Biblical Faith - It's Essence Part 2
Hal Molloy · Jun 24, 2001
Biblical Faith, No. 03
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/41026162932711

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

What we've looked at so far as we've gone through this study is that there's four major aspects of faith in terms of its essence, faith in terms of the faith, and personal faith. And there's faith as a principle. We have to distinguish between these four aspects of faith depending upon the passage that you're in and depending upon the context of the passage. I believe that if you just take a look at this first aspect of faith, faith in its essence, that this is the most critical thing that we need to understand. This is the foundation of all the aspects of faith. If we understand faith in its essence, then we're going to understand faith in terms of where there's a definite article, we're going to understand personal faith, and we're going to understand faith as a principle.

But we need to understand faith in terms of its essence. turn your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 11. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. We went through in some detail what this passage of scripture was saying and we came up with a picture summarizing Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. We saw that the word is, that the verb is an essence verb. It's describing the very essence of faith, the intrinsic nature of faith.

And when it talks about faith as the substance, the word substance can translate reality, that faith is reality. What God describes as biblical faith is reality. This has nothing to do yet with personal faith. Faith in its essence is reality. It's reality in the things of God, and these things of God are an absolute certainty. Now we're just looking at faith from God's perspective and not our perspective. We're looking at what God reveals to us as what faith is. It's a reality. It's about the things of God. We can say it is an absolute certainty.

Last week I asked you What are the things of God? And one of the responses was, who God is, his essence. What I did here is just to summarize the things of God, because we can't go through in this study all the aspects of the things of God, because I'll be here for the next four years. As we look at some of the aspects of the essence of God, we see that God is holy, which means he's set apart. God is set apart from everything that is not consistent with his essential essence. As I have said before, you cannot box God. We're trying to show some of the aspects of his nature on the screen here. And please understand you can't limit God.

What scripture reveals is the fact that he's holy. He's set apart from everything. He's righteous. He's absolutely right. He's just, which means that he's fair. He's infinite. He's omnipotent. He's all-powerful. He can speak and create the world just by speaking the word. He's omniscient. He knows everything.

There isn't anything that he doesn't know. He knows every one of our hearts, every single one. He knows the sorrows that we have. He knows the thoughts of joy that we have. There isn't anything that he doesn't know. Because he knows everything doesn't mean it's causative. Just because He knows the decision we're going to make about something, it doesn't cause us to make that decision.

For example, Adam sinned. Did God know it ahead of time? He sure did. Before the foundation of the world, God prepared the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ, His death, His burial, His resurrection, before Adam ever sinned. But because God knew Adam would sin, did that cause Adam to sin?

Absolutely not. is not causative. He's omnipresent. He's everywhere. He's self-existent. He needs nothing outside of himself to exist. We're here this morning, and we need every breath of air to exist. And if we don't get that next breath of air, we don't exist. That is, in terms of this physical body. We need all of these things outside of ourselves to exist in terms of air and food and water, etc. But He's self-existent.

He's love. And scripture reveals to us the love of God. We read this morning in 1 John chapter 3 what manners of love that this is. That we should be called the sons of God. Think about it. Think about the love that God has for you and me, that we could be called the sons of God.

But God is love. That's his essential essence. Out from his love comes his grace. And his grace, I like to summarize it this way. Everything that we don't deserve, God gives us. Gives us everything that we don't deserve. And then he's mercy. We deserve nothing but his wrath and punishment. And his mercy, he withholds. everything that we do deserve.

He's immutable. He will never change. He's truth. In the word Jesus Christ said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes into the Father but by me. He is truth. He is absolute truth. He is faithful. He is faithful in every aspect of our life. He is faithful in everything that he's ever said, everything that he's ever promised, He is faithful in carrying out every single promise. He's spirit. God is a spirit, and we worship Him in spirit and in truth. He's sovereign. He's over all. No one needs to counsel God. He is sovereign.

Those are some of the aspects concerning the things of God. I've listed a few others. Not only are we talking about the essence of God, but we're talking about His ways and His thoughts. He tells us in the book of Isaiah, in chapter 55, that our ways are not His ways, and that our thoughts are not His thoughts. And as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are His ways above our ways, and His thoughts above our thoughts. I want you to think about it.

