faith

Chapter Two

FAITH

Miraculous Faith

After loving God and our neighbour, faith is the next greatest teaching in the Bible. Love and faith are the concrete we build our lives upon. Many times in the New Testament love and faith are linked together, as in Galatians 5 v 6, where Paul says, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love”. Also in 1 Timothy 1 v 5, he says, “The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”  Love and faith are the two main teachings that identify us as Christians.

 A Bible definition of faith is given to us in Hebrews 11 v 1: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Our faith stretches from the ‘infinite’, i.e. believing that God created the universe, which I call easy faith, to the ‘intimate’, which is believing that God loves me more than I could possibly imagine - a much more difficult thing to grasp.

Real Bible-based faith consists in believing, accepting and doing what God says, as revealed in the Bible. “Without faith” we are told, “it is impossible to please God”, because anyone who comes to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him (Hebrews 11 v 6).

To have faith in God means that we trust Him and are certain that what He says is true. It means that we believe in Him and rely on Him and are assured that He has the truth of eternal life, and it is His great joy to share it with us.

 Not only does faith give us confidence in God for eternal things, but it is a day by day, moment by moment walk with God and Jesus.  Since God is always with us through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are able to draw on Him for help, strength, courage, guidance and comfort. Now that is truly wonderful!

Strong, vibrant, unwavering, courageous, growing, active, sharing, joy- filled, Christ focused, Bible based, God honouring, obedient faith, with a solid foundation of love and hope (1 Cor 13 v 13) is indeed one of the most important and precious goals of every single Christian.  Paul says “the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love”, and in James we are told that “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” The only way to know true faith is by the fruit it bears.

Faith in general, is indeed a miraculous quality. With faith our lives are a joy, filled with hope and very much worth living; we tend to have a deep inner peace, knowing that things will end up being OK even if we are in the worst of situations. In contrast, without faith our lives can be very sad and empty, without joy and hope. We are pessimistic, with feelings of not being good enough, of not measuring up, even when our circumstances are very fortunate and we may even be the envy of many. In this situation, the only one seeing a problem is Mr. Doubt sneaking around in our hearts and minds. Considering this, who wouldn’t want faith in their life? And Bible faith is far more powerful than every day faith, as its focus is on the eternal God with eternal rewards.

 We can speculate on what ‘faith’ is, and does, but the Bible helps us to really understand its essence by giving us many examples. In Hebrews 11, we have a list of people who achieved various things through faith in God. We are greatly impressed by this list of faithful ones and may even find it discouraging as we are reminded of their great victories. But surely any thought of discouragement must be turned to hope as we realise that though they were fragile human beings, their faith in God was the source of their amazing victories. This is the very reason we have the record. God is saying, “They did it and you also can believe and do what is required of you.”

Hebrews 11 makes it plain that it was by FAITH these people DID various things. I would just like to look at two of these characters. In v 11 and 12 it says “by faith Abraham, even though he was past age (and Sarah herself was barren) was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he was as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky” etc. The book of Romans reinforces the hopelessness of Abraham’s situation in chapter 4 v 18-21 “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations!  Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead. Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith giving glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what he had promised.”  Could any of us find ourselves in a more challenging situation than this? God was there for Abraham, and He is there for us.

Also in the case of Moses, Hebrews 11 v 24-29 tells us of the remarkable feats that Moses accomplished through faith, leading God’s people out of Egypt and not fearing the wrath of Pharaoh, keeping the Passover and crossing the Red sea. How amazing!  And we find in the book of Exodus that Moses did not feel that he was the man for the task - that it was beyond his capabilities.  “But Moses said to God, who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh”? Exodus 3 v 11, and “What if they do not believe me or listen...I can’t speak...O Lord, please send someone else to do it” (Exodus 4 v 10-13).

What a changed person Moses became when he finally stopped arguing with God and making excuses and instead put his faith and trust in God. In fact there are many examples of faith that started out as weaknesses. The weaknesses are overcome when the eyes are focused on the solution, which is God, rather than on the problem, which is ME.

