Faith - Lesson 2

Lesson three is in the back. I know it looks a little weird if you're not an English major or a Greek major, but it has a diagram, a sentence diagram, and I want you to try to fill in the blanks. It's perfectly okay if you don't get the right words because it's really, the reason I put it in there, is hopefully it can be used to illustrate some very interesting things when it comes to studying Hebrews 11.1. And then we're going to talk about the essence of faith. So, don't be spooked by it. Give it a go. See what happens. So, starting today, lesson 2.

What's your definition of faith? We talked some about this last week and we're still kind of in a overview mode. I haven't gotten down to specifics and probably won't. You want a definition? Sure, yeah. Okay. We usually go to the Bible, Hebrews 11, and say, now faith is, and so on. And a couple of words in there strike me. Substance and evidence.

That faith is more than a mental assent. Jesus said the devils, the demons, also believe and tremble. But that didn't change the fact that they're opposing God. Their actions are not in line with a faith in God. So you can believe in God, but not have faith if it doesn't produce something. So belief is in a sense intellectual, whereas faith has feet to it.

It shows itself, whether it shows itself in hope and love, whether it shows itself in compassionate ministry, whether it shows itself in encouraging and edifying the body. It's based on evidence that your mind and your heart are in agreement that this is truth, this is reality, this is something to build my life on.

Steve. I kind of took, before I got into a scriptural definition, I kind of took this cap. Webster seems to equate... Oh, you've been hanging out with Courtney. I use all sources. Webster seems to equate belief and faith in a narrow manner. based upon what the believer slash faither exercises. He equates both of them kind of together. His definitions aren't that different from each other. So then my view on it was a pre-scriptural type of definition.

Belief seems to be more of my action in a direction. Faith can incorporate my participation, but it seems to exist independently of my participation. Oh, that's good. It is independent in its existence something I enter into rather than direct or manipulate or maneuver. Okay.

Yeah, what's good about where you're going with that is that, as we talked about last week, when you enter into understanding faith, it's pretty much always from your frame of reference. It's personal. It's how you think about it. It's your trust. It's your dependence. It's your rest and reliance. on the scripture or anything like that.

So it's personal, but as we're going to discover and did discover, there's at least four kinds of biblical faith, which we'll start to get more detailed about that next week. So we looked also at personal faith, and that's kind of what's been described, right? And we looked at Matthew 8. Matthew 8 is the story about the centurion who had the sick servant, right? And he came to Jesus and said, you know, will you come over to my house and heal my servant? And Jesus, in the conversation, he said, well, Jesus said, well, where do you live?

I'll come over there. And he said, well, you don't need to come over there. I'm not worthy that you should come in. All you got to do is say it and it'll be done. And the reason I know that that's true is because I'm a centurion and I... tell people to go, and they go, and they come, and they come, and I'm a boss. I've got a hundred guys under me, and they do what I tell them, and there's no discussion. If you've ever been in the military, you kind of know how that goes.

And Jesus said, I have not seen this kind of faith in Israel from any Jew. Personal faith. That this guy had a personal faith in the capacity of the Lord Jesus to heal his servant, right? And said, you know, I know, you don't need to come, you can just say it and it will be done. There wasn't any evidence of any Jewish guys, men or women, other than Mary and Joseph, but Jesus said, I haven't seen this kind of faith in all of Israel.

Isn't that interesting? Personal faith, right? So again, until we get going in the class, we're going to primarily think about faith that it's ours. It's the way we look at it. It's our frame of reference. And that's okay for now. So question three says, does faith have to have an object?

You understand what the question is? In other words, does faith have to have something to believe in? Now, you might think, well that's really an easy and a dumb question. Why would you ask that question? I'll tell you why I asked it. I grew up in Catholicism and their theology is that faith is a commodity and you just have faith for faith's sake.

He's a person of faith. What does that mean? Really, what does it mean? It's no object, just a person of faith. Do you understand what I'm saying? And so, when I became a Christian and began to understand about biblical faith, from a personal standpoint, it always needs an object. I believe in fill-in-the-blank. The fill-in-the-blank is the object. Do you see that? I have faith that fill-in-the-blank.

