Which Side of the Cross - Lesson 18
Mike Doyle · Oct 1, 2017
Which Side of the Cross, No. 37
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492667207277

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

I wanted to ask, in Lesson 17, did you do 8 and 9? Question 8 was the word conviction or substance or substantiation really means reality, is faith reality? Did you talk about that? We did. We did it in light of the portion through the sentence itself, and so we talked about that. And then does your faith ever change? That's the very last part of the question. Does it change? You can't answer. Does it change? Does your faith change? Let's ask it this way. Does faith in and of itself change? Does your faith change?

Yeah, all the time. Mike thought it was fine to get this new motorcycle. A month ago, he wasn't even thinking about it. Hey, you're driving this thing. So, with that in mind, let's look at, I was going to say this, some of what we're doing in these last couple of lessons and actually in the next one, will seem a little bit redundant.

But I'm convinced that we can't spend enough time on this part of the discussion on faith. We need to know what it is in its essence. We need to know why God put faith in the place that he did and why it is what it is. It's critical for us We were talking about this, how many people who are people of faith, their faith is in all kinds of moving objects. It's like being at an arcade with the ducks going down the road and you're shooting at them. The solidity of God's word is so important and yet we try and try and try to modify what God has for us because we think or feel it's something different. So to settle down on the issue of faith and understand what it really is I think is critical for us to not only for our being solid but also for spiritual growth because God is going to tell us things in his word that seem crazy.

I mean you think about if I'm sitting in front of a psychiatrist, and I tell him that I was crucified to Christ, what do you think he's going to do? He's either going to write me a prescription for some mind-altering drug, or he's going to call the two guys with the white coats. I'm out of there. It's insanity to think, from a worldly perspective, that we or somebody was crucified 2,000 years ago with Christ. Well, that's just the beginning of the things that God tells us. So as we talk about these things, I think it's important.

So the first question, yeah? So six is how does God convey the essence of faith to us? How do you think? Anybody? Yeah, through the word. Okay. And question seven I'm not going to answer right now because we're going to actually spend a lot of time today on what the things are. Which he kind of did. Just because he listed them doesn't mean I understand them. I did eight already, right?

Is faith reality? Is it? Is it, Russ? It is, but our faith continues to grow. Would you say my faith is reality or faith in and of itself is reality? OK, I'll accept that, that's good. And then we talked about does my faith change or does faith in itself change?

Answered, mine does, it doesn't. OK. So no wonder J.D. got done in a hurry. He did four questions in a minute and a half. Did you listen to it last week? I talked to you in that tape. I didn't listen to it. You should have told me that. I would have listened to it this morning.

Lesson 18, question 1 is define what essence is. What is it? It's not a perfume. How would you just simply say what essence is? If you're talking about the essence of God, yeah. What is it in and of itself? What does it mean? I don't. Did we? I don't think so. Oh, for 18. Yeah. Yeah. Aren't they back there? What? Oh, OK. That's why we have Courtney here.

He says you're a gopher. So could you say that essence could be defined as the fundamental nature of a thing? Could you say that? It's whatever characterizes or identifies the thing. OK. If I said what's the essence of a car, what would you say to me? A to B. It gets you from A to B. It gets me from A to B. It's a mode of transportation. It's got a motor and four wheels. Does it describe what the car is? The essence of a thing is the nature of a thing? If I said describe the nature of Satan, the essence of Satan, how would you define that? Evil. Really good. Evil. Satan is evil. Evil is Satan. The essence of him is evil. Right? But you can't describe God in one word. What's the essence of God?

I got a whole bunch of them which we'll go through today when Courtney gets back. So, we talked last week and the week before about this word right here. It's a linking word. It links. It links faith with these two things. This word, because it's a linker, decides or describes the essence of this thing. You see that?

So if I said Satan is evil, the is would describe what the subject is, his essence, he's evil. substance or reality, evidence or proof describe what faith is. So this in Greek is called an essence verb. And when you see that, not that you need to be a Greek geek to understand it, but when you see it, it links this with this so that you know when you're reading that it describes and it gives a status quo to what this is. And that word is, essence verb, really is a verb of status quo.

It describes. If I said Phil is a carpenter, it would describe and give status quo A status quo to who what Phil is one one aspect. One aspect of Phil. Do you see that? I want that to be clear. OK. Thank you. It states that something continuously exists in and it ties the subject and the compliments together. Faith continually exists in substance and reality, evidence and proof. It continuously exists like that and this word ties them together. Is that simple or complicated? I think it's pretty simple. Don't you? It's like my class a couple of weeks ago, I said Donna is a woman. Does it describe her essence? Part of it. Part of it.

