Which Side of the Cross - Lesson 17
Mike Doyle · Sep 17, 2017
Which Side of the Cross, No. 35
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492666518156

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

Okay, introduction to faith. So I think we want to start with kind of get a frame of reference maybe. If I were to say to you, is love, grace, faith, righteousness all the same thing? Do each one of those bring a different concept in your mind? What do you think? They all mean something different, don't they? Yeah, I think it's all tied together. They tie together. But let's just, to maybe set this up, let's use the word love and let's use the Greek word agape. Agapeo is a verb form. And so we find out in scriptures that God is love.

1 John 4.8 is what it says. God is love. And if we go to John chapter 3, we find that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believed in him should not perish but have everlasting life. So we tie this word to the love of God, right? But if you go over to Romans chapter 8, verse 35, it says that nothing, nothing, nothing will ever separate us from the love of God. So, what's my frame of reference of the word love? That God is love and that He's directing His love towards me all the time, right? So would you say that that's an acceptable definition of love?

Who said no? Anybody agree with him? Come on you cowards, make a decision. You agree that that's not an acceptable definition? So if you look at John 3.18, what does that tell you? He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son.

So this tells us that the passage, how do I say this, it convicted me about being lost, right? And here's the thing. I don't know, I got saved at 35, I don't know about all of you, but if you're like some of the kids we teach downstairs, they're already saved, and I'm sure they're going to grow up and not remember exactly when or what the circumstances are, they just believe, and it's cool that they do. But there are some of us that meet the Lord later on in life, and some of these verses have a profound effect on you as you're a little older.

John 3.19 says, and this is the condemnation that light is coming to the world and men love the darkness. There's that word agape again. That they love the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.

Well, it didn't take me very long early on and even as the gospel was being presented to me for me to recognize I really liked what I was doing. But the Lord had put me in circumstances where it wasn't working for me anymore, so I'm looking. He created a need, and I'm looking. And through that process, after I got saved, I really began to realize I love the darkness. I still say to you that there's never been a sin that I've ever committed that I didn't want to do it. I want to do every one of them. Because if I didn't want to do them, I wouldn't do them.

So, in the context of the word love, it can be taken two ways. It can be taken from God's perspective, or my perspective, or a man's perspective who lives in darkness. I can love that darkness just as much as God loves, because it's the same word. So, we can say God is love, Christ is love for us, our love for one another, but yet It's used in a very negative sense so that in our definition of love we've got also account for the love of darkness rather than light. How do you account for that? How do you account for the love of darkness?

The same can be said for righteousness. Can it not? Because scripture talks about the righteousness of God, but then it also talks about the righteousness of man. So you can look at righteousness a different way. It uses righteousness in a negative sense and a positive sense. So what I'm leading up to here is depending on the context of the scriptural passage, it can determine what a word means.

So when we come to the word faith, A lot of times, well rather than ask you, I'll just tell you. The last time Courtney and I, and I think JD taught faith, did you help in that class? We started out the first class and we went around the room and we said, well give me your definition of faith. And we want a definition of the essence of faith.

What is it? You know what we got? we got a definition of personal faith, personal faith, which wasn't the question we were asking. We were asking, what is the definition of the essence of faith? What is it? And everybody answered what it meant to them. Do you see that? Well, does that mean that, oh, well, we ought to accept the fact that the definition of faith is personal. Can there be more than one definition or more than one aspect of what faith is? Question, what do you think?

Yeah, depending on the text. Depending on the text, depending on the context it's in, depending on the proof that it gives and what it's about. Let's just spend a minute and talk about, define faith for me. I would say it is believing the gospel, Christ, death, burial, and raising from the dead, ascension and receiving.

Okay. Anybody else? Believing the gospel, and the death, burial, and resurrection. Anybody else? Come on, you cowards. Isn't faith a dependence? I could say it's dependence. What else? Could I say that it's trust? Could I use that word? Could I say that it's rest? Could I say that? All of those words in your definition are all part of defining personal faith. You haven't approached at all yet what faith is. I look at it from my perspective. What do I think faith is?

