Fruit of Faith

Scripture:

Matthew 11:25-30

,

Hebrews 11:1

,

6

;

12:1-3

Topic: Faith, Endurance, Strength, Tiredness

Hook: How do we find rest and the strength we need to endure?

Bottom Line: Only when we trust in Jesus will we find the strength to endure.

Intro

Daylight Savings Time / Adjusting / So Tired

Thinking back on last year / Exhausting

Have you ever been super tired after a long day of work, or at the end of a long-term project, or a crazy day with the kiddos and thought, how did I endure that? How am I still here?

Being able to work from home, I watch what my wife goes through in a day. Not only does she raise our two kids, but she works a part-time job!

Some days are great. Other's everything's a struggle. Breakfast is rough; naps are a fight, someone poops in the tub.

AV TECH

I used to do free-lance AV work for a company that served the Chick fil a's corporate office. We would have to set up these events in their atrium that was 4 stories high. We'd set up these giant TVs on each floor and run the cables down to the second floor. When you agree to these jobs, the company is paying you a day rate. So they can technically keep you there 24 hours. Towards the end of the day, when I had but only a few hours left, I'd start feeling how tired I was. I remember my feet would feel so sore by the end of the day.

That was always such physically exhausting work.

Family Drama

Now have you ever been through something that was so emotionally taxing, at the end of it you felt emotionally depleted?

I was 17, when it hit me that my family was falling apart due to infidelity and alcohol abuse. I was in denial about it all hit me at once one day while talking with my sister. I cried on her shoulder on our deck. This crisis would be the beginning of a long process of soul searching. For the first time, honestly, I felt alone. I had my sisters, a few friends, but I knew it would be wrong to put that burden on any of them. I could no longer rely on my family to be my rock; I needed something more solid.

I was emotionally exhausted.

How about you?

The older you get, the more it becomes apparent that we are exhaustible.

The physical and emotional energy needed to perform at work, exist in a family unit, invest in friends can leave us depleted at the end of the day.

Question: So when we're tired and weak, How do we find rest and gain the strength we need to endure?

Come, Take, Learn

Let's turn to Matthew 11:28-30

Earlier this year, Terry spoke about the word resolve. Resolve requires energy.

Hook: How do we find rest and the strength we need to show resolve?

We're all called to make disciples. That's in your home, at your job, at church, etc.

Discipleship takes energy, the very thing we lack.

Hook: How do we find rest and the strength we need to disciple the next generation?

Read Matthew 11:28-30

How can Jesus promise this?

This claim is big!

How can he say this?

Matthew 11:27 NASB95

"All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

Jesus acts with God's Authority and Power. (Miracles and forgiveness of sins.)

Point: Jesus has the authority to give the rest we need.

Come to Him

Not the pope, not a pastor, not to the Elders, or the deacons, your spouse, not a psychic, anything!

He says, "Come to Me."

Illustration: If I ever met Matthew McConaughey, I would be so nervous.

I love MM because he says things like this…

Ask DJ to show funny MM photo

Would you be nervous to meet God?

Are we apprehensive about asking God for assistance?

Hebrews 4:15–16 NASB95

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Jesus saying "come to me" speaks to how approachable Jesus is.

Do you want rest for your soul?

Point: When we come to Jesus, we can rest assured, knowing we are at the right place.

Take His Yoke

Jesus says, take my yoke.

Notice that Jesus doesn't say the opposite of the hard yoke is no yoke. It's an easy yoke. So there's structure when we come to Him, but it's the proper structure that leads to rest.

Illustration: Sometimes in a marriage relationship, a husband and a wife can become distant. It's usually because they've become so busy that they haven't realized they've gone a long time without investing in the relationship.

My wife enjoys quality time, acts of service and words of affirmation. So if ever there was distance, I could spend time and energy going out buying gifts and flowers, come home and give her a big hug, but it wouldn't have the same effect as if I were to put the phone away, sit down, and ask her how she's doing and let her know I see the hard work she does. This is the way she works.