So what this definition or this, what's the word I'm looking for, diagram, we wanted to show, is that faith continually exists in these reality and substance, evidence and proof. It continuously, always, all the time, never outside of that, exists. Faith exists like that.

I think it's going to be important for us as we begin to live by faith because we need to know that what we believe doesn't ever change. So when we understand God's word to us, we can rest upon the fact that what I'm looking at, what I'm reading, what I'm observing, what I'm believing never changes. I change all the time. And the circumstances around what I believe may change, but the essence of what God says to me never changes. Never changes.

So can you say that faith is confirmation of what you're hoping for? Interesting. I would say it's more exact than that. It is a confirmation. But Hebrews 11 says that by the thing faith, the elders received witness. The interesting thing about faith is that there is a consequence of it from the Holy Spirit that will confirm in us that what we have believed is true. We are persuaded about it.

But I can have all the evidence in the world and not be persuaded. You assume that just because you have the right evidence that you're going to be persuaded. Well, I challenge you to go read some of the Supreme Court decisions. There's a lot of evidence on both sides what makes this side or this side.

Here's a problem we have. We live in a society where my frame of reference is more important than what God's Word really says. I remember as a young believer going to a Bible study one time. I don't think Donna and I were married. We were there. I challenged some guy about something he said, and he said to me, well your faith is, or what you believe is different than what I believe. And I thought, that can't be right. I didn't understand this, but the substance of what we believe has to be the same. It has to be. Because God doesn't modify what he tells us based on how I feel about it.

You see that? Something kind of occurred to me last week as we were talking. Katie brought up the idea that understanding God is love. So love is one of the things. We'll talk about those things. But we kind of replaced the word love with faith. God is faith. And we've said that it's not a characteristic of Him.

And we've used the word grace as an environment, the operating system that we live in. And if you look at the definition of faith in this way, This describes further that grace-based environment, because faith is an environment in its essence. It's a substance, it's a reality, and it's an evidence. It is the reality that our personal faith exists within. It's part of the operating system of grace. It's a component of it.

It's not a characteristic of God. that he allows us to live in an environment of faith where we can understand reality so far as he's described it to us and he is working to prove that through his Holy Spirit and so this is the outer environment that God has placed us in because of his grace he has given us a reality of himself, who he is and what he's done and he's proving it to you through his Holy Spirit and that's the environment where personal faith There you go. See, that's the interesting thing. Without personal faith in what God reveals, you don't ever see grace. You don't ever see what God has for you. You just don't see it.

And people say, well, I'm a person of faith, but the object of your faith is critical. Do I accept what God has said to me? As a non-believer, let's say, God presents the gospel to me. What does my faith do? It appropriates the benefits of that gospel to me.

It opens up the door. It's a non-meritorious act because all of the value is in what God has done. But without believing Him, none of this environment is reality to me. I have not a clue that it even is there. Let me tell you where it's really critical. We prayed for Brian White and his family this morning. The church that he's in is beginning to move over into covenant Calvinism, reformed theology.

Is there a possibility that any believer can grow under a lost system? Why not? Why can't you grow under a lost system? Because you're attempting to do the growing yourself? Yeah, but overall in the scheme of all of this, why can't I grow in this from a law perspective?

Because law is not of faith. That's exactly right. And law is not of grace. You can't mix the two. So a believer who functions under a law system, this is all nothing to him. Nothing. He's outside the loop. It's like a contrast. They change that subject from faith and they make it commitment. Commitment is reality. Commitment is proof. We need to see that you're proving your commitment.

Instead of God providing that environment. And what's interesting about, if this word were commitment, then all of this goes blank. I don't know if I can say this just yet, but we always operate out of faith. I'm always operating out of faith, but this object thing that you're talking about, the only time my personal faith lines up with faith as a reality in the Lord is when my faith is directed towards Christ. Otherwise, I'm operating in faith, but it's faith in myself, it's faith in...

Right. Where my focus is on this. Yeah. That's the only time you have faith as reality. And that's the only time all of this opens up. Right. Yeah. Fascinating. It's really interesting to understand that because you wonder sometimes, why do we live in an environment where we have such great apostasy in the church? It's because they changed this word. See that? They changed this word.

And they made this whole thing about them. This isn't about them, this is about God. Law, commitment, whatever. And all of this is about them or some doctrinal thing that they've already decided upon. And so they miss the whole umbrella of grace. The whole thing. And it's not just a little bit, it's the whole thing.