Think about the heavens, and think about the stars. How high are they above the earth? Pretty big separation, isn't there? When you look at the stars, and the scientists tell us that these stars are billions of light years away. Do you know how far that is? Light travels 186,000 miles a second, and they're billions of light years away. One light year is light traveling 186,000 miles per second for one full year.

That's a big separation. His ways are above our ways and his thoughts are above our thoughts. So he reveals himself to man concerning his ways and thoughts. He reveals himself to man concerning his wisdom, his knowledge, and his mind. If we talk about the first one, wisdom, in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 it says, For the message of the cross is to them who are perishing foolishness, but unto us who are saved it is the power of God. And then it goes on to say, and it's talking about wisdom, that the cross represents the wisdom of God. Would man ever come up with the cross, which includes the death and the burial? and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ?

If you were to tell man that he has a sin problem, and if he would recognize it, most people would never believe that they have a sin problem, but those who recognize that they have a sin problem, if you ask them, what would be the solution to your sin problem? What would be the solution to satisfy God concerning your sin? What would be our solution? I know what my solution was when I was an unbeliever, that I would go to church every Sunday and that I would genuflect before we walked into the pew.

And if I did that, then God would be looking down at me and he would be pleased with me. But God says, Tom Malloy, that's your wisdom. But let me tell you my wisdom. My wisdom is in the cross. of my son, and I sent my son to die and pay the penalty for your sins, and my wisdom is wrapped up in the cross." My response is that's foolishness. That's moronic. That's the word you can make great. It's moronic. It's dumb.

Why would God do that? His wisdom is not our wisdom, and higher is the heavens above the earth, so is His wisdom also higher than ours. We're pulled apart. We're light years away. And that is true concerning his knowledge that is true concerning his mind. I want you to look at one passage of scripture concerning this. So would you turn to Romans chapter 11 for me. Look how it starts out.

Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. Oh the depth. We just look at Isaiah and it talks about the height. Oh the height. And now it's talking about the depth. whether it be height or depth, you see the distance we are from God. Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.

How unsearchable are His judgments. And the word there for unsearchable is inscrutable. How inscrutable are His judgments. What that is saying is something like this, that every single judgment that God has made, is making, or will ever make, is inscrutable. You don't need to take it to a higher court, because every one of his judgments are inscrutable. They are perfect. And then it goes on to say, and his ways pass finding out. They're so high, we can't find out his ways.

In verse 34, For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who has been his counselor verse 34 says something like this that even though we progress in our knowledge about the Lord we can never come to the end of the knowledge about the Lord because here we have an infinite God and finite preachers we'll never come to that end but isn't that wonderful because we're going to be spending all eternity with him and we're going to keep finding out keep understanding. Verse 35, For who hath first given to him, and should be recompensed unto him again?

Verse 36, For out of him, and through him, and to him, or unto him, are all things. Notice the word things there? What do you think things mean in verse 36? Could it mean the things of God? For out of him and through him and unto him are all things, are all the things of God. I think that's what that is saying. The things of God are out from him, they're through him, and they return back unto him. To whom be Glory forever, Amen. And it's interesting that the passage ends that way. To whom be glory forever, Amen. Everything that is out from Him and through Him and unto Him is for His glory.

At this point in time, I want you to recognize we are not in the equation. This is all things of God, out from God, through Him, unto him, we are not in the equation yet. We'll come in later on when we talk about personal faith, but we're not there yet. We're just talking about faith and assessment.

So the things of God not only consist of his ways, thoughts, wisdom, knowledge, and mind, but it's the things in terms of what he has done, what he is doing right now, and what he will do yet in the future. And he's revealed all of that to us. and all of those are things of God. The list can go on, but I ended it with the things of God also relate to His eternal purpose. When we talked about God's eternal purpose, we said there were four aspects of His eternal purpose. The first aspect of His eternal purpose, we're talking now back before the foundation of the world, back before creation, back in eternity's path.