As we look at the encounters that Jesus had with various people during his ministry we see faith at the very front of His teaching. He was very encouraging to people who demonstrated faith with such statements as, “your faith has healed you,” Matthew 9 v 22, or “According to your faith” Matthew 9 v 29, again “Woman you have great faith, your request is granted” or Matt 21 v 21-22 “If you have faith and do not doubt…If you believe you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer”.

On the other hand Jesus was extremely unhappy when he saw a lack of faith. “O you of little faith”, Jesus often groaned (Matt.6 v 30), and “He was amazed at their lack of faith”. Jesus had such responses to lack of faith simply because it meant the people did not fully believe and trust God. They were more inclined to limit Him.

We are often very weak when it comes to displaying faith in God. We relate to the man who said to Jesus, “I believe; help me overcome my unbelief” (Mark 9 v 24), and to the disciples, who, when challenged by Jesus on forgiveness, responded, “Increase our faith” (Luke 17 v 5). 

Fortunately, there is an amazing treasure chest of faith at our disposal if we just take the time to prayerfully lift the lid and sift through the contents…it is the Bible. We are told that “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God/Christ” (Rom 10 v 17). The Bible is God’s word.  In it He has chosen to reveal His plan and purpose to people, and His plan and purpose happen to be based on FAITH, HOPE and LOVE.  God’s Spirit speaks powerfully to us through His word, directing and growing our faith.

As we seek God through the pages of His word we get an idea of how strong and all-powerful God is, being the creator and sustainer of the universe (Gen 1). Not only this, but also this creator God reveals himself to us as a loving Father, who loves us more than we could possibly imagine (John 3 v 16). As we come to see God more clearly through his word and his creation, how could our belief, faith and trust in Him not fail to soar higher and higher?

For a time after the creation was complete, man and God were living in harmony. However this was short lived. As we know, the man failed a fairly simple test. He disobeyed God, being aware that the consequences of this would bring death into the world and destroy his wonderful relationship with God. I think he may not have imagined just how devastating the result of going against God would be. We can’t be critical of Adam, because any one of us would have done the same thing. We prove this every day by making choices, as Adam did, that, to varying degrees are against the will of God. We do this sometimes knowingly, sometimes in ignorance. One of the most appropriate Bible verses for us all would have to be Romans 3 v 23 “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. This is a humbling place to find ourselves, and we rightly deserve the consequences “The wages of sin is death” Rom 6 v 23. This is the harsh reality of our situation.

 Fortunately our father in heaven loves us so much that He does not want us to stay dead.  In fact He wants us to have a restored relationship with Him (Rom. 5 v 9-11), and wants us to live with Him for all eternity. He has taken it upon Himself to work out a way by which we can be reconciled to Him, through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. (Rom 5 v 15-20) “Just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (v 21). By providing a way for us to be forgiven of all our wickedness, God has enabled us to live at peace with Him, now, and  to approach Him as our very own loving Father, confident of His love for us (1John 3 v 1, Heb 8 v 11- 12).

The end result of this reconciliation is the wonderful gift of eternal life that we have through faith. We are told in Rom 6 v 23 “The gift of God is eternal life”.  In John 3 v 16 we have in summary the Good News of the gospel: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him might not perish but have eternal life”. “Good News” is surely an understatement. This hope is the unimaginably fantastic, most wonderful news!

If this message does not fill us with joy and overflowing thankfulness let us pray, "Please Lord, increase our faith”.

We can have a trusting faith-filled existence. Take God at His word. In Christ you are forgiven, you share in that wonderful promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 v 3.  This is explained in Galatians 3 v 7-9: “Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham.  The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles through faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham “All nations will be blessed through you.”  So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.” And v 14 “He (God) redeemed us on order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit”.

We can’t really know God until we know Him as the one who has forgiven our sins and wickedness (Heb 8 v 11-12). Until we reach the point when we can say, “My sins are forgiven; Christ died for me, and I really believe it”, all our thoughts on ‘the truth’ and ‘God’s ways’ are merely speculation, not good news.

By faith, we share in Christ’s victory over sin. By faith in the power of His resurrection we share with Him in His victory over death. At His return we will share with Him in His divine nature. 1 John tells us in 3 v 2-3, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope in God purifies himself, just as He is pure.”