In the same way, Jesus has made it clear through the Bible HOW we should go about pleasing Jesus.

John 15:5 NASB95

“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

He says it's easy, that's because we don't have to do anything but rely on Him.

His yoke (structure) is easy, and his burden is light.

Point: Only when we take on Jesus' yoke (structure of reliance) will we receive His rest and His strength.

Learn From Him

The only way for Jesus to teach you something is for you to be teachable.

The Faith of the Centurion

A centurion is a Roman soldier who commands 100 soldiers. This particular Centurion had a slave, that he loved, who had fallen ill. When he heard that Jesus was coming, he sent elders of the Jews to ask Jesus to heal his slave. The elders told Jesus that this Centurion deserved his help because he loved the Jewish nation and had built them their synagogue. Jesus agrees to heal the slave and begins heading to the house of the Centurion.

Luke 7:6–10 NASB95

Now Jesus started on His way with them; and when He was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to Him, “Lord, do not trouble Yourself further, for I am not worthy for You to come under my roof; for this reason I did not even consider myself worthy to come to You, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. “For I also am a man placed under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled at him, and turned and said to the crowd that was following Him, “I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such great faith.” When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.

Jesus found the most remarkable faith, not in Israel but the Centurion's humble heart.

He knew how unworthy he was of Jesus' time and love.

That's humility.

How do we gain humility?

James 1:23–25 NASB95

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.

How do we gain humility? We learn by looking intently into the Law of Liberty, gaining an accurate view of ourselves.

Illustration: I cut my hair. Even the back! I can do it because I have a mirror. The mirror gives me the ability to see the back of my head. The part I can't see!

Application: That's why we can't go a day without looking in the mirror.

Point: To find rest and strength, we must be teachable.

We Have To Come By Faith

Matthew 11:25-26

Teaching: Jesus praises (agrees with) the Father saying that he has hidden these things (the Kingdom of God) from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.

Illustration: I've had the honor of being dad to two amazing kids, Copeland and Eleanora. When they were infants, they were completely reliant on us for everything! Sometimes they couldn't calm down and they needed me to help them. I watched this video online of this doctor soothed crying babies by flipping them on their side and rocking them from side to side. It worked!

That's the image Jesus is showing us here, those who find rest for their souls are like infants, not bratty teenagers who think they know everything.

Those who find rest, are completely reliant on Him.

Jesus says that FAITH is pleasing to the Father.

The way is not by knowledge alone.

Quote: Ray Comfort (Evangelist from New Zealand) says, "If someone talked you into your faith, someone can talk you out of it."

Romans 1:22 NASB95

Professing to be wise, they became fools,

If relying on Christ is something we do, how is this any different from someone preaching Salvation by works?

Text:

Romans 3:27–28 NASB95

Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.

Boasting and self-righteousness are excluded - because it wasn't by your works.

We are justified (declared righteous) by grace through faith apart from works.

God has designed it to where faith is not a work!

So you can put your faith and Christ while at the same time, trust him completely for your Salvation.

What is faith?

What is Faith?

Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is...

Assurance of hope

Conviction of things not seen

Biblical faith is not blind faith, but rather, it's assured hope in what awaits us in the future. Faith compensates for what we don't see clearly now.

Paul says it this way:

1 Corinthians 13:12–13 NASB95

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Charles Spurgeon, one of the church's most famous preachers in the 19th century said this about faith.

"Faith is made up of three things: first knowledge, then assent (agreement), and then what they call affiance (trust), or the laying hold of the knowledge to which we give assent, and making it our own by trusting in it."

3 Components of Faith

Knowledge

Belief

Trust

Knowledge

A man cannot believe what he does not know. He describes a conversation with someone who says they believe but has no idea why! (The man says,) "I believe what the Church believes." "What does the Church believe?" "The Church believes what I believe." "Tell me, what do you and the Church believe?" "Why we both believe the same thing." Now this man believed nothing, except that the Church was right, but in what he could not tell. It is idle for a man to say, "I am a believer," and yet not to know what he believes; but yet I have seen some persons in this position.

