian beliefs” and “Christmas needs to be distinctly for Christians, because only Christians know the true meaning of Christmas.”
I hear these lines of reasoning, but I don’t find them very convincing. Christmas should be celebrated because it’s a holiday for all mankind, one that remembers the offer of Christ for salvation to all who would believe. It’s a powerful tool of witness that we as believers are able to have to our neighbors, our families, our friends. It’s a reminder that the arrival of Christ is a celebration available to all … not just to the rich and powerful, not just to one nation or another. It’s something that can be shared despite the divisions that our sinfulness has driven within humanity, that there’s something greater at work. Faith in Christ is available to all.
Why choose faith?
Why choose faith?
Faith, though hard, is not Empty
Difficulty of having faith - world demands proofs or reasons (especially after the enlightenment) … often hard to quantify faith or explain it.
It’s not easy to lay down all of your own wants and desires and to follow something else. It’s not easy to tell yourself no, or to not give in to your emotions and let them control you when tragedy strikes.
But it’s faith that helps you through those hard times and leads you on to a future hope.
Faith is unseen conviction which leads to seen realities. One day faith will be turned to sight.
We read this in the book of Hebrews,
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.
If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.
But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
When you live in the path of faith, you live as an exile here on earth. You embrace that fact. You accept it. You recognize that all of your perceived needs may not be fully met- that healing may never fully come, that mortgage payment may never be fully paid, that you could starve and suffer the elements of the world, but that even despite these difficulties because of your faith, your conviction of the promises of Christ, you shall inherit eternal life to come. We need that reminder that our home is not here, it is with Christ, though we do not yet see it. Faith is what keeps us grounded in staying away from the distractions and the wants of this present reality.
All of the faithful of God’s people in the Old Testament looked forward to the hope that is to come. They didn’t get sidelined by what was seen, but trusted in God for his promises. And furthermore, they did not receive it in their lifetimes, but they trusted God.
We have the same call for us. We trust in God for the future glory, the future home, with him.
Do you remember the words of Jesus? He said,
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.
In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
Faith, though it is difficult, has an eternal reward. It is not empty of substance. The result of faith is life with God, life with Christ, living with him and having a relationship with him not just here and now with the distance that we have, but for all eternity in his very presence.
When we celebrate Christmas, we often bring green things into our home … green trees, green wreaths, garlands. All of these are made from evergreens. What does that symbolize? Well, it symbolizes the lasting and eternal life that is made available. Christ is the tree of eternal life, ever green, ever bearing fruit. Circle of the wreath represents eternity, never-ending.
One day the truths that we have received in faith will be actualized within the presence of the creator himself. He is the hope of eternal life, the hope of heaven. You will be near to him and he near to you. Faith, enduring hardship and trial through things now though you do not yet see, results in substance. Faith is not empty. It has an outcome. It’s a portal that connects you to your Lord.
Conclusion
Conclusion
What is Faith?- Faith is certainty and assuredness.
Why is faith important? - Faith is important because it is necessary to know God.
How do we obtain faith? - We obtain faith through hearing the word of God and receiving his gift of eternal life.
What do we place faith in? - We trust in Jesus, the source and object of our faith.
Who can have faith? - Faith is available to all who believe.
Why choose faith? - Faith is not empty. One day the unseen will become seen, and Christ’s promises will be completely fulfilled.
Celebrate Christmas. Celebrate faith. Look to the symbols of Christmas and be reminded of this important Biblical motif that has led you to Christ and led you to your creator.
Let’s pray.