A Life of Faith
Notes
Transcript
Handout
What is faith?
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Oxford Dictionary defines it as “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.”
Hebrews hits something very important right on the head, that faith is not entirely dependent on proof!
It’s a conviction, or a belief, in something that is not currently seen, or an assurance of something that hasn’t quite happened yet.
That doesn’t mean that there’s no way of knowing or no reason to believe that something might happen, it just means that it hasn’t happened yet.
It would be ridiculous for you to say that you have faith that you’re growing wings and going to start flying, no matter how much red bull you drink.
Yes, that hasn’t happened and you haven’t seen it, but it’s kind of ridiculous to assume that it would happen in the first place.
So, we might say that we have faith that our cars will not break down on the way home.
It’s probably going to make it, you have good reason to believe that it’s going to happen, but it hasn’t happened yet!
A clear example that I’ve seen recently for faith is in my daughter.
She will throw herself off the couch when I’m around with the faith that I’m going to catch her. And then, when I do she cackles and cackles because she knew that the ground that was quickly approaching her wasn’t going to hit her and that she would just be able to experience the thrill of falling without any of the repercussions of the act of falling.
I have a much harder time with that type of faith!
This summer, some of our youth students went up to Wenatchee to do a leadership retreat where they mix outdoor stressful activities with reflections on our walk with Jesus.
One of these activities that they have you do is rock climbing, which I’ve always been a big fan of.
But, they didn’t have the adults or the leaders that went doing the climbing, it was all students!
So, my first route, I get up the cliff, it was a great time, and that was the first time that I made the connection, “I HAVE TO LET A STUDENT DROP ME OFF OF A CLIFF BY A LITTLE ROPE AND IF THEY DON’T PAY ATTENTION I COULD DIE!”
I don’t know if you’ve ever been in this sort of a situation, but it instantly improves your prayer life!
I won’t say who it was (Eli Gilmon), but I was terrified. And then he gently led me down and I had no problems.
But faith can be hard, right?
When we have to trust God when He tells us that we matter, or that our salvation isn’t up to us, or to trust in His plans for us; there’s always that voice in the back of our heads that tell us not to trust Him.
And I’m sure that this voice was present in Mary as well.
This is a young girl (probably 13-16), who is going to be the mother of the Son of God.
However
The story of Mary calls us into a life of faith.
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary.
This first bit is introduction, it gives us the setting and who were talking about here.
Galilee was a primarily farming society, and Nazareth was a place that no one who was successful came out of. It wasn’t a place that you would move to because of it’s great schools and artisan coffee shops.
So, when a ancient near-Eastern Jewish person heard this, they would instantly write whoever they were talking about off, and then Luke brings up a woman!
Women had no standing in this place in history, they were functionally considered property that made and maintained children, and she’s not even able to do that yet!
Mary is basically engaged to Joseph, but is a virgin.
Then, an angel shows up, and the conversation that the angel Gabriel and Mary have is important for our understanding of faith.
Faith is Based on God and His Promises
Faith is Based on God and His Promises
And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
So, this angel comes to Mary and greets her, calling her “favored one.”
This is actually a traditional greeting that one would give to an honored guest, but this almost NEVER happens with a woman!
There are only two more times before this when an angel speaks to a woman in the Bible
An angel speaks twice to Hagar in Genesis, and once to Samson’s mom in Judges, but outside of those instances, angels didn’t even talk to women.
Mary is greatly troubled by this, probably because if you saw an angel it would terrify you!
In the Jewish mind, that means that you’re going to die! They’re not fuzzy cute creatures, they’re messengers from God that have incredible power.
So, Mary is understandable a little shaken.
But, the angel tells her not to be worries, and then he tells her the plan.
She will conceive and have a Son named Jesus, who will be great and called the Son of the Most High and will have the throne of David forever.
The language is very specific to say that she will “conceive in your womb.”
It’s both a medical term (since Luke is a physician) as well as a specific way of Luke telling us that Mary will remain a virgin throughout this ordeal.