Perhaps in some people's mind, faith is equated with faithfulness. And so if you go to church every time the doors are open, If you read the Bible, say prayers, like I recall vividly... Well, come on, be more practical. Show up and write a check. Okay. You know what I'm saying.

We look at faith as being demonstrated by our faithfulness in following certain rituals, certain procedures, certain requirements, and the rest. That's our faith, and that's what the Pharisees tried to do with the people. They tithed their herb garden even, to show their faithfulness to the legality of the law. But Christ got after them because the attitude in their hearts was not one of faith. So the difference between faithfulness to a prescribed way of doing things, or performances, objectives, that's not faith. Faith is how much of it you've incorporated into your attitude and style.

Now, last week we went through a lot of those, by faith Abraham did X, by faith, and what we looked at is what faith allowed them to do. But we didn't really look at the object, but the Hall of Fame of Faith in Hebrews 11, it just says, by faith Abraham was able to do this by faith. Noah built an ark and that kind of thing by faith. And it just goes through that list and every one of those is personal faith. And it shows that by faith they did accomplish certain things. But that whole list there doesn't really lay out the object. It says that they were able to do certain things. But what was the object of their faith? It doesn't mention it.

Like you said, our faith, it's important that we have faith and believe. who we're believing in that's really matters. Theology could work to infinite powerful finding God. Let me give you an example. If I say I love And that's all I say, what does it say? Don't I have to have an object? I mean, some people would say, well, I'm a lover. Well, good for you. I love direct object. What do I love? Or I believe... what?

The what part, as you go through and spend time with believers, the what part is where the ignorance is. Because they say, well, I'm a believer, and my question is always, well, what do you believe? Because it matters. Well, that's what I was thinking. I think that faith has to have an object and a person or a thing. But the one thing I thought is, what do you believe in?

And we learn that as we grow. You know, it says we grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus. Well, the more we know the word, we have to first trust that the word is true. You have to have faith in that. It's God's word and then the rest is a lifelong process.

It's very interesting when you kind of go down that road because you do. I mean I can say back to the example of love. I love my wife. I love the Broncos. If I don't put a direct object in there, it's not a complete thought. You see that? You have to finish the thought.

And lots of people say, well I'm a person of faith, and what they really mean is that I believe in myself. I believe in myself to have faith. that God is going to come and somehow fix whatever I want him to fix. So faith is emotional. The value of it is what I feel, rather than the fact that it has an object. I believe, fill in the blank, or I have faith which is a noun, in what? If you say, well, I feel like God is going to... Is that faith?

No, it's not. Here's a question that's not on the list. Does faith have anything to do with your feelings? No. It doesn't. Not one thing to do with your feelings, because faith, the direct object, is not a feeling. Faith in the facts is like train on the tracks. Yeah. Faith, I believe in... My feelings? If I believe in my feelings, my ship is going down. It is.

That's a leaky boat. Well, they're fickle. And you have to put your faith in someone who's not fickle. But someone who's not fickle has an object that they believe in. Do you see that? I'll say that again. Someone who's not fickle has an object they believe in.

Alan and you. I think of Jesus' response when he was asked, what are the works of God that I should do? And Jesus' answer was that you believe in him. He pointed to a personal faith in a person and nodded to the set of prescriptions. I was just going to make an observation.

So you mentioned, does faith have anything to do with feelings? I would say that there's feelings involved in faith, but the feelings don't verify the facts. That's what I mean. And what's interesting, if you have a problem with feelings in your life, you have a faith problem. If you have a problem with your feelings ruling, your attitude, your heart, then you have a faith problem. So in a reverse sense, feelings have everything to do with faith. Because if feelings are ruling your life, if your circumstances, if your anxiety or your worry, are what is guiding your train, so to speak, then you have a faith problem. So there's an inverse relationship that's very much the root of the problem with feelings. So in that sense, it does have a lot to do with faith. It's just not... it doesn't guide faith, but faith guides feelings. Yeah. Do all of us have faith? Do all non-believers have faith?

