All About Faith

Introduction:

Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations 1495 Reduced into One Law

Rabbi Simlai in the third century noted that Moses gave us 365 prohibitions and 248 positive commands. David in Psalm 15 reduced them to eleven: Isaiah—in 33:14, 15—made them six: Micah 6:8 binds them into three: and Habakkuk reduces them all to one, namely—”The just shall live by faith.”

Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations 1496 Faith and Doubt

Faith And Doubt

Doubt sees the obstacles.

Faith sees the way!

Doubt sees the darkest night,

Faith sees the day!

Doubt dreads to take a step.

Faith soars on high!

Doubt questions, “Who believes?”

Faith answers, “I!”

Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations 1499 Epigram on Faith

Faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible, and receives the impossible.

• Faith is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable.

• Faith is idle when circumstances are right, only when they are adverse is one’s faith in God exercised. Faith, like muscle, grows strong and supple with exercise.

• Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.

—David Lloyd George

• A little faith will bring your soul to heaven; a great faith will bring heaven to your soul.

—Spurgeon

• Faith is not believing that God can, but that God will!

• Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.

• Faith in God is indispensable to successful statesmanship.

—Abraham Lincoln

In Hebrews

Hebrews 11:1 NKJV

1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

We are starting a series on faith. Faith is the key to everything! Today we are going to take a look at faith and it’s cousins; faithful and faithfully. You may say they are all the same but I can promise you this, after today you will walk away with a different opinion.

We will be looking at a rather large portion of scripture starting in .

Daniel 9:1–19 KJV 1900

1 In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans; 2 In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem. 3 And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes: 4 And I prayed unto the Lord my God, and made my confession, and said, O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him, and to them that keep his commandments; 5 We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments: 6 Neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets, which spake in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. 7 O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces, as at this day; to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and unto all Israel, that are near, and that are far off, through all the countries whither thou hast driven them, because of their trespass that they have trespassed against thee. 8 O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee. 9 To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him; 10 Neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets. 11 Yea, all Israel have transgressed thy law, even by departing, that they might not obey thy voice; therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him. 12 And he hath confirmed his words, which he spake against us, and against our judges that judged us, by bringing upon us a great evil: for under the whole heaven hath not been done as hath been done upon Jerusalem. 13 As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil is come upon us: yet made we not our prayer before the Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities, and understand thy truth. 14 Therefore hath the Lord watched upon the evil, and brought it upon us: for the Lord our God is righteous in all his works which he doeth: for we obeyed not his voice. 15 And now, O Lord our God, that hast brought thy people forth out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and hast gotten thee renown, as at this day; we have sinned, we have done wickedly. 16 O Lord, according to all thy righteousness, I beseech thee, let thine anger and thy fury be turned away from thy city Jerusalem, thy holy mountain: because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and thy people are become a reproach to all that are about us. 17 Now therefore, O our God, hear the prayer of thy servant, and his supplications, and cause thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord’s sake. 18 O my God, incline thine ear, and hear; open thine eyes, and behold our desolations, and the city which is called by thy name: for we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies. 19 O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God: for thy city and thy people are called by thy name.

Faith- noun, something you can possess. If you do not have faith, then the other two points today are worthless. There are many of you here today that have great faith. There are many here today that have little faith and there are some of you sitting here today that have no faith at all. There is a void in your life, something missing and I can tell you it is faith! Daniel had faith. In the midst of this trial in life he had one thing going for him and that was his faith! It wasn’t faith in the king, it wasn’t faith in his friends, it wasn’t faith in those who served underneath him, it was his faith in God that brought him to the point of this prayer.

So what is faith?

Faith is powerful- faith the size of a mustard seed…

Faith is a defensive weapon- above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

Faith is the only way to heaven- By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of god, not of works, lest anyone should boast

Illustration- having faith, the old woman whose church was praying for rain and she brought an umbrella.

Faithful- adjective describing someone with faith. Also to be faithful. Many times you will hear at a funeral service, “he was a faithful follower of Jesus”. He was a faithful member of his church. He was, he was, he was. While these are great, shouldn’t someone be saying that about you now. He is, a faithful follower, he is a faithful member, he is a faithful husband father, wife, mother etc...

What does it look like to be faithful?

In this passage of scripture, we see Daniel being faithful by pouring out his heart to God.

He is faithful to pray

he is faithful to remember who he is praying to

He is faithful to repent- look at the words he uses in verse 4: confession- means to be in agreement with.

What about unfaithful? Vs 7

I’m sure each and every one of you when I said what does it look like to be unfaithful, immediately thought about someone else that you know. Did you stop to look at yourself first? I’m here every time the doors are open. That doesn’t make you faithful anymore than sitting in an airplane hangar makes you an airplane.

Unfaithfulness looks like complacency- the church at Laodicea

disobedience- vs 14

infidelity- In today’s world we understand this word to mean cheating on the one you love the most. How is your relationship with God? are you cheating on Him with someone or somehting else. have you been replacing time with him. the Israelites did and you see that He was very angry, very jealous. he doesn’t like to be cheated on.

Being faithful to God means that just like in verse 9 we know that God is the owner of grace, mercy and forgiveness, even though we may fail, we go to Him and ask for forgiveness, we repent, and know that he is faithful to hear us and forgive us.

God’s faithfulness to us is the standard in which we strive for.

Transition: so faith is something we can possess, we are to be faithful and that leaves the last thing, we act faithfully.

Faithfully- I look at this as an action verb. this is something we do.

God’s word tells us to be still and know. That means to actively listen to him and then act on what he is telling us. We see in Isaiah he has a burden placed on his heart and he says Here I am send me. This is called faithfully doing the work. In this last portion of the scriptures today, Daniel shows us what it means to faithfully act as a child of God through this prayer.

You may say I don’t feel burdend. To that I would say then you need to hit your knees and begin to pray about what God would have you to do. Maybe it begins with repentance. Maybe its a change in attitude, maybe you are faithful to be here, but you are faithfully engaged in doing the book. What do I mean, you are not faithfully living the life of Jesus.

You just simply want to blend in, be a part of the crowd. Jesus didn’t call you to just blend in, he calls you out of the crowd to faithfully serve Him.

You can do it through tithes, offerings, discipleship, being a prayer warrior. Can you be counted on to do what needs to be done, or will you say “someone else will do it”.

whatever it is you must first faithfully pray. Four verbs that Daniel cries out to God to do.

Hear, Forgive, listen, and act

Conclusion: The questions for today, the challenge I give you is to search your heart. Ask yourself, Do I have faith, Am I being faithful, Am I acting faithfully.

At the end of Daniels prayer in vs 23 Gabriel tells Daniel somethign great. God has heard you and you are greatly loved.

God wants to tell you the same thing today, but you have to have faith, be faithful, and faithfully pray. God will hear you, God loves you, and he desires that personal relationship with you.