Is faith just a feeling or is it something more?
Something with power and purpose to help us on our spiritual journey? Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah continues his focus on faith, shedding light on what it means and what it can do in the life of an active believer. From his series, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Faith. Here's David to introduce the conclusion of his message.
What is faith? And thank you so much for joining us today. This is a very fundamental study. It's a very important study because the Bible says without faith it's impossible to please God. If you want to please God, you need to know what faith is and practice it.
And there's so many people who talk about faith but don't really understand it. The Bible gives us clarity. When we open the Bible, we find out what faith is all about. We're in the first few verses of Hebrews chapter 11, commonly known as the hall of faith. And we're laying down the foundation for the stories that we're going to read and review in the days ahead.
We started yesterday. This is part two of What is Faith? And we'll get to it in just a moment. First, I want to keep reminding you of our special resource for the month of November. It's a beautiful book called Where to Go in the Bible.
It will help you find the verses in the scripture that you've been looking for as you think about some of the issues that you face every day. All of us are asked questions by our friends, our family, people around us. Many of us. Don't know what to think. And so We Look for the verse in the Bible that we think we know where it is, but we can't find it, and it's so frustrating.
I can't promise you this book will solve all those problems, but it will give you a great foundation for finding the scriptures you need for the issues you face. It's our way of saying thank you for your gifted Turning Point during the month of November, so when you send a gifted Turning Point, simply say, Please send me the book Where to Go in the Bible, and we'll send it to you right away.
So what is faith? Here's part two. of that discussion. Over the years. When I First, I started in ministry.
I used to be involved in teaching the evangelism course in our church. And I taught it for many years and we had it. an incredible evangelism program. We based it upon evangelism explosion, which was James Kennedy's outline of presenting the gospel. When you go out every week, as I did, in fact, for a period of time in my life, I had appointments every single night of the week, and some on Saturday, all I did was go and talk to people about Jesus Christ.
That's how that church grew in Fort Wayne before I came here.
Sooner or later, if you do that enough, you're going to find that people ask questions, and there are a lot of the questions that become very similar. And one of the questions people asked was about faith. You would say to them, Do you have faith? Oh, yes, faith. I believe.
I really believe. What do you have faith in?
Well, I just have faith in faith. And that's really true. They believed that faith itself was the object. To have some cerebral thought process they called faith. That was faith.
So I read the story someplace and I used to ask him this question. If you were to go ice fishing, would you rather have A tiny little bit of faith on four feet of ice. Or would you rather have a whole bunch of faith on two inches of ice? Everybody went. Hmm.
The vast majority of people said They would rather have a whole bunch of faith on two inches of ice. And besides making a note never to go ice fishing with those people. I tried to help them understand that it is not. How much faith you have, it's what is the object of