In something. Yeah. I mean, if they buy an airline ticket and get on the plane, it proves that they do. They have faith that that sucker is going to stay up in the air. Not so much anymore. As long as you're not in Southeast Asia, you're okay. And it seems like with all these definitions that it's like something that's like a ongoing thing, like let's say Santa Claus, like little kids believe and have faith that Santa's going to come on Christmas, but as they get more information, you know, and their feelings are all wrapped up in it, and they're happy, and they try to be good and stuff, but as they get more information, they may choose then not to believe in Santa Claus anymore. And so it's kind of like, it seems like an ongoing kind of choice and you can have different things like come into your life that you may think of as, you know, in a worldly sense as like proof that God isn't reliable and so therefore you might like lose faith If you're going to go down the road that God isn't reliable, because I went to him and I said, I want you to fix this problem and he didn't. Whose parameters are you using there? Your own. So, the next question on the list is, is there a difference between biblical faith and non-biblical faith? What's the difference? The object. Right?

So how important is it, based on that premise, to know the facts? It's critical. And what makes it tough is that our culture in America tells you to trust your feelings, if it feels good, do it, etc, etc, etc. And they also, our culture in America says that as you learn that there isn't Santa Claus, God's in the same category. And that as you grow up and learn all the things that science has to offer, science can take the place of God because After all, that guy in the white lab coat who's looking serious when he tells you things, he must be telling you the truth.

Turn on TV tonight and some event's going to happen and a reporter's going to stick a microphone in somebody's face. What's the question they're going to ask him? How do you feel about it? How do you feel about what just happened? How do you feel about losing the game? I wish they'd do that to me.

I've always said, I've always thought it'd be cool to say, I don't feel at all, I'm a critical thinker. Now, biblical faith and non-biblical faith, the Broncos going to win today? It doesn't matter. We don't know. Who cares? If I say I believe that the Broncos are going to win today, biblical faith or non-biblical faith? None. Sure it is. We don't know.

So if I study the facts and review all of the evidence and I think, oh yeah, they're going to win. I'm having this discussion in my mind about, do unbelievers have faith? And then we use the example of, sure they do, they get on an airplane and they trust it. But there's something even bigger that all unbelievers have in terms of faith. So you think about the big picture of life, where did I come from, where am I going, why am I here? What is true? How do I know what is true? How can I trust that? What is valuable? What is right? What is wrong?

Ethics, so forth. So those big three areas of what gives, you know, we give definitions like the philosophy of thinking. They have faith in a philosophy, even though it's not biblical, they believe They have an answer for where they came from. Maybe it's not satisfying to them, but they have faith in those big questions of life, beyond just the chair. And the answers may not be satisfactory, and they may not know how to explain them, but that Romans 1 passage tells us that they've traded that truth of God for the Creator, or traded the truth of the Creator for the creature. So they're worshipping something and they have faith in something even if they can't define it fully.

It's misplaced and it's ultimate. I guess it's so beyond just the plane or the chair. It's the big picture of that philosophy. So biblical faith is defined as the object of your faith must be the truth that is contained in the Word of God. Non-biblical faith is anything else. Unfortunately, you can always change your mind, right? I mean, we all started off as like... We'll get to this next week, but does biblical faith change? No, we do. You do, but it doesn't.

So again, why does a place like Holly Hills put so much emphasis on learning the facts? so that the object of your faith would be solid. And that's what you find in most churches today, is that they don't teach the facts. They want to teach you how to feel about the facts, or you should have some emotional response, or there should be, like Al was describing, you come to church and you're faithful and you do this and you do that, but where are the facts? What do you believe? Just talking about the false teachings that you get and the feelings and stuff, I think of the doctrine of assurance of salvation and how that can just rip you to pieces. your whole life continually worrying about, did I go over the edge that day?

Which is what I was originally taught for years. I think it's one of the best examples of who we are. and the assurance of our position. Right. It's really important. Again, the facts map. Okay, so we recognize that all human beings have the capacity to believe. They all have faith. It depends on what they believe in that matters. Sorry to interrupt, but then going back, that God gave us that capacity to believe in him based on what he has on creation. Why do you think God gave us this capacity to believe?