And then Gabriel gives her a small biography of her Son.
He will be named Jesus
He will be great (notice that John the Bapatist is called “great before the Lord (15)” but Jesus is just simply called “great.”
This shows that He will be even greater than John, because Jesus, who is God, is simply great.
He will be called the Son of the Most High
This is a statement that most Jews at the time of hearing this would understand to mean the Messiah or the Savior of the world.
He will be given the throne of David
A callback to the Davidic kingship that we spent a few years talking about
He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and His kingdom will have no end.
Jesus will forever reign and be the Savior that was promised to the people of God centuries ago and His kingdom will never cease.
Notice here, NONE OF THIS IS ABOUT MARY!
Gabriel hasn’t even told her how this would happen yet, he just says that she’s going to have a bouncing baby boy named Jesus, and the he starts talking about how Jesus is the promised Messiah and will save the world.
What’s so significant about this is that
Faith isn’t based on us.
Gabriel calls Mary favored by the Lord, but does not expound on why! There’s nothing especially important about Mary to make this happen, he doesn’t call her the chosen one or anything crazy.
Gabriel says that she’s done well, but that God is the One who’s going to do all of the work.
Our faith is rooted in God, but if we’re honest, we might sometimes live that out a little differently.
I know for myself that I can believe that intellectually, but I can have a hard time following that.
When I feel far from God, my first thought is what do I need to do so that I can fix our relationship.
Or, do you ever do that thing where we thing that we’re good with God because we went to church that week?
Or how about when we mess up really badly and realize how bad our sin is, so we start another Bible reading plan or ask God to forgive us just this once because after this time we’re for sure done with that sin?
It’s all just a way for us to control our faith in God. Because if my faith is up to me, then I can just work a little harder and then I can get God to love me, and then, if I work hard enough, then it’s His turn to owe me.
We can bargain with God and make as many deals as we can, and it’s all because our faith isn’t based on Him, it’s based on us.
But a true faith that is based on God will look very different!
When our faith is firmly planted in God, we can have the confidence that comes only from trusting in the One on whom the world turns.
I think it will look a lot like how Gabriel talks about Mary and Jesus, it’s not that Mary isn’t valued, but it’s that God is Supreme over all.
And so we don’t have to fill our lives with hopeless bargains and intense practices, we can rest in the promises of God and on His character, and trust that our own brokenness is factored in.
See, God wasn’t looking for a perfect person to raise Jesus, He was looking for a faithful person, which we see so clearly in Mary’s response at the end of this section.
And the same is true of you and I. God did not prepare His kingdom to be spread by the cream of the crop, and He did not expect perfection, or He wouldn’t have let in any of His disciples.
God expects faithfulness, a willingness to give everything for your life in Jesus, and the trust to throw yourself on Him.
And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Faith Doesn’t Leave You Alone
Faith Doesn’t Leave You Alone
So, Mary is put in a position that can feel incredibly isolating.
She will probably be ostracized by the people around her, she’s not sure if her fiance is going to believe her, and she thinks that she has no one in her life that can say, “Oh yeah, I totally understand that!”
Even though she is willing to take this monumental task on, this is almost certainly going to be an incredibly lonely existence for Mary.
But then Gabriel tells her that she has someone to help.
Gabriel had just been talking recently with Zechariah, who didn’t get to talk that much, and Gabriels tells Mary that one of her relatives (probably like a cousin or something close like that) was also pregnant, and that this was a miracle as well!
Can you imagine how Mary might have felt!?
She must have felt so alone moments before this! She was going to shoulder an immense burden with almost no support, and then the angel says, “You have someone close to you that can empathize with you!”
And, not only that, but we know later that Joseph is a godly man who will stay faithful to his wife and not leave her!
She goes from being alone and unsupported to God building a network of support for her and this little Baby.
But we can feel alone as well, right?
We live in a fairly isolated age, it’s rare for most people to actually have close friendships or a feeling of support in their community.