And how do I use it? But what is it in and of itself? It's like, what if I said define what love is? How would you define that? Well, the first thing you would ask me is, which Greek word for love are you talking about? Wouldn't you? Kaphe, phileo, eros, and there's another one, I think. Or righteousness, you'd say, well, how do you mean that?

But with faith, it seems like we automatically view it from a personal standpoint, right? Because that's what you just did. And the other words that are used have to do with what really is personal. But the essence of faith has nothing to do with rest and trust and that kind of thing. J.D. is going to go over that next week in exhaustive detail. So what I want to set you up for maybe is the best way to is there's nothing wrong with that definition of faith but it's going to be really important for us I think over time here to learn what is it in and of itself and there's another interesting thing in the in the Bible in the Greek language anybody tell me what an essence verb is you know Something is something.

What's an essence verb? Say that again. They know. He knows. What is an essence verb? An essence verb is something that said this is exactly like this. OK, if I said a Chevy is a car, this is an essence verb. Does Chevy define what car is? Does car define what Chevy is? Close enough. Give me another example of an essence verb. Something is something.

I can say God is love. And I can say love is God. Can I? Because it defines who God is. Not totally. But He is love. Right? And love is God. We wouldn't know anything about what love really was without Christ. Give me another example of an essence verb. Something is something. I want you to think that way for a minute. Because when we come to the essence of what faith is, faith is, that is, is going to be an essence verb. And after the word is, is going to be several things that define what faith is and you can take the definition and move it over here and put faith on this side and put essence is in the middle too. See that?

If I said Donna is a girl, can I say girl is Donna? I think I could. The essence of Donna is she's a female. And that's excluding what you might think about gender. And that's a good point. We have a gender identity today in our political. And people say, well, I'm a whatever I am. It's interesting, they try to make it an essence verb, but it isn't because you can't describe them by what they say they are. But I can describe Donna by saying Donna is a female. A female is Donna.

Essence. Did you say Christ is our Savior? Christ is Savior, Savior is Christ. Sure. Essence verb. That's a good one. Did you get that? Christ is Savior, the Savior is Christ. Essence. It describes exactly who Christ is and what Savior is. If you look at Matthew 8 5 through 13, I'm not going to read the whole thing.

Well, maybe I will. When Jesus was entered to Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion asking him, saying, My servant lies at home sick with the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus said to him, I'll come and heal him. And the centurion answered and said, I'm not worthy.

I want you to look at something. Do you know what a centurion is? If you describe a centurion as a centurion, what does the word century mean? It means a hundred. This guy is in charge of a hundred people, a hundred soldiers. so in our army he would probably be a platoon commander maybe a captain okay maybe a major but probably a captain and what's interesting is that in this case Rome had conquered Palestine Jerusalem yet look at this guy's frame of reference he's a member of the conquering army yet he says to the Lord Jesus I'm not worthy. Interesting frame of reference, right?

I'm not worthy because he recognized when it came to dealing with healing of his servant, he didn't have any power to do it. But he was trusting Christ to be able to do it. And he said, I'm not worthy, you should come under my roof but speak the word only and my servant shall be healed. For I'm a man under authority. having soldiers under me and I say to this man go and he goes and another come and he comes and to my servant do this and do that and he does it when Jesus heard this he marveled and he said to them that followed I have I say to you I have not found so great a faith no not in all of Israel so As the Lord Jesus Christ from his frame of reference, he looks at all of Israel, he hasn't found that kind of faith, and he looks at those outside of Israel to those outside the seat of Abraham and he says, I have never found that kind of faith in Israel. Isn't that interesting? Because you would think that the Jews had it all wired. But he says, this guy understands faith better than every Jew in Jerusalem.

So, and then he follows up, he says, and I say unto you that many shall come from the east and the west, and I say to you that many shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, But the sons of the kingdom shall be cast out into utter darkness, they shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go your way, as you have believed, so it is done unto you. His servant was healed that very hour. So what's he warning the Jews about?