So that we can. Why do you think we have it? He orchestrated it. He orchestrated it. Why do you think there is this thing called faith? Well he wants fellowship with us. God wants fellowship with us. Now it goes back to the heading of grace. Under grace.

What's the one thing a man can do he can't take credit for? Believe. The value is in what you believe. It's not in the fact that you believe. So God institutes a program under grace in which he says, okay, I've done all of this through Christ and all I require of you is that you believe me. And we say, okay, where's the value in what God did or the fact that I believed? It has to be in what God did. But I get all the benefits by exercising faith and trust in what God says.

We like to seed things and understand them for ourselves. Not like science and personal faith. So we have all kinds of evidence, just like David saying, when I behold the heavens and the work of your fingers, you know what is man and so on. We have general revelation. But in order to have the facts about God, He has to reveal them. And if we were not created in his image with the capacity for that belief, he could reveal, but we couldn't receive. You know it's interesting though, like Jim was talking about Romans 1.

God's real clear there. He said, man, you're without excuse, because I've revealed myself to you in my creation. You're without an excuse, because I'm there. You can see that I'm God, I'm powerful, and I want you to be thankful and recognize me as God. If you don't, the consequences within four verses are awful.

So God doesn't reveal the things of Christ to the non-believer, but he does reveal himself. in his creation. So what does he say? The man looks at creation and is that a matter of faith, responding to the evidence that's there? Yeah, it is. It is. Now, moving ahead.

Ephesians 4, 11-13. and he gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man to the measure of the stature that belongs to the fullness of Christ.

So if I put the definition of the faith in there that's personal, is the issue that we all got to believe the same thing? That my faith and your faith has to be exactly the same? Is that what, when you put the definite article in there, does it change from personal to something else? It does change. And what happens here? It's a personal level of maturity, isn't it?

Well, we all come to the unity of the faith. Now does that mean that Laban and I have to believe exactly the same thing? Why not? Do we have to have our trust and our confidence personally in exactly the same thing? Otherwise I've got to go somewhere else? Yes. Isn't it? There is a core in scripture where it talks about one Lord, one faith, one baptism and so on. So I would say that there is a core of belief that we agree on and that there's unity in.

But that there are areas of how this faith operates that we would... So when you see the definite article in the word of God in front of the word faith, I think the first thing you have to conclude is well maybe this isn't personal faith. Maybe this is something different. If I said the faith to you, if you're awake you're going to say well what do you mean by that? What is the faith? Gospel for salvation? Steve?

I kind of ran a list because this could be an endless study in one way. And I won't give the verses, but one God, Father of all, God exalted, Holy Spirit dwells in the believer, the grace of Christ, Christ's ascension, Christ is victorious over the world, Christ gifts, which is a bunch of things, and Christ exalted. So it's a definition of it's all, the faith. The interesting thing I see about it is the more you realize those It evolves into your own position. Okay, if I say the faith, what's the word the or the do?

It identifies something specific, right? Specific, which takes the personal aspect out of it. Do you see that? So we all come to the unity of the faith. We're not talking about personal faith here. We're talking about something specific. Now you expect me to tell you what it is, right? Because we're going to have a whole class on the faith. Why are there so many?

I mean, why did it take so long? for, well, just to make it personal, you know, go hear this church, that church, and then finally find, so isn't that what that means? That we may be built up until we reach unity. And the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God. And become mature. Oh yeah, sure. So we will spend an entire class, I think, on that issue.

And I just want to point out today that all we're talking about, the reason that that's there is so that I can distinguish between our personal faith and the faith. Everybody alright with that? Did you have the patience to wait? So what's the difference between faith and knowledge? Trust. Trust. Don't you find it interesting that in 1 Peter it says that we all grow in We're already in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus. We're already in the grace and we're to grow in there. And knowledge there is what? There is objective knowledge. gnosis, there's epi-gnosis that's a more intimate knowledge. It's like I have a lot of gnosis with Donna, but I have a lot of epi-gnosis with her too, that I don't have with you.