Especially in the holidays, it’s easy for us to feel totally isolated.
There are kids to take care of, presents to buy, a million different events, it can all feel very overwhelming!
But this is where the church comes in!
The Church is a community that is built for support and encouragement in the Lord.
That’s why Hebrews 10:24-25
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
We are supposed to continue meeting together and encouraging each other and growing in the LORD together!
We live in a fragmented time of radical individualism and a belief that “I” am the right one and people should look like me.
That’s why the church is so countercultural: because it is a community that is not based off of shared interests or common goals but on our love for Christ, and so it is a place for people to come that look and act very differently from each other and support one another!
And so we have 12 year olds that get to sit next to 80 year olds, and doctors get to sit next to ex-cons, and the family struggling with infertility gets to sit next to a grandma of 30.
There is no other place on earth that you will find a community with the amount of differences that you can find in a church building.
So, we must learn to value and grow and learn from this community of faith. We must grow in our love for each other so that we might become the community of faith that the church was built to be.
“Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
This quote points out something incredibly significant for this reality - it can only be found in Christ.
This isn’t just a random group of people that we get to be a part of! This is the body of Christ, God’s chosen people who are loved intimately by Him and are reformed and rejuvenated by the sacrifice that Christ gave on the cross and by the unity of the Holy Spirit.
We don’t get to take advantage of this community, we don’t get to “opt-out” when we become followers of Jesus. When we enter into the people of God, we must commit to lovingly enter into a relationship with the community of faith that God built.
And then we get to the final verse of this section
And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
Faith Requires a Response
Faith Requires a Response
Mary could not have just absorbed the information and encouragement that Gabriel gave her and then rejected him!
“Oh, thanks for thinking of me, but I think that I’m going to have to decline, that’s not something I’ve got time for right now.”
Mary was put in a position to trust in God in faith, so she had to act on it.
Faith is not merely intellectual agreement.
This is something that we can be really good at in our style of churches!
We preach the Bible, we’re people of the Book, which is fantastic! I wouldn’t want to be any other way.
However, one of the things that we can easily fall into is just an intellectualism.
We want to learn about God, but we don’t really want to know God or live like He tells us.
There’s a big difference from knowing about someone verses knowing someone.
For instance, I can know exactly the ingredients that it takes to make a pizza.
I can know all of the types of flour one might use, the quality of the cheese, the greasiness of the pepperoni, but if I have never actually eaten pizza, then I know pizza less than the high school student who just ate a whole one and wants to throw up.
God is knowable! God the Son entered into creation and makes us able to know Him! God the Holy Spirit indwells and enlightens us to understand the triune! And the Father constantly communicates His love to us through His graces
Just knowing facts about Him or reading the Bible is not sufficient for faith in Christ.
Jesus was not just some sacrifice that died and was resurrected, He shows us the way to live. When we read the Scriptures, it should change the way that we interact with the world!
Has it done that with you?
When we look out at the socio-political sphere, we can see so many people arguing about what is right because their worldview doesn’t agree with some other person’s view of the world.
And thus, Thanksgiving was born!
But, if we are to be followers of Jesus in the world, then the way that we view and interact with sin, entertainment, music, technology, the homeless, the immigrant, the poor, the oppressed, the successful, the powerful, and the weak should be different from all of our non-Christian friends
If Jesus really is who He says He is and if we really are the followers that we say we are, then our lives must look different.
And I would bet that if you’ve been listening, that there is something that the Lord is speaking to you when we talk about acting in faith.
Maybe He’s communicating that the way that you have treated your spouse or your children or your parents isn’t right.
Maybe He’s saying that you need to give up pornography
Maybe He’s showing that we need to treat people of a different social class or race better than we have.
Whatever it is:
Application: Act in faith.
Maybe for you, this is the first time that you’ve ever really thought about your faith seriously, or maybe faith is something that you think about all of the time but have never actually committed to. I believe that this might be the time that God is using to call out to you to come and sit at His feet and give yourself over to Him.
Gospel message.