You can't live a little bit of grace and a little bit of law. It's impossible to do. Because it's like living here or in heaven. You don't get to live a little here and a little there. You're either there or not. You're either here or not. So God conveys the essence of faith to us by what means. It's God's word. This thing right here. That's how we know. All of this is contained in here.

However, I just made a distinction between covenant reform theology and a law based system and a grace based system. In this word, does God change systems? Does he go from a law-based system to a grace-based system? Yes, he does. Yes, he does. He does, because look what he did. Adam and Eve are created. They're put in a garden. What's the first test that they got? It was a law. It's a test. It's a system.

Now they broke it. couldn't live up to it, and God responded in grace, but they were not living in a grace environment. The Jews certainly are not living in a grace environment. However, faith was the only way from Adam going forward up into Pentecost for anyone to be saved. So in that sense it had to be gracious, but it wasn't the environment.

And you'll see in the Old Testament that God can only reveal a little bit of himself. That's what the veil in the temple is all about. He can only reveal a little bit of himself because he had one big problem. The problem was that the people that he loved were sinners. And until that problem got solved, he could not show them this.

A lot of times we contrast law and grace, and you mentioned it, that there was law, but that law was never meant to save. So there was a gracious component to God. It wasn't the environment. I'll use the example of law and grace, and then transition to grace. It wasn't a full environment, like we see after the cross, but we use the example of a Jew who picked up a piece of wood on the wrong day on the Sabbath, and he died.

He could have been very much a believer, trusted and had faith in the Lord so far as he understood and knew him. As in, you know, in the presence, well, he is saved, but he was condemned according to the law in terms of his physical life. And so there was a gracious component of God to save, but he broke the law.

And a lot of times when we talk about law in a contemporary sense of like Reformed theology and so forth, It tries to utilize that same concept, but very much confuses that transition from law-grace to grace. Now they went from law-grace to law-grace.

So we'll talk about both sides of our mouth sort of thing. So God's Word tells us, Malloy in his book said God's Word tells us three things. It tells us what God has done. It also tells us what he's doing right now and what he will do in the future. So those three aspects of what his word tells us is really important. He tells us that he's going to come back. He promised Adam a Redeemer. He made a lot of promises to Abraham. So he was telling out kind of what he was doing.

The problem that God had, like he has them, was the fact that until Pentecost the receivers of his grace weren't capable of receiving the full on of what it was. They couldn't do it because they were sinners. Henceforth, when Paul begins to describe to us in Romans the identification truths, what he's really telling us is that God has taken a sinful human being, he's recreated him in Christ for a lot of reasons, but one reason is so he can get this. He can receive this now where he couldn't before, didn't have the capacity to do it. It took God to recreate those who believe him in Christ for us to be receptors. So a Jew didn't get this, that's why reformed people don't get it, that's why the world doesn't get it. Because this definition applies in the Old Testament, right? Faith is the substance and reality of things and so forth.

It's just that the things, they didn't know all of the things yet. They knew justice. They knew righteousness. They knew sovereignty. And they knew certain aspects of it, but they didn't know love and its capacity. Not at all. And that was your point, is that that evidence, that proof, and that substance and reality from the time of Christ forward, those things became more and more clear and more and more full. Right.

And that part of God's love and the characteristics that the Jews didn't fully understand. They knew He loved, but they didn't know that He loved to the point of dying on the cross for their sins. They knew of a Savior, but they didn't know how to do it. Well, our boy Nicodemus, when the Lord Jesus said to him, you know, you must be born again, he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. And John is saying, well, God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

What does that mean? That whosoever believed in him wouldn't perish but have eternal life. Nicodemus' frame of reference was totally Jewish. How do I get in the kingdom? That's all he thought about. How do I get in the kingdom? And when Jesus said, you must be born again, his mind went tilt. He didn't get it. Went to the physical. What's that? His mind went to the physical.

Yeah, because Earth-based law system focuses you on the physical. So just for the heck of it, let's define what biblical faith is. What is it? If you take this definition, this is biblical faith. In what aspect? in the fact that the focus of my faith is on the things of God. That's what biblical faith is. How would I say this?

This diagram, Hebrews 11.1, could be the definition of what biblical faith is. Biblical faith. Not necessarily my faith, but biblical faith. It doesn't have anything to do necessarily with us, So how do we, can we enter into this faith, you and me? Biblical faith? I believe the first good thing is just being one, working all this, where all the fines of the gospel is. That's how I enter in. That's the evidence side. Yeah, that's the evidence side.