Just like we could be warned about our denominations and our religion and our and our church that we go to and whatever spiritual affiliation we have, we put a lot of faith in the organization. Like the Jews put a lot of faith in the fact that they were Jews. They were the sons of Abraham. So we're covered, right? They weren't covered. Why not? Why weren't they covered? And why does Jesus make such a big deal out of the faith of the centurion? Is it that complicated? I'm not that clear?

I keep looking at you, which means you don't have to be the guy answering every time. I could be looking at Courtney. He has the Son, has life, and he does not have the Son, does not have life. And when I said the definition of faith, what answer did you give me? You gave me the gospel. The point that Jesus is making here, I think, is that faith that's centered in the proper object is solid. Faith that's not centered in the proper object is not solid. The Lord Jesus Christ is the proper object. The centurion had faith in the ability for Christ to heal his servant. He didn't know that he was the son of God, but his faith was such that he said to him, my frame of reference is, I know you can heal him.

I know you can do that. And you don't need to come to my house. All you got to do is say it. And the reason I know that is because I'm a soldier and I'm in charge of people and when I say this and they come and they go. So if you just say the word, it will be done. He understood that.

No Jew understood that, the simplicity of faith. They didn't understand it. They thought, well, we were coming down this morning talking about we have Hasidic Jews that live in our neighborhood and they're so busy being Hasidic Jews that a lot of times they just forget the commonness of life. Things like they don't take care of their houses. They invest half a million dollars in a house and they don't mow the grass. But they're wearing the black suits and the hat and walking around going up to the synagogue on Saturday. It's misplaced.

A lot of times, having come out of Catholicism, they taught Faith for faith's sake. You have to be a person of faith. Well, what did that mean? Well, you just have to be kind of believing in what? They never gave you the object or clarified the object. People will say, well, I grew up a Methodist. Isn't that good enough? Or I grew up a Presbyterian, or a Corgain went to Plymouth Brotherhood. Man, that's major leagues.

Not enough. Why isn't it enough? Why isn't it enough? I'm not going to talk again until somebody answers. Why isn't it enough? I don't believe that. You don't believe what? That you're not going to talk again until somebody answers. He doesn't realize that I'm a salesman. You know, there's an old adage in selling. When you ask a question, The next guy that talks loses. So when I ask a question, if I talk next, I'm losing. Now I've forgotten the question.

I think the thing is that you get so wrapped up in everything with Jesus and how important He is. that we could be busy as the beavers and tension probably could very easily be saved but just miss out on an abundant life. So with the centurions, his faith, could you say that he trusted and was dependent and relying on all the things that he knew about Christ?

Yes. Yeah, he was. He was depending on that. It gives you an aspect of what personal faith is like. It's a dependence, it's a trusting, it's a reliance on believing. So let's say that I believe that I believe that God is going to cure Matt Klingon Smith this afternoon. Is that reasonable for me to think that? Only if the Lord gave it to you. See, there it is. This centurion knew enough about Jesus that he knew he had the power to heal. And he just solicited the Lord Jesus to heal him, but his faith was in the fact that he could do it.

So, interesting in the Old Testament. Well, let's go through some of them. We'll go through this when we get into Hebrews chapter 11. Starting in verse 4, it says, Faith, by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. Did he? Why did he do that? Verse 5, Faith, by faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death.

7. By faith, Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his house.

And so you go through this, what is known as the Hall of Fame of Faithful. Everything that they believed in, notice it was all future? Notice that it was all promise, right? By faith they were able to do this, by faith they were able to do that. And how long did Noah's faith have to hold up? Over a hundred years, right? It took him that long to build the boat. So you and I, are we focusing in on, resting in on, believing on promises, what God has promised to do.

Gordy's smug over there, he's smiling. If you say no, you have to explain. Because we are facing a Facts. Right. So the reason that this is the third part of the class we're teaching, we found out the facts about our identification with Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. Those are the facts.

And then we found out about this incredible environment we lived in called grace. Well, it doesn't do anything for us unless we believe it. The interesting thing about, especially Paul's epistles, the facts are overwhelming. And we go through them like, oh yeah, okay. Like we're reading a Denver Post. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. Last Sunday, at the camp out, by the way we had a really cool camp out, it was fun.

