--Blind-- Faith
2020 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 39:01
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Good morning. How is everyone doing today? Awesome! Let’s pray together.
Father, we thank You for being such a good good Father. As we worship You this morning we ask that you soften our hearts, open our minds, and give us a clear understanding of Your word so that we may incorporate what we learn into our lives and live it out before You Father. We thank You for Your love for us. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.
If you have your bible you can turn to Genesis chapter 12. We are picking our kingdom of God series back up this morning and so I want to go back to where we left off a few weeks ago with Abraham.
Let’s pick back up in Genesis 12:1-4
1 The Lord said to Abram: Go out from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. 4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.
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God promised to make a great nation through Abraham, so again we have this idea that God is going to make a great nation, or a great kingdom. And God chooses Abraham to be the father of this great kingdom. He chose to build this kingdom on earth starting with Abraham. And as the Father of this kingdom, God wanted to teach us something very important through him. God wanted to teach us how to enter this kingdom. God wanted to teach us how to become a member of His kingdom. So He did that with Abraham. How did He do that? How did He show us through Abraham how we could become a member of His kingdom? If you were with us several weeks ago, you might remember that God showed us through Abraham that we enter His kingdom through faith. We are not saved by our good deeds, or by our blood line or nationality, we are saved by our faith. Romans 4:13 says:
13 For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would inherit the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.
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And we see that’s exactly what happened with Abraham. He believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness. Genesis 15:6 says:
6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
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God wanted Abraham to have faith — In other words, God wanted Abraham to TRUST Him. This was not BLIND faith, God spoke directly to Abraham, But Abraham didn’t know God like we know God. God had revealed Himself to humanity from the very beginning, with Adam and Eve and Cain and Able. God revealed Himself to Noah, and there’s no reason to believe that He had not continued to reveal Himself to people for the first 2,000 years up to Abraham. Abraham didn’t have a FEELING that God wanted Him to get up and leave his country and go to a place that God would show Him. God SPOKE to Abraham and told Him those things. There is a big difference.
Many people today say they have a strong relationship with God, or say that God is absent, but in both cases the majority of their relationship with God is based off of feeling. Some people say they don’t feel God, or don’t hear God, and think He’s not there, but they base that conclusion mainly off of their feelings. On the other hand there are many others who say that they have a very strong relationship with God and that they hear Him all the time, but again the majority of their relationship with God, or closeness with God is based off of feeling. They Feel close to God and believe that He’s telling them to do all kinds of things, because they feel a tug or a desire to do something and they attribute that feeling to God or the Holy Spirit.
But is that what happened with Abraham? Did he have a feeling that God wanted him to move? Is that what happened with Adam and Eve? Did they feel that God didn’t want them to eat from a certain tree. And after they ate from that tree, did they feel that God was upset with them? Did Noah feel that God wanted him to build an ark? Did Moses feel that God told him to tell Pharoah about all ten specific plagues and he just so happened to get all the details correct before each one of them happened? Did all the prophets feel that God was telling them something to tell everyone and they just so happened to get every specific detail right down to the very last word? No they didn’t feel these things, everyone I just mentioned heard these things. They heard God speak actual, specific, meaningful words to them.
And God didn’t just give Abraham a desire to move, He told him to get up and go. God spoke to Abraham with words. And today, we have God’s words. God did not honor Abraham’s faith because he had a feeling and he acted on it. That’s not the type of faith that God is looking for. God’s not looking for blind faith. He’s not searching everyone’s heart and saying that He’s only going to save the people who will take risks and make decisions based on a gut feeling. I know a lot of people who have a gut feeling about something and will risk their entire life savings or their safety on a feeling, or will up and go to another country because they had a feeling that they should go. Those are not the only people that God is saying that He’s looking for to save. He’s not only going to save the adventurous, or the risk-takers. That’s not what he means by faith. The faith that Abraham had that He said that we must have to be saved is probably best described by using the word trust. He trusted God, or He believed God. Abraham was between 75 and 86 years old and childless when God told him that he and his wife would have descendants as numerous as the stars. And he believed God. He took God at his word. He had come through the years to trust God, that even if what he said was impossible, that if God had said it, then it would happen.
God didn’t credit the fact that Abraham moved because he had a gut feeling as righteousness. He credited the fact that he believed that he would have children as an 80 year old man married to a 70 year old man who was never able to have children their whole lives. He believed God. He trusted God. Even though it was impossible, He trusted God. He took Him at His word. That is what God honored, and that is why God forgave him of all his sins. And that is what He has asked from us. To trust Him. To believe Him. To take Him at His word. Faith is not a feeling. Faith is the act of believing God. Faith is an act of trusting God. In the New Testament you will come across two words a lot. Faith and Belief. Both of those english words come from the same Greek word. Now before you start to correct me, assuming that you know Greek, let me explain. Faith is translated from the Greek word Pistis. Believe is translated from the Greek word Pisteuo. Yes those are two different words but let me help explain the difference by asking you a question.