Number one is to declare His glory. How does He declare His glory? How does He announce His glory? He does it in several ways. He does it by creation, because as you look at all of the creation, as you look at the universe, Psalm 19 tells us, the heavens declare the glory of God. So one of the ways He declares His glory is through His creation. How else does He declare His glory? He declares His glory through the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let's go to John chapter 1, in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God, in the beginning. that in the beginning takes you back before the creation of the world. It takes you back into eternity past. Then in verse 14, and the Word became flesh, came into a new state of being, became flesh and dwelt among us.

We beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. He declared his glory through the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then, God reveals His glory. How does God uncover His glory to man? We certainly have the written Word, and the written Word reveals the glory of God. It reveals all of the things of God, and the things of God is His glory. That's one way, and the other way He reveals His glory is through the incarnation, through the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. God's glory was revealed through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then there's a third way in which he reveals his glory to us, and that is through you and me as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 3 says that we are epistles of Christ. We are the message of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we come to know him, God transforms us into the very image of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the Spirit of God manifests through us the very glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So He reveals to the world His glory through us. Then He shares His glory. How does God share His glory? First, he shared his glory with the first Adam. God said, let us make man in our image and our likeness. God shared his very glory with Adam. Adam fell. You could no longer recognize God's glory through Adam.

But God's purpose still remained the same, that he was going to share his glory with man. And even though Adam sinned, And we took on Adam's nature. God's purpose was never ever going to be changed. He never redirected his purpose. He still wanted to share his glory with man. Then comes the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ comes to die and pay the penalty for the sins of the world.

So God is now free to share his glory with those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And the first thing that God does is he identifies us with the Lord Jesus Christ. He puts us in union with the Lord Jesus Christ. And he puts us in union with Christ's death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding.

We're put in that union, and the question is, why? Why does God identify us with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ in all of his works? Why does he do that? The answer is that God shares His glory with us. He puts us in union with the One who is the glory of God, and we are in that living union with Him. That's the way God shares His glory with us, through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. I tell you all this, how about proving it? Turn to John chapter 17, This is the real Lord's Prayer. The Lord Jesus Christ is praying to the Father.

Neither pray I for these alone. Who are these alone? The Lord Jesus Christ initially is praying for the Apostles, and now the prayer takes a turn, and neither I pray for these alone, that is the Apostles, but for them also who shall believe on me through their words. Well, who's that? It's all of us who believe on the Word. This is the Lord Jesus Christ's prayer for us.

Verse 21, that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us. Now, notice two things there. That they all might be one. That we may be one. Are we one? All of us one? And how are we one? We're one because when we put our trust and faith in the person and the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit baptized us into the body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and we are the body of Christ, so we're one. Now look at the second part of the prayer, that they only be one, first part, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us. Are we one in the Father and in the Son? And how did that happen? Didn't that happen through our identification with Christ that we were baptized into the person and the work of our Lord Jesus Christ?

Look at the result. It's so that God can share his glory with us. verse 22, and the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one. Every time I come to this passage, it chokes me up. This is emphatically bold. This is one of the deep things of God, that God would share His glory with me. So, one of the purposes of God is to share His glory.

And that's how He shares His glory with us, through identifying us with His Son. And His Son, then, giving us the very glory that the Father has given Him. Then, He is to be glorified. We read in chapter 11 in Romans, it was out from Him, through Him, and then unto Him. So it all comes then back to Him. To be glorified means simply that we magnify the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. We magnify that glory. So I had to terminate the things of God with God's eternal purpose. Let me just summarize.

My whole purpose in all of this is that we understand, starting out, what the essence of faith is. That the essence of faith includes all of the things that we've looked at this morning. This is foundational. If we understand faith in its essence, all of the other aspects of faith will fall into line. Maybe we could say it this way. The essence of biblical faith is the totality of God's revelation to man.

It's the objective truth. It's the fact. It's reality. It's the very reality of who and what God is and what he's done. And it's independent of us. It's independent of man, whether we believe it or not. God wants us to believe it, and God wants us to enter into what He's revealed, to enter into those wonderful truths, the truth that He's revealed about Him, about His Son, and about us. But independent of whether we believe it or not, it's still reality, it's still truth, it's still fact. As we look at this, You probably ask the question, why is it God, God, God, God, God, God? Why is it all underlined? Because we're trying to stress that this is all out from God, God, God, God. It has nothing to do with man at this point in time. And as we go on, we're going to build upon this foundation.