We spent time in Ephesians, and we started with Ephesians 4. that we are expected to walk in a walk that's worthy with who we are in Christ, right? And then we went back to chapter one and we quoted a bunch of verses about who we were. Who are we in Christ? And when we get to chapter four, you think, well, okay, I can see now that I should walk based on who God says I am.

So I have a choice. I can either live my life, function based on my experience, how I feel about it, what the pressures are on me, or I can live based on the facts that God has revealed to me in his word. That's really what it comes down to. Do I trust God or do I trust my emotions? Do I trust God or do I trust what I'm seeing? Do I trust God or do I trust, oh, I hope, I hope, I hope? Do I trust what God says? Or do I trust that he's going to change the circumstances so that they'll fit my belief?

No. The problem is that our faith, because it's based on fact, has to have an object. And there's all kinds of pronouncements from God about who we are, what we have, and where we are. that is already true of us and our faith is in the facts, yeah, but our faith is really in the one who told us the facts.

Do you see that? When the father tells us about his son and the gospel message, that message comes from the father. So what am I believing? The message. But who am I believing? I'm believing the father's telling me the truth. And my faith is in a person. You see that? My faith trusts the person just like the centurion trusted Christ personally to heal his servant. He knew he could do it, but where was the trust? In the fact that he could do it? Or in the person who could do it? It was in the person. You see that?

So our personal faith functions like that. We all know each other to varying degrees, and we all have faith in each other to varying degrees. I would depend on a certain person to think and act and do something this way, and the person standing next to him, I wouldn't trust him because I know them well enough to know that, well, they're not going to go there. I can trust Phil that when he measures something, he's going to get it right. You can trust me to cut it three times trying to get it long enough. You can tell by my fingers. So the point is this.

Our faith is based on facts. One of the great things about Holly Hills has been through the years is that we talk about facts. We teach facts. We teach, here's what God says, here's what he says, and we bang on this verb tense, aorist tense. What's the aorist tense? It's a fact. We say, well, it's completed action in the past. It's better to look at it as it's a fact, otherwise it wouldn't be in that tense.

So, as we go through and study faith, we're going to look at facts. So, let's say that God reveals to you, I don't know, we'll pick something. I was crucified with Christ. And your mind says, really? I looked in the mirror, I don't look any different, I sure don't look dead. But he says it. What do I do with that? I was crucified and I was buried and I was resurrected, but I don't feel any different. I don't look any different. I don't think any different. Nothing has changed around here. I don't see obituary for me.

What do I do with that information? Believe it. And how do I believe it? In other words, what are the elements of my believing? Yeah, I'm trusting in the source of who said it. Now, let's say as a young believer, you know, I'm barely persuaded about my salvation. I believe I'm saved. Well, I'm kind of persuaded, I'm kind of not because the circumstances are against. Whose job is it to persuade me? The Holy Spirit.

Hebrews 11.2 says exactly that. That by faith that these people that he mentions in the rest of the verses receive witness or confirmation that their faith was true. Now, are you absolutely sure that you're safe? Are you sure about me? Right answer. Are you sure you're safe? Are you sure about me? Pretty sure. Pretty sure.

But I'm not sure you'd bet your equity in your house on my salvation. But I would, because I'm persuaded. He's persuaded me about me, but I would say sure. But am I persuaded like I'm persuaded about me? The work of the Spirit of God, He shows you something in the Word, and you just simply say, I may not get it, but I kind of see it. I believe you. I trust you because you've shown it to me. And I'm going to rest in those facts, and it's up to you to confirm in me that that's really true, especially when it comes to identification, especially when it comes to my position, all these things called positional truth that God says are true of me now. My job is just to say, okay, I understand the fact I'm trusting you that you're telling me the truth. That's really what you're doing. Because the minute you don't, you're playing God. The minute you question God, what have you done? Well, I'm God and you're God. Let's talk this over. I'm not sure I agree with you. I'm playing God. You see that?