Is belief and believe the same word? You’re thinking, that’s a trick question. And it kind of is. They are spelled different and they are used different. Belief is a noun. Aka, that is my belief. Believe is a verb. Aka, I believe such and such. They are different words, that are used differently. You can believe me or not, but that is my belief. But as southerners, can we just agree that that’s the same word? Would you agree that one’s a noun and one’s a verb, but in essence they mean the same thing? That’s the best way I can describe Pistis, and Pisteuo.
Pistis
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Pistis is a noun that means belief, or trust, we translate it as faith. An Example is Ephesians 2:8-9
8 For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—9 not from works, so that no one can boast.
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Pisteuo
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Pisteuo is a verb that means believe, we translate it as believe. An example is John 3:16
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
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God is a good God, but He has not just given us all a feeling that He is good. He hasn’t just given us a feeling that we have sinned and can’t save ourselves and that He somehow has atoned for our sins. He has told us these things with very specific words that we don’t have the liberty to change. If God only revealed Himself to us through feelings then we all could come to different conclusions about who He is and what it is He has required of us and wants from us, but that’s not the case. And many times when people today argue about what God believes about certain lifestyles, or what He would do in our shoes, or what He wants us to do or don’t do, they often base their beliefs on their feelings. But we don’t have to make assumptions about God based on our feelings. He has told us everything about how He feels and how He wants us to act and how He wants us to treat each other, and He’s told us all these things with words. Words that have actual meaning. Words that we can easily understand. Words that we can’t change to make them say what we want them to say. Words that explain very specifically who He is and who we are and how we are to be saved.
But Abraham didn’t have a full copy of God’s word to study growing up to get to know God personally. Abraham didn’t know God the way we do. We have a full copy of God’s words where God has revealed Himself to us. We know what God is like. We know what He loves and what He hates. We know that He is good and trustworthy, and is self-sacrificial, and just, and holy, and love. God has revealed exactly who He is to us through His own words, in a way that every single one of us can study and read and get to know everything we could ever need to know about Him. That is so much better than having to depend on God specifically showing Himself face to face to each of us in order to know Him.
There are many people who say, “If God is real then why doesn’t He show Himself to me?” Well let’s imagine that that’s the alternative. Let’s imagine that that is exactly how we have to get to know God, by Him revealing Himself miraculously to us. If that were the case then we would be the people that we read about in the Scriptures. We would be the people who have to learn what God is like and what He’s not like, first hand. We would have to go through the things that the people in the Scriptures went though. I for one am very thankful that I have His word, and that I’m not having to learn who He is the hard way. I am thankful that I haven’t had to go through what David went through, or what Abraham went through, or what Adam went through, or what Job went through, or what Daniel went through, or what Jesus went through. I’ve had an enormously blessed life, where I can read all about God the way that a young child would read a diary that a parent had written for them.
You see, God is our Father, who loves us, and He’s written us the most amazing diary. He has written for us so many of the great times, and adventures that He’s been on, and He’s also written about the heartbreaking times that He’s been through. He’s told us about our older brothers and sisters that we never knew but that He knew and knows and loves dearly. He told us about the time that He was so proud of our older brother Stephen that He stood to His feet in front of His throne. He was so proud of our older sister Mary that He included her story of when she prepared Jesus for His burial, so that everywhere the gospel is told throughout the whole world for all time she would be honored by everyone. He told us about those He was proud of and those He was disappointed in. He didn’t shelter us from His past, He told us everything we need to know. The good times and the bad times. The times when we were good to Him and the times when we rebelled and betrayed Him. The times we praised Him and the times we cursed Him. And we can learn all about Him, and get to know Him, really really get to know Him, through the book He wrote to us, without having to live through it all again ourselves.
But the beautiful part is that even though He gave us a book about His life with our older brothers and sisters and neighbors from the other side of the world, He didn’t just mail it to us so that we could learn about Him. He brought it to us. He’s not like a father who went on an adventure and we only have a long distance relationship with Him and will never get to share adventures with Him. He is here with us now. He came across the ocean to be here with us, to start new adventures with us, to guide us, and protect us and shield us from our enemy, to teach us, to comfort us, to love us. He is right here with us every day. And He’s still on the same adventure He’s been on for thousands of years. An adventure full of wonder and excitement and amazement, but also full of danger and heartache as well. An adventure of fighting an enemy army in order to save people held in captivity. Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:22-26 to:
22 Flee from youthful passions, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. 23 But reject foolish and ignorant disputes, because you know that they breed quarrels. 24 The Lord’s servant must not quarrel, but must be gentle to everyone, able to teach, and patient, 25 instructing his opponents with gentleness. Perhaps God will grant them repentance leading them to the knowledge of the truth. 26 Then they may come to their senses and escape the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.