So in your handout, in question five, I thought this was really important for us to go through because if I, I don't know if it was in The Hungry Heart or something I was reading some time ago, but you know how when you read certain things and they just sort of stick with you? And you just can't, you know, they never go out of your mind.

I forget, I think it was J.B. Stoney said this in one of my readings one day, he said, how much he longed for the ability to sit down with someone this morning and after we got done talking about how are you doing and what's going on, just sit here and talk about the wonderful things that Christ has shown me today. And I thought, how cool would that be to sit down with you and for 20 minutes we're just going to talk about the wonderful things that Christ has shown us today. So I keep calling you guys up and you want to talk about the Broncos. Do you see how cool that is? The fact that there's another human being where you can just spend some time with and that's what the topic of conversation is. We just want to the cool things that Christ has shown me of himself today.

Wouldn't that be neat? That's sort of one of those things that ravels around in the back of my mind all the time. So in talking about that, I thought that we could spend a lot of time in defining, in question five, define the following things regarding God.

What is He? And what I find with discussions with people about faith, their God is so little that they don't really trust Him. They're always trying to put Him in their box with their parameters and they don't think about or maybe have never been taught, well who is this God that we believe in? Who is He? And what are His substances and evidences and the proof and the reality. Who is this God?

The first one is that he's holy. Oh my goodness, what does holy mean? No. He's set apart. So he's holy. He's set apart from everything in his essential essence. We can't limit who he is. He's set apart. Psalm 99.9 Exalt the Lord our God and worship him on this holy hill for holy is the Lord our God. Psalm 77. Oh God your ways are holy. Where is there any other as mighty as you? The point being is that it sounds like we're being separated from God, but you have to understand that God exists in and of himself, set apart, who he is. He's holy. Set apart from what? From everything else. Evil. Everything. And goodness. All of it. He's set apart unto himself. Okay?

Ralph used the term unique one of a kind. Yeah, that's a good way to say it. So you start with that premise and then you say, like Russ said, he's righteous. The is's here are all these connecting words. God is holy. He is righteous. What does that mean? The best way to say that, I think, was in Hal Molloy's notes, he is absolutely right.

All by himself. He is absolutely right. How many times in your life and in my life have I gone to him and said, Lord, I don't think he got this right. That isn't the way I would do it. He's absolutely right. Psalm 145, 17, the Lord is righteous in all his ways. and kind in all his deeds. He's absolutely right. We hear it every single day. How could God allow some travesty?

I don't know, but I know he's right. And he's absolutely right. The third thing is that he is just. Essence verb. He is just. What does that mean? He cannot be unjust or unfair. No, you can't define a word with a word and put it on the front of it. Well, he can't be unfair. Okay, well that's good. It means that he is fair. That's exactly what it means. That he's eternally fair.

Isaiah 45, 21. Declare and set forth your... My printer didn't print the word I was looking for. Declare and set forth your case. Indeed, let them consult together. Who has announced this from old? Who has long since declared it? Is it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides me, a righteous, just God and a Savior. There is none except me." So many people get all fired up about the about 1 Corinthians 15, the Gospel. You know what the cool thing about the Gospel is?

There's a Savior. The words are important, the information is important, but who saved you? It was the Savior who did it. It's a person. It's this holy, righteous, just God, the Savior. So I like that when a believer says, He refers to the Lord Jesus as Savior. That person understands the personal nature of what salvation really is. I was saved by the Savior. It's really neat. Yeah.

I was wondering that in 2 Corinthians 15, I always feel like I'm sharing that with someone. But I can't just read it the way it is, but it's my faith in His death, my faith in His burial, my faith in His resurrection, and that He went to the cross on my behalf. If I just read, you know, death, burial, resurrection, it seems like it's my faith. I actually believe in that with all my heart.

It saves me. Not just reading those words. What God says, here's the information. In other words, what has he given you? Substance. Right? What's he really saying? He's talking about something that his son did. And he's making a declaration about what his son did. And he's saying, if you believe me about that, I will save you.

So when you exercise faith in the person and work of Christ as a non-believer, where are you resting your faith in? You're resting it in the fact that God said it. That's really what you're doing. The words are really important, the information is really important, but you're trusting that this holy righteous God is telling you the truth. Right? Isn't that what you're doing? So what happens? You're putting your faith in a person.

The information and the substance is there, but you're betting your internal security on the fact that a person said, if you believe this, I will save you. was preaching and that they received it. And he says, this is true unless you believed in vain. So they were standing. They were placing their faith in what he was communicating. So that, he was just backing up a few verses to give you that. Thank you. So God is infinite. What does that mean? Or omnipotent. What does that mean? It means that he's all-powerful. He's all-powerful. So he's holy, he's righteous, he's just, and he's all-powerful. He can just speak things and they become. He just says them and they are.

