Sermon Tone Analysis

*Knowing God Well Enough to Believe Him* (Expressing your Faith)

March 27th and 28th, 2004

 

Review:

We talked about discipleship and beginning in Christ.

We mentioned that discipleship is publicly identifying with Jesus and learning to obey Him.

We looked at authority and how our response to that should be then finally we looked at your authority.

You are sent as an ambassador of Christ to represent Him.

Who we are in Him as new creations is so astounding that it takes a revelation to understand it.

The revelation is understanding who we are now in Christ by understanding who He is in us.

We have His authority.

-I once heard a story about a missionary family that lived overseas and had a small child.

The mother looked out in the back yard and that child was walking up on a coiled snake (cobra or something).

The mother called out for the child to come.

Without hesitating that child came to its mother.

Its obedience saved its life.

-Obedience is the result of knowing and trusting someone.

Hebrews 11

*/The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living.

It’s our handle on what we can’t see.

The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd./*

*/     By faith, we see the world called into existence by God’s word, what we see created by what we don’t see./*

*/     By an act of faith, Abel brought a better sacrifice to God than Cain.

It was what he believed, not what he brought, that made the difference.

That’s what God noticed and approved as righteous.

After all these centuries, that belief continues to catch our notice./*

*/     By an act of faith, Enoch skipped death completely.

“They looked all over and couldn’t find him because God had taken him.”

We know on the basis of reliable testimony that before he was taken “he pleased God.” It’s impossible to please God apart from faith.

And why?

Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists and that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him./*

*/     By faith, Noah built a ship in the middle of dry land.

He was warned about something he couldn’t see, and acted on what he was told.

The result?

His family was saved.

His act of faith drew a sharp line between the evil of the unbelieving world and the rightness of the believing world.

As a result, Noah became intimate with God./*

*/     By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God’s call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home.

When he left he had no idea where he was going.

By an act of faith he lived in the country promised him, lived as a stranger camping in tents.

Isaac and Jacob did the same, living under the same promise.

Abraham did it by keeping his eye on an unseen city with real, eternal foundations—the City designed and built by God./*

*/     By faith, barren Sarah was able to become pregnant, old woman as she was at the time, because she believed the One who made a promise would do what he said.

That’s how it happened that from one man’s dead and shriveled loins there are now people numbering into the millions./*

*/✠/*

*/Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing.

How did they do it?

They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world.

People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home.

If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted.

But they were after a far better country than that—heaven country.

You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them./*

*/     By faith, Abraham, at the time of testing, offered Isaac back to God.

Acting in faith, he was as ready to return the promised son, his only son, as he had been to receive him—and this after he had already been told, “Your descendants shall come from Isaac.”

Abraham figured that if God wanted to, he could raise the dead.

In a sense, that’s what happened when he received Isaac back, alive from off the altar./*

*/     By an act of faith, Isaac reached into the future as he blessed Jacob and Esau./*

*/     By an act of faith, Jacob on his deathbed blessed each of Joseph’s sons in turn, blessing them with God’s blessing, not his own—as he bowed worshipfully upon his staff./*

*/     By an act of faith, Joseph, while dying, prophesied the exodus of /**/Israel/**/, and made arrangements for his own burial./*

*/     By an act of faith, Moses’ parents hid him away for three months after his birth.

They saw the child’s beauty, and they braved the king’s decree./*

*/     By faith, Moses, when grown, refused the privileges of the Egyptian royal house.

He chose a hard life with God’s people rather than an opportunistic soft life of sin with the oppressors.

He valued suffering in the Messiah’s camp far greater than Egyptian wealth because he was looking ahead, anticipating the payoff.

By an act of faith, he turned his heel on /**/Egypt/**/, indifferent to the king’s blind rage.

He had his eye on the One no eye can see, and kept right on going.

By an act of faith, he kept the Passover Feast and sprinkled Passover blood on each house so that the destroyer of the firstborn wouldn’t touch them./*

*/     By an act of faith, /**/Israel/**/ walked through the /**/Red Sea/**/ on dry ground.

The Egyptians tried it and drowned./*

*/     By faith, the Israelites marched around the walls of /**/Jericho/**/ for seven days, and the walls fell flat./*

*/     By an act of faith, Rahab, the /**/Jericho/**/ harlot, welcomed the spies and escaped the destruction that came on those who refused to trust God./*

*/✠/*

*/I could go on and on, but I’ve run out of time.

There are so many more—Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets?

… Through acts of faith, they toppled kingdoms, made justice work, took the promises for themselves.

They were protected from lions, fires, and sword thrusts, turned disadvantage to advantage, won battles, routed alien armies.

Women received their loved ones back from the dead.

There were those who, under torture, refused to give in and go free, preferring something better: resurrection.

Others braved abuse and whips, and, yes, chains and dungeons.

We have stories of those who were stoned, sawed in two, murdered in cold blood; stories of vagrants wandering the earth in animal skins, homeless, friendless, powerless—the world didn’t deserve them!—making their way as best they could on the cruel edges of the world./*

*/     Not one of these people, even though their lives of faith were exemplary, got their hands on what was promised.

God had a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete apart from ours./*

*/*[1]*/**/ /*

-Obviously the theme of that Scripture is “faith”.

*1.

**Faith is an expression of your knowledge and understanding of God*

* *

Hebrews 11

*/8 /**/By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.

*[2]* /*

-We need to notice that the emphasis of this verse is what Abraham did not know.

-Yet He knew God had spoken.

His faith expressed that God’s plan was good or made sense.

He didn’t know what it was.

-All He had to cling to was faith in God Himself.

-The object of faith has sometimes been our faith, Biblical principles, or something else.

-The object of faith is GOD HIMSELF.

Mark 11

*/22 /**/“Have a faith in God,” Jesus answered.

/*

*/ /*

-About Noah Hebrews 11 says, “*/His act of faith drew a sharp line between the evil of the unbelieving world and the rightness of the believing world.

As a result, Noah became intimate with God.”/*

-About Sarah it says, “*/By faith, barren Sarah was able to become pregnant, old woman as she was at the time, because she believed the One who made a promise would do what he said.”*[3]*/*

*/ /*

Jeremiah 30

*/21 /**/Their leader will be one of their own; /*

*/their ruler will arise from among them.

/*

*/I will bring him near and he will come close to me, /*

*/for who is he who will devote himself /*