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You see the world is being held captive by our enemy. The bible describes him as a dragon. And so God is battling against a dragon and has asked us to join him. He’s asked us to put on our spiritual armor and join Him at His side. He told us that we as his church would storm the gates of hell and that the gates would not prevail against us. We are members of His kingdom, and we are supposed to be waging war against Satan’s kingdom. We are supposed to be going out and spreading God’s kingdom. We are supposed to be liberating those being held captive by the devil and welcoming them into God’s kingdom. And this is the same kingdom that He told Abraham about 4,000 years ago. A kingdom that that would spread to all nations so that one day there will be people from every tribe and nation in His eternal kingdom. But people will only be drawn to God’s kingdom, and people will only enter God’s kingdom if we are faithful to live the way God has commanded us to live. Only by obeying Him will we be a shining light to the world around us. Only by obeying Him will people see the love that He has poured out for them through us. Only by obeying Him will they hear the gospel message, the only message that is able to save them.
Romans 10:13-17 says this:
13 For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. 14 How, then, can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher? 15 And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. 16 But not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our message? 17 So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the message about Christ.
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His commands are good. They mold us into His image. The better we obey from the heart, the better we represent Christ to the world. The better we obey from the heart, the better people are able to see and hear exactly who God is. And the better we obey from the heart the more people will come to know Christ and enter into His kingdom. God wanted to show us through Abraham that we only enter His kingdom through faith, so He chose a man full of faith to use as an example for us to follow in his footsteps. But as I hope I just made clear that Faith and Faithfulness are intrinsically connected. Deep faith produces as a result deep faithfulness. God reiterates this truth in Genesis 18:18-19 when He says exactly why He chose Abraham.
18 Abraham is to become a great and powerful nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him. 19 For I have chosen him so that he will command his children and his house after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just. This is how the Lord will fulfill to Abraham what he promised him.”
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What did God promise to Abraham? He promised him that he would make him into a great nation and that all the nations on earth would be blessed through him. That is so important and beautiful at the same time. God said that He chose Abraham, a man full of faith, so that he would teach all of his descendants to obey God and live like God would live, by doing what is right and just, that that is how God will fulfill His promise to bless all of the nations through Him. That the nation of Israel, would be a kingdom, full of members of God’s kingdom, and that as a kingdom full of people that love God and live like God, would draw all nations to Him. And that as they obeyed Him, that they would love each other, and treat each other as made in the image of God, and that they would take care of the oppressed and needy, and they would speak truth and not lies, and they would deal honestly and not cheat, and they would share the message of God’s love for them and the danger that they were in because of their sin and their desperate need of a savior and the extraordinary grace of God who has reached down to save them. And through their obedience the kingdom of God would grow and reach every nation on earth. But that type of long term, century after century, millennia after millennia obedience, is only possible through genuine faith. Only real faith, only real trust in God can produce that type of kingdom growth.
We saw this throughout the Old Testament. Israel would obey for a little while but then would very quickly stop obeying. They began to pursue so many things that the world had to offer. Yes there were times that they did a very good job as a nation obeying God and therefore pointing people to Him and His kingdom, and it was during those times that we saw huge growth in God’s kingdom, but more often than not, they did not obey God. They did not point people to God’s kingdom, and as a result, it suffered. After a few thousand years, God sent His Son to obey Him perfectly the way that Israel never could, and showed us exactly how He wants each and every one of us to live and obey Him. Now, no one, throughout all of history, other than Jesus has ever obeyed God perfectly, and none of us can, that is exactly why we need a savior, to save us from our sins, or from failing to obey perfectly. But Jesus coming to live perfectly on our behalf, in absolutely no way changed the fact that God still wants us to obey Him perfectly. We know that we are not saved based on our inability to obey Him perfectly, this is not a salvation issue, this is an obedience issue.
God still requires us to obey Him, and we see the consequences of us being faithful, or us not being faithful. It doesn’t just affect our lives it effects everyone else’s lives as well. In the same way that Israel did not point many people to God, or lead them to the only God of salvation when they were disobedient and failed to live how God told them to, we too have the same responsibility. If we fail to obey God, then we will fail to move His kingdom forward and point people to Him the way He desires.