Genesis 17, now when Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said, I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless. I am God Almighty. I love that. I mean, I can't get over the fact that it's important for you and me as believers to recognize He is God Almighty. That's who He is. I can tap dance around that all I want.

He's God Almighty. And he's omniscient. What's omniscient mean? He's all-knowing. So let's talk about that. He knows everything. Is there anything he doesn't know? Have you ever been able to hide anything from him? You think you can. He knows every one of our hearts thoroughly. Every single one. He knows the sorrows that we have. He knows the joys that we have. There isn't anything he doesn't know. So when you go to him, you know, sort of with anxiety to tell him something, he already knows it. But he wants you to say it. He knows everything doesn't mean that his knowing is causative. Do you understand that?

He knew that Adam was going to sin, right? Did he cause him to sin? He knew it. So you think just because he knew it, God didn't cause it? What do you think about that? That's a debate that a lot of people have. Well, if God knew it was going to happen, he must have been a cause. Why is he not the cause of Adam's sin? Free will. Imagine God now with the characteristics of his essence that we've got so far, decides, I don't like the word decides, determines he's going to create a being like us and he's going to give them the ability to turn against him. I wouldn't do that, but he did it. He created Adam and Eve with the ability to say no to God. And guess what? They did. They did.

You get a sense here about, wow, you can either go down the road of, well God isn't as sovereign or omniscient as I thought he was, or he had all this in play way before, but it wasn't causative. Adam's sin was not caused by God's knowing. Just because he knows the decision we're going to make about something, it doesn't cause us to make the decision. So, how do you describe, if God is holy, which means he's set apart, a couple of things it means.

It means that he doesn't live in time, right? It isn't Sunday morning to God. It's not 10 minutes to 10, Sunday morning, October 1st to God. And he hasn't got something going on this afternoon. The other thing it means is that he doesn't think like we think. We think sequentially, don't we? I think this thought, and this thought, and this thought, or I have this concept and I'm contemplating and I arrive at a conclusion and I make a decision. How about this?

God has all knowledge in play right now. There is no time. He has all knowledge in play right now. And right now is right now all the time. How else would you say eternity? He has all knowledge in play right now. He knows everything, and he knows it right now. He doesn't have to wait until that thought comes through his mind. He's omnipresent. What does that mean? I don't know if it was William Newell, but someone said he's everywhere, present in the totality of his being.

Oh, I love it. Say that again. is everywhere present in the totality of his being. Psalm 139 says, How precious also are your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with you.

One of the amazing things about we as believers is that this God in the third person of the Holy Spirit now permanently indwells us. And even though he's on mission, we take him wherever we go. Or maybe I was going to say he takes us wherever we go. But wherever we are, he's there. He has decided that he would indwell us permanently. So not only is he everywhere and in everything, his spirit is in us permanently.

I think that your value of the substance of who God is is starting to grow by going through all of these things. I think it's really important to realize when I sit down with God and I have a problem with Him, who am I talking to? Who is this God and what are His capacities? Well, I can say they're unlimited, but as I go through this list and I look at it, I think, wow, is there anything that I can bring to God who by the way is my daddy.

Is there anything I can bring to him that he doesn't have and not only doesn't have but has already have a solution in play that glorifies him and edifies me and the whole sphere of influence around me. Absolutely he does. This is a lifetime study here. It's cool though isn't it? And we'll do this last one then we'll quit. He's self-existent. I like that. He doesn't need anything outside of himself to exist.

When Don and I were talking about, it was hot in Florida, and we read the weather in Denver, well it's a little cooler in Denver. What's the temperature range that we can exist in as human beings? Pretty narrow, isn't it? We can't survive at 100 below zero unless we're somehow clothed to keep the temperature inside my clothing at 92 degrees or whatever. And I can't exist much higher than 105 or so without insulation. So it's a very narrow, you know, I've got to have air to just get up in the morning or just to exist.

God doesn't need any of those things. He's self-existent. Well, we can talk more about self-existence next time. It's interesting that God is not dependent on anything or anybody for existence. And if you think about it, we're dependent on a whole bunch of stuff for existence. We really are. We've got to have food. We've got to have air. We've got to have water. We've got to have the right temperature. Let's close.

Father, how we thank you for you and who you are and the fact that you loved us. to recreate us in your Son, the Lord Jesus, and then subsequently begin to teach us and reveal to us exactly who you are. We thank you, Father. We pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.