We have been saved by a gracious, almighty and loving Heavenly Father. Our faith-response to what has been done for us is to extend our hand in kindness to others. It starts with the golden rule of “doing to others as we would have them do to us” Matt 7 v 12, which later becomes more challenging: “love others as I have loved you” John 15 v 12… This is where we are called to go. And we are to keep growing until the Lord returns. We can only grow as we, by faith, live out the words of Heb 12 v 2-3 where we are encouraged to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God...Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and not lose heart.”

As you fix your eyes on Jesus, as you meditate on the wonders of His love for you, as you accept, through faith the promises of God as being for you personally, may the God of hope fill you with joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom: 15 v 13).

Praise God for His kindness, mercy, grace and love, received by faith, for what He has done for us.

 

Living by Faith

 

     We learn from Hebrews 11 that a great purpose of the  Old Testament is to teach us about faith, and to build our faith. The chapter is filled with examples of faith, and they are just a selection of many more examples that could have been chosen from the Old Testament. Likewise in the New Testament, believers are identified by their faith. They are called “the household of faith”; they have “the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ”, and are “established in the faith.”(Col.2 v 7). Faith is essential to our salvation, “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11 v 6).  It is the way God saves us, He “purifies our hearts by faith”, “our faith makes us right before God”, the promise that we will become heirs of the world is through our faith. God did it this way so we could all be saved, “we are justified by faith, and so have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 15 v 7-9, Romans 4 v 13-16; 5 v 1). Faith is the way we live our lives – “the life we now live, we live by faith in the Son of God”, “the just shall by his faith” (Galatians 2 v 20, Habakkuk 2 v 4).

 

What is faith? You can’t see it, buy it or wear it. It is a power inside us that motivates us to follow God and Jesus Christ – “this is the victory that overcomes the world – our faith” (1 John 5 v  4).  Faith is believing we are made right with God and have peace with Him. It is believing our salvation is assured through a life of faith (Romans 5 v 1, John 3 v 36 ). It is believing the supernatural, and not limiting God, who cannot be contained in the box we often make for Him. Peter walked on water by faith, but then looked at the wind and waves and began to sink. Jesus said, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt” (Matthew 14 v 31). The disciples of Jesus were caught in a storm and their boat began to sink. They thought they were going to die, so they woke Jesus, who calmed the sea and said to them, “Why are you so fearful? How is it you have no faith” (Mark 4 v 40).

 

Faith is believing God has a different life for each of us, and honouring His direction for each of us. In Hebrews 11 we see the diversity of faith. For Abel it meant death; for Noah it meant being saved; for Daniel it was protection from lions; for Daniel’s friends it was escaping fire; for the woman in Shunem it was having her son restored; for David it was victory in war. For others, it was wandering in dens and caves, hiding in fear, being eaten by lions, being burnt at the stake, being stoned, or

tortured. For John the Baptist it meant living in the desert, wearing camel skin and eating locusts and wild honey. For Jesus it meant being despised and rejected, having no place to lay his head at night and death on the cross. For the apostles it meant forsaking everything they had, being issued a death warrant from the Jews and the Romans. For  Peter it meant crucifixion, and for  John it meant living to an old age. If these are our examples, then living by faith is not intended to be always comfortable, civilized and predictable.  Faith asks us at times to be radical, risk-taking, different and ready to change.                        

Faith is linked with grace (the favour God shows us and the help God gives us). “We have access by faith into this grace by which we stand” (Romans 5 v 2). 

Faith and grace are sometimes interchanged, because they are so closely linked. Faith is the way to God’s grace. 

 

What is the faith that God wants us to have? Maybe we will understand by considering its opposite - faithlessness.

 

Just before the Israelites went into the Promised Land with Moses, God made Mt Sinai thunder with great power.  The people were so afraid.  They thought he was a hard, fearsome God, and pushed Him away.  But God was trying to show them that all His power was going to be with them when they went into the Promised Land.  He was going to fight for them.  He was their shield and protector, and there was no force that could ever overcome Him.  All they had to do was trust in that.  He was on their side, to deliver them. But most of them did not understand. God delivers people who believe that He delivers them. That’s the faith He requires. “Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them: for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you.  He will not leave you nor forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31 v 6).