So this great nation, or this great kingdom, that God promised to build through Abraham, has reached all the way around the world to us. In the same way that Abraham entered into that kingdom, we enter into that kingdom, through faith. Trusting God. Believing not only in God, but simply believing God. Taking Him at His word. Loving Him. Now Abraham entered the kingdom through Faith, and we too enter the kingdom through faith, but Abraham was commanded to spread the kingdom through obedience, and we too, today, are commanded to spread the kingdom through obedience. Don’t miss this. God accepts us into His kingdom through our faith, God grows His kingdom through our obedience. True faith, produces faithfulness. This is not blind faith based on a feeling. This is real faith based on facts. Faith based on reason and evidence. God told us in Acts 17:2-4
2 As usual, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and rise from the dead: “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah.” 4 Some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, including a large number of God-fearing Greeks, as well as a number of the leading women.
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Did you catch that? When Paul went to Thessalonica to share the gospel so that people may be saved, he didn’t show up and say, you must be saved and God is looking for those who will believe in Him without any evidence. He is only looking for those who are willing to step out in faith and follow Him blindly. No. God said Paul reasoned with them, explaining and proving that Jesus was the Messiah from the Scriptures. God has given us all the evidence and proof we need to come to a reasonable conclusion that He is exactly who He says He is and we can trust Him. He’s not asking us to trust Him, without giving us any reason to trust Him. He is asking us to trust Him based on ALL OF THE REASONS He’s given us in the Scriptures. That we can look at history, and we can look at the world we live in, and we can REASON from all the evidence that God is real, and He is good, and He loves us, and He wants to forgive us.
I’m not asking you to give your life and place all of your trust in a God that you know nothing about. I’m not asking you to totally commit your life to some mysterious being and say that He is only looking for those who will trust Him based on an inner feeling without knowing anything about Him. No. I’m asking you to examine the scriptures. Examine your life. Look at the world around you. Look at all of the evidence. Read all that God has done, and who He is, and give your life completely to a God who is not scared of your ability to reason, but instead who has given you every REASON to believe Him. That’s what a REASON is. A reason is something that you can look at, and then in your mind reason something else from it. God has given us countless reasons to trust Him. There are countless things that we can look at and based on those things reason that God is trustworthy. The faith God is looking for is not a blind faith. It is a reasonable faith. It is an evidential faith. It is a faith that can’t be shaken because my feelings changed. It is a faith that is based on facts that are outside of myself, and therefore can withstand the ever changing feelings that take place inside of me as I go through life.
Do you have real faith? Do you trust God? Do you believe in Him? Meaning do you believe that He exists? And do you not just believe in Him, but do you believe Him? Meaning, do you take Him at His word? Do you trust Him? Hebrews 11:6 says
6 Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
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The one who has faith draws near to God. Do you have faith? Without faith it is impossible to please God. Without faith it is impossible to enter the kingdom of God. Are you a member of His eternal kingdom? Are you ready to step out in FAITH and trust Him, based on what you know about Him and based on what you know about yourself? Do you know that you have sinned against Him and that you can’t be good enough to wipe away your guilt, and that He is so good and loves you so much that He took your guilt upon Himself so that you could be forgiven? Have you decided to turn from sinning against God and have decided to live for God and with God instead? Do you love Him?
If you want to be right with God. If you want to be forgiven and adopted by Him as a son or daughter into His kingdom then make that decision right now. Turn from sinning against God to living for God right now. Ask God to forgive you of your sins against Him and ask Him to save you because you know you can’t save yourself. Ask Him to adopt you as His child, and to accept you into His eternal kingdom forever. And let us know that you made that decision. Click on the request prayer button and give us your name and email address so that we can follow up with you and help you continue to follow Him for the rest of your life. If you are not on our live website, then email us at YatesvilleBaptistChurch@gmail.com so that we can follow up with you. I love you, but God loves you more than words can describe. Let’s pray together.
Father, You are so good to us. You have always been so good to us. We don’t deserve Your love. We absolutely don’t deserve Your sacrifice. But your self sacrifical love shows us the depth of your love for us in your heart. Father, help us to love you in the same way. And Father, help us to love each other the way that you love us. Father, I pray for those who are listening or watching this message right now that you will draw them through Your Holy Spirit to Yourself and that they will trust You with all that they are for the rest of their lives. Father, we thank You for giving us so much of Your word for us to get to know you so intimately. Father, there is none like You, and we ask You to help us to live faith filled and faithful lives to You. Help us to be obedient through Your shielding us from temptation and through Your Holy Spirit. Give us strength, courage, wisdom, and love to live this life exactly the way you want us to. Help us to represent your kingdom to the world around us, and to do what is right and just so that we may point others to You. We love You Father, and we thank You for Your never ending love for us. In Jesus’ holy and precious and eternal name I pray, Amen.