Faith 1
Introduction
Tonight, we are going to begin a new series that I’m really excited about and really nervous about. I’m excited about it because I think it is a little different in that it is not going to resemble so much of a “three points” type of approach. Not like one of Shakespeare’s plays where at the end, the conflict is resolved and Hamlet is dead and Laertes is dead and Ophelia is dead and the Queen is dead and the King is dead—everyone is dead. This won’t be like that. Instead, it is going to be open-ended at times. It will be more like a movie that ends with the possibility of a sequel. It should stretch us and prod us to think more. I’m also nervous because while we’re on this journey together, it may feel like at times we are trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. I mean, this subject is sort of like a squirmy two-year old—doesn’t always act the way you want it to. In fact, when we’re done, you may find that you have more questions than answers—which I think is very good and healthy for your Christian growth, but can be a little scary.
When I told Steph what I felt like God wanted me to focus on for awhile, her first question was, “Do you have this down? Do you really understand it?” My answer was a resounding “no!” From the beginning, I want you to know that as I stand before you and lead this discussion, I do it humbly. Not as the guy with all of the answers, but the guy who is on this journey right along with you. It is my prayer that God uses this series to shake us all up and make us think.
In Christian circles, we use a lot of different words and phrases, a sort of “Godspeak” —words like faith, trust, beliefs, saved, lost, salvation, righteousness, justification—the list could go on and on, ad nauseum. The more time we spend in Christian circles, the more familiar we get with this “Godspeak” and the more comfortable we are in using it. When someone has a struggle, we say, “Just give it over to God.” Or, “just have faith that the Lord will pull you through.” Or, we might quote a verse of Scripture that seems to apply to that person’s situation. When we sit in Sunday School or in worship service, and someone asks you a question, our “Godspeak” vocabulary usually shows up, sometimes in the form of what we like to call “Sunday School answers.” You know, answers like, “God”, “Jesus”, or “the Bible.”
Although I have given those answers hundreds and thousands of times, I am starting to become annoyed with them. Why? Because they are wrong? No. Those answers may be absolutely right on target. That’s not the issue. Here’s the issue—what do those answers mean in context, where the rubber meets the road of life? I get the feeling sometimes that we give a “Sunday School answer” without even a meager understanding of how that answer is supposed to be lived out in the day to day. And we do this without thinking. When we do this, we perpetuate a serious problem in the church. That problem is an unthinking, shallow walk with Christ. We understand how to become Christians easily enough. We are a little unsure about what happens next. We go to church, read the Bible, pray—basically do what we see everyone else at church doing. After awhile, we may wonder why we don’t get it—why what we read in the Bible and hear in Sunday School and church seems so distant, almost like a fairy tale somewhere out “there.” The Bible contains of stories of people who lived thousands of years ago and talks about things that I can’t see or touch like faith, hope and love. It’s like we’re talking about stuff that is non-existent. And that is supposed to guide my life? I mean, I basically understand that, as a Christian, my life is to be on God’s path. Yet, I might know the right things and say the right things, but my growth as a Christian is one step forward and two steps back. It is as if I am walking on a train track. My path is on one side and God’s is on another. Out in the distance, it looks like those tracks become one line. As I walk, I see that those tracks don’t get any closer at all. So I question. I ask, “Why don’t I get it?”
Do you know why I think that we don’t “get it”? I believe that our brains turn off when we walk in the door of the church. We come here and listen to someone expound on the Bible. We read it on our own and we begin to gain knowledge. The more knowledge we get, the more comfortable we become and the more that we may unconsciously act as if we’re getting this “Christian thing” all figured out, sort of like men who read instructions up to a point and then think that they can put together that Christmas toy on their own from there. And when you have something all figured out, it becomes an object that you can manipulate instead of a subject to explore. You have subjects in school, right? They’re not called “objects”, are they? No, they’re not, because in subjects like math more is being learned all of the time, as is in physics, chemistry, and so on. If you listen to scientists in those fields, like scientists who work with any Mars project, they have huge grins and their eyes dance with excitement as they say about their subject, “Oh, this is only the tip of the iceberg.”
What about our subject? We aren’t talking about an impersonal subject, either; not a subject that we can learn about but doesn’t know jack taco about us. We are talking about our Creator. He made us—how much more personal can that be? (READ PSALM 139!!!) So God knows everything about us. Although we cannot fully know God, He is knowable. Did you know that the Bible is written on a grade school reading level? Plus, just look at creation. Romans 1:18-20 says this: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” God is indicating that He wants to be known. He’s left his calling card, his fingerprints everywhere. He wants us to know Him. Not just the Sunday School answers, either. We need to probe and question and search and find out just what these “Sunday School answers” really mean. I’m not talking about learning theology or reading your Bible from Genesis to maps, although I think that those things are important. I am talking about discovering where faith meets life. Not faith that is out there somewhere in some distant place far away from my life, but faith that is life. One Christian author says it this way: “We need a picture of our life in God that does not leave most of our life untouched.”
People used to think that the world was flat. Those people were convinced that if a ship sailed west it would sail right off the edge of the Earth—end of discussion. Christopher Columbus was convinced that the discussion was not over. His step of faith proved that the discussion was far from over. Being satisfied with the Sunday School answers that leave most of your life untouched makes you a “flat-earth” person and kind of “ends the discussion” about God. But, guys, I’m telling you—the discussion is not over. Why? Because the discussion includes your story. In fact, if you look at Hebrews 11, you find that the discussion about God and about faith includes the stories of the lives of lots of people. Ordinary people like you and me. Let’s look at this chapter.
That is what our conversations for this series will be about: faith. The title of this series is, “Faith—is it in you?” That is the question that we all should be asking ourselves at the end of each day. As we go through this series, we are going to look at some of the people mentioned in this chapter. We aren’t going to look at them in a pretty, all cleaned up, Sunday School kind of way. Seriously, Abraham came at his son with a knife, Moses was a murderer, Rahab was a hooker, Jacob was a liar and a cheat—if anything, it sounds more like Jerry Springer or Judge Judy than it does the A-list of God’s faithful ones. We are going to try to see them as they really are, warts and all, and we’re going to try to discover what they add to the faith discussion. We’re going to look at Jesus comments about the faith of others. At the end of this series, my prayer is that you will have a huge grin on your face as we have pulled faith from somewhere out of the clouds and you will say, “I’m beginning to get it. Oh, this is only the tip of the iceberg” and be willing to embark on this adventure of journeying through life with God.