 

God lifts up the poor and the needy. He exalts the low and brings down the mighty.  He is our strong tower and our defence, and in Him we will be safe.

Faith can make us bold as a lion, not in our own righteousness, but in declaring His righteousness to other people. If we have faith in God, He is with us, and in us, and we are in Him.  He shows us how to hate evil and love righteousness. This often puts the faithful in dangerous situations. They’ve been persecuted because of what they’ve said, and where they’ve gone... but they always had faith in God, declaring that God was right, and that man was wrong. And now it is our turn to declare His righteousness.

 

We live by love and faith, and we need to be aware of things that can minimize or destroy our growing faith. Perhaps our greatest problem is believing we  justified by works rather than our faith. From the beginning this teaching has mostly come from within the church. When the disciples asked Jesus for ways to “increase their faith” (Luke 17 v 6), He said faith grows when we see that our works are not profitable to God, nor do they make us better than others. “A man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law shall no one will be justified.”(Galatians 2 v 16). Paul is speaking here about the law of Moses found in the Old Testament, and the same is true of any other laws we make to justify ourselves – “I go to church all the time”, “I read the Bible every day”, “I organize church functions”, etc. These ways to justify ourselves can be like the prayer of the Pharisee: “God, I thank You that I am not like other men – extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.” With all that the Pharisee did, he was not justified before God.  The tax collector who ‘did’ much less, and could only say, “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18 v 9-14) was justified before God. Faith is the unity we share as Christians. We are of the “household of faith” not the “household of works.”

 

Duty, guilt or shame can easily damage our growing faith. “God is an angry God”, “He is angry with my sins”, “I am guilty”, “I am not good enough”, “I must go to church to appease Him”. When we are constantly driven by guilt and shame or duty, or others use guilt and shame to manipulate us, this is not a life of faith. We need to build our faith on the love, justification, grace, peace, freedom and rest that God and Jesus give us in the gospel and allow this good news to bear its unique fruits in us.

 

Appearance is another way we might wrongly justify ourselves before God.  Jesus said to the Pharisees, “you clean the outside of the cup – clean the inside, then the outside will be clean”, “you outwardly appear beautiful to men” (Matthew 23 v 25-27). True disciples are known by fruits of love, kindness, gentleness, faith etc (Galatians 5:22-23). Our unity is in love and faith. A church with high standards is a church known for its love and faith – “we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all saints” (Colossians 1 v 4,8), “remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labour of love and patience of hope” (1 Thessalonians 1 v 3). The Pharisees especially were caught up in this tradition of appearance rather than “encouraging each other in faith”. To be fully accepted in their ‘group’ a person had to follow their strict laws of washing and of  the Sabbath, make long prayers, have wealth, physical health and an appearance of holiness.

 

An insular religion minimizes and can destroy true faith. “The world out there is evil, only mix with the people of our church or denomination”.  Rather “let us become all things to all men, that by all means we might save some” (1 Corinthians 9 v 19-22). Insular religions tend to make more rules than the simplicity of faith that unites us.

 

Justifying ourselves by knowledge destroys the power of faith and love. The apostle Paul says, “Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies” (1 Corinthians 8 v 1). Knowledge of itself is useless before God. “If we have all knowledge and have not love it profits us nothing” (1 Corinthians 13 v 1-3). The Pharisees were an example of this. They had an amazing knowledge of the Old Testament – but they did not love the people and they plotted to kill Jesus. The true purpose of knowledge is to grow in love and faith and encourage others (Isaiah 50 v 4).

 

The New Testament speaks about “The joy of faith” (Philippians 1 v 25-26).  It is the joy of knowing our faith cannot be stolen. It is the joy of believing we will be in the Kingdom with God forever. It is the joy of believing God and Jesus are always with us. It is the joy of believing we are forgiven.

 

Faith is sometimes a step into the unknown. It is an adventure – believing all things are possible. Faith is being ourselves – and using our unique talents for God’s glory.

 

As you think about faith, read the life of Jesus in the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).  What did a life of faith mean for Jesus?  And what does it mean for you personally in your unique life and situation?