So what we're going to learn over the next little bit is that there are four major aspects of biblical faith. Oh yeah, there is a difference between my walking around experiential living in the world faith and biblical faith. So let's talk a little bit about what the four major aspects of biblical faith are. Next week you'll get a whole class on what the essence of faith is. That's the first one. It's just the very essence of faith. The second one is, if you're reading along in the New Testament, every once in a while you will see the word faith with the word the. in front of it, the faith.

And just to say, to maybe make that clear, we could go across the street and say there's a bunch of homes going down Holly Street, right? So okay, so I have the information there's a bunch of homes. What if I said the home? What am I talking about? One specific house.

So you will find in scripture where there's faith, but now we're going to talk about a specific aspect of that faith, or it can be talking about the whole composite of what we believe as Christians, the faith. The third one is the principle of faith. Now, what's a principle? I only ask this question every class. I ask this question every time I teach. What's a principle? How something works. And it works the same way every single time. It never varies. So gravity is a principle.

You guys are engineers. You operate based on principles. You do your job based on principles. You have principles in computer science. They operate that way. There are principles in electricity. There are principles in the whole material world. There are spiritual principles. One of the principles is that faith in the person and work of Christ will save you. That's a principle. Well, faith operates based on a principle and one of the aspects that we'll spend some time in is how does faith work? What's the principle of faith?

Which may sometimes change how you think about it. And the last one is personal faith, which we always want to start in the middle and all the way to the end about my personal faith. Well, I think it's important for us to learn The different aspects of biblical faith. Next week we'll look at the very essence of faith. We look at the essence.

We're going to find out that it has nothing to do with us. You listening to me? Next week when you talk about the essence of faith, you're going to find out that the essence of faith has nothing to do with you. Nothing. You're agreeing you don't even know. You're just believing me, right? It doesn't. The essence of faith doesn't have anything to do with the person who's a believer. It has to do with what faith is in and of itself. Because personal faith, we think of trust, dependence, reliance, etc. But that is not the essence of faith.

We are so tuned to us being the ultimate authority about things, that if we think it's this way, then that must mean it's true. Or that must exhaust everything there is to know about a certain subject is what I think about it. Well, trust me, faith is a little bigger than that. And as we look at faith in the scriptures, we'll look... I've already gone through that. And we'll spend some time going through all of these tremendous Old Testament guys that are the hall of fame of faith. And what I find interesting in this whole list, there aren't any New Testament people. It's all Old Testament.

So what would you say was the principle of salvation in the Old Testament? The law? Does anybody get saved by the law? So what's the main principle? I mean, it's interesting in Hebrews 11, he doesn't say, by the law Enoch was translated, by the law Noah built an ark, by the law Abraham. What does he say? So this faith principle starts with Adam and continues from now on, from Adam forward. The thing that honors God and the thing that he requires from human beings is faith. We have to trust him. Did Adam trust God? In what respect? Did he trust him when God said, if you eat this fruit, you're going to die? No, he didn't. He ate the fruit and he died. But where did the trust come in with Adam? Where did he trust God? Where was his faith demonstrated?

Right after that, because he realized he was serious. He knew he was serious. And what did he do? How did he try to compensate for his sin? He felt it was naked. He went and got a philodendron. He'd been to Hawaii, they're this big there, so he'd make a three-piece suit out of them. But God came to him and said, now that the philodendron is not good enough, I've got these skins here for you. Put them on to cover your shame. He said, okay, I'll do it. What was he doing? He was taking God at his word. Adam believed God. And that's really what it comes down to, is believing God. Okay, so basic introduction.

Next week we'll start to to get into it. We've got three and a half months and we're going to talk about faith. Hopefully you can see how these three aspects of the Christian life come together, identification, grace and faith. Right after this, I'll have Sue copy the questions for next week and the following week, and you can get them back here.

So let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for your facts, I guess, and we thank you for your very person in which you reveal to us the facts of who you are, and that the only requirement you have from us is that we believe you. We thank you. We pray in your precious Son's name. Amen.