So what's the difference then? If I go to seminary and in four years I graduate with a degree in whatever courses they offer, am I a spiritual giant at that point? Unfortunately, no. If I come to Holly Hills for 10 years and go to all of the Sunday school classes and I have 35 notebooks at home full of stuff, am I spiritually mature? You weren't so quick to answer that time, were you? No. So what is the difference between just plain knowledge and faith? You're going to have to stop giving all the answers. Well, it's the knowledge of the Son of God. The knowledge of the Son of God. Okay.

I had all kinds of knowledge. Matter of fact, I knew everything when I was about 16. All you had to do was ask me, and I would tell you. But I went to an InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Bible study my junior year in college. And after studying the first 11 chapters of Romans, verse by verse, the lady in charge came up to me after the evening session, and she said, You know all this stuff.

You need to do something about it. I need you to go home and make some decisions about what to do with this knowledge. And my oldest daughter, by contrast, has a good friend who's a seminary student and he's convinced her that the Bible's just the story of the Jews and then an extension into the New Testament and that it's not God's word, it's just human history and stuff that's good literature, etc. So the difference was between doing something that was life-changing that produced an action and an attitude versus just knowing all the answers to jeopardy and so on. But it's not doing something. You're going to perk up with those words. It's okay.

Do you think, though, that the faith would be like the exercise of the knowledge? I mean, we go into praying about something that's intangible. We have the knowledge that God is going to take care of it. You go in a situation where you don't know what's going to happen. So you've got to have faith that God, you have the knowledge that God is going to take care of it. And then when it does not, not the way you want it to, but then it strengthens the faith. And to me, the faith there is the exercise, I don't know, the exercise of the knowledge that you have. So it's not only knowledge, the exercise of knowledge you have, salvation, which hopefully we'll have time to get to it.

I'm to believe God about his son. So do I believe the facts? Yeah, the facts are important, but what am I really believing? I'm believing that God is telling me the truth. So I'm believing in him, the person. that his veracity when he tells me something is viable.

So I learn from my growing in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus and so I find myself in a circumstance and as a mature believer I don't ever even question God. I already know and trust him and rest in the fact that it's going to get resolved to the benefit of everybody involved. That's the thing about the Old Testament saints. Their belief in the object there was God's word and God himself. What he said was true. And it's interesting, in Hebrews it says that most of them didn't realize the end of what they really believed in. Isn't that something? Quick question.

Does faith require knowledge? Does faith require knowledge? I think so. If you're going to have an object, you've got to know. Does knowledge require faith? No. I don't think it does. You know. Well, you have to know what you have faith in. Yes, you do. Well, obviously you've just got to believe.

Don't worry about it. Well, you know that somebody said something, I guess, like that we need to do something. And I thought that was one of the things we are not to be concerned about. We have to do something. You only have to do one thing. Believe. That's it. That's it.

Now it's difficult for us to understand that by believing will result in God's grace working on us for action. He both to will and to do of his good pleasure. And you recognize that it's all of his energy. It's all of him. And all he needs is a believing, dependent servant. That's all he needs. He'll get his work done. Oh, by the way, he'll give you credit for it. First time I'm trying that right now. Keeping my mouth shut.

I like the differentiation that you made in knowing The English words sometimes don't differentiate as well as the Greek or Hebrew or whatever. Because even Paul, with all that he knew about the Old Testament and the writings there, and then his experience on the Damascus Road, he still would say later that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his son. You know, I think, as many times, I think this also goes back to the knowledge of the identification truths. The doing part is the old man, and always trying to do and improve and this and that.

It comes out of the new man, which is just by faith, and nothing of improving, nothing of trying, and the self aspect of it. And it's trying to identify that part of it when, you know, just believing. Just believe the facts. That's all the new man is required to do.

The old man is the one always trying to do the self-improvement project, getting proud, having to do something. That's why we always, when we hear the word do, that usually is a key for the old man. The old man wants to do something and to have relevance in our life, you know, is the doing part. And the new man is Christ living through us. So our doing is done. We're done doing. Actually, we're not done doing. Because your body won't be able to keep up.