Belief

True faith gives its full assent to the Scriptures; it takes a page and says, "No matter what is in the page, I believe it; It sees the Trinity; it cannot understand the Trinity in Unity, but it believes it. It sees an atoning sacrifice; there is something difficult in the thought, but it believes it; and whatever it be which it sees in revelation, it devoutly puts its lips to the book, and says, 'I love it all;'

Application: When you come to the part of Scripture that you don't fully comprehend, you don't stop searching for the resolution, but you don't let the answer be the source of your faith. Because there are some Biblical truths, you won't fully understand until you see Jesus face to face. That doesn't mean over time God can't make things clearer through his Word.

"But a man may have all this, and yet not possess true faith; for the chief part of faith lies in the last head, namely, in an affiance (reliance) to the truth; not the believing it merely, but the taking hold of it as being ours, and in the resting on it for salvation."

Trust

"suppose a fire in the upper room of a house, and the people gathered in the street. A child is in the upper part: how is he to escape? He cannot leap down—that were to be dashed to pieces. A strong man comes beneath, and cries, "Drop into my arms." It is a part of faith to know that the man is there; it is another part of faith to believe that the man is strong; but the essence of faith lies in the dropping down into the man's arms. That is the proof of faith..."

Faith In Action

Text: Hebrews 11:23-29

Moses’ Parents (v23)

They hid him for 3 months, because of the king's edict to kill all the baby boys.

Look what it says about their spirit's… they were not afraid.

Their souls were at rest.

Illustration: You guys know how much newborns cry. I would be terrified!

This is a courageous action, that could've gotten them killed.

Moses' Gives Up His Royal Privileges (v24-26)

Moses made a decision when he protected the Hebrew man who was getting beaten by the Egyptian.

By doing this he was choosing God over the passing pleasures of sin.

He had everything, all the treasures of Egypt, but he regarded it as nothing and chose ill-treatment.

Moses Left NOT Fearing the King (v27)

Exodus 2:15

says that Moses fled from the presence of Pharoah and settled in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.

He sat down— he wasn't pacing, franticly. He was resting by a well.

by a well— isn't it interesting that Moses sat by a well. God brought Moses there! He couldn't taken him anywhere, but he chose a well. This is the continuation of God's provision.

In

John 7:37–38

Jesus says that he is the living water. If anyone is thirsty, let him 'come to me and drink'

Moses Kept the Passover

The Israelites Passed Through the Red Sea

Point: Moses' Parents by faith had courage and did not fear the king's edict.

Point: Moses by faith, chose to live with God's people and suffer persecution, over the wealth and pleasure that Egypt had to offer.

Point: Moses by faith fled and did not fear. Rather, he rested by water God provided.

Point: Moses by faith, obeyed God's specific instruction regarding the Passover.

Point: The Israelites by faith crossed the Red Sea as if it were dry land.

Question: If all of these things were accomplished by faith, does that mean they get the credit? NO!

Again, you can't boast about faith because it isn't a work!

So how do we find the strength to endure and finish well?

Hebrews 12:2-3

We need to fix our eyes on Jesus / Notice the similarity with

Matthew 11:25-30

Fix your eyes / Come to Me

The writer of Hebrews fixes these Jewish Christian's attention on Christ at points in time.

The Cross

At the Right Hand of the Throne of God

What happens when we consider the cross of Christ?

We remember Christ's love for us.

We remember that Jesus endured for us.

What happens when we consider Christ at the right hand of the Throne of God?

We remember the Resurrection.

We remember the hope that is alive in all who put their faith in Christ. The hope in eternal life with the Lord!

We remember that he has prepared a place for us.

How do we fix our eyes?

How do we abide in Him?

Pray - Talk to God

Listen - Read His Word

Learn and Apply

It's all fruit of faith.

When you are tired, fix your eyes on Jesus, and you will find the rest and strength you need to endure.

It's all the fruit of faith. Let's pray.