But as an example, if we are very clear on what the gospel is, and that it is a grace-based system, and Russ comes to me and I'm able to give him the gospel of the grace So he understands not only that he's saved, but he understands the nuances of how he got saved. So when a guy over here says, well, now that you're a Christian, here's a list of stuff you've got to do, you look at it and say, well, I didn't get saved that way. So you're consistent in understanding then, I'm a different method now.

There's nothing I have to do to enhance my salvation. It's totally done. I learned that at the beginning. That stops me from trying to do spiritual push-ups so that I will be more acceptable to God at some point in the future. But it automatically changes your behavior. Sometimes. I agree with what Holly is saying. We're done doing the doing. It's Christ that's doing the living through us. But we have to learn that. Holy Spirit is doing the working.

And you're just the vehicle. Yeah, that's it. And how do you learn to be a vehicle? Especially if you're an American and you've got the Constitution in your pocket. How do you learn to be a vehicle? that it's God doing things through you. You don't get that in the first week, month, year, decade of your Christian life. You try, but you don't get it. You don't understand. Dependence. You don't understand the word yield. Present. Rest.

You don't understand any of that because you're around some people who say, well, now that you're a Christian, you better start acting like one. And here's what they do. But you naturally do. I remember the first week I was a Christian I started looking around, well what do they do? You watch them, you know?

And so some of them right away you think, well they're phony. And those guys are phony. But this one's real over here. I wonder what the deal is with him. And you can tell the difference. Because they don't take credit for it. That's one of the things. They're humble. This is your last question.

It's easy when you first become a Christian. And like Wanda, I'll make it personal. It was easy for me to then be proud of the fact that I saw the light, that I became a Christian and this poor Courtney over here, he hasn't seen the light, and somehow I'm spiritually superior because I've seen the light and I'm growing. And so many Christians in the churches that Wanda and I have been in and some of the others, people use Christianity, being a Christian, as a judgmental aspect for judging other people and their behavior. And instead of learning patience and humility and how to encourage and build up in faith, We end up comparing ourselves with people and get a spiritual pride which is just as bad as anything the Pharisees ever had. How long does it take the believer to come to the realization that it's his humility, it's his patience, it's not yours and he's not going to give it to you? It takes a long time to learn that. Fruit of the Spirit. Fruit of the Spirit. Yeah, it just does. And that's okay.

Mike, for Helen, the one thing, Sam Dalton was an evangelist, a great guy, knew the Lord incredibly well. He used to carry around this flexible tube. And that's what we are. We're just a vessel to have him go through. And that's all he carried around, a tube. And that's all I am. I'm just a flexible tube to be used by him. And so that was a graphic one for me when I was a young believer. It's like, what? Where's the value in that? Well, we're just a conduit for the Lord to work through. That's it.

Galatians 2.20, the Lord had to bring me to Holly Hills. We all have made a career out of telling the right thing to the wrong people. All of us. The guy that said, Go call this other fella because he's got the answer for your life." And he did. He led me to Christ. I went back to the other guy who said, go to this guy and told him about the gospel. He threw me out of his house. He said, and don't ever come back. I've never been back in his house. We were college buddies. So you know, I went to so and so and I got the truth, now you need to hear it. He said, out. So you don't know.

Next week we will start with question 8 and look at 8 and 9 go together because what we are working towards is the four major aspects of biblical faith. It's essence. We talked today about the faith. We talked today about personal faith. And next week we'll start off by talking about faith as a principle. It's important to understand it as a principle.

But the diagram that you see on the the fill-in-the-blank diagram really has to do with understanding what the essence of faith is, and it comes from Hebrews 11.1.

Hebrews 11.1 is really the essence of faith.

Did the second buzzer go off? Yeah. So that's what we'll do. We'll close. Dear Father, how we thank you for your word. How we thank you for the opportunity to learn what this faith is all about, Father. We thank you. We pray in the Lord Jesus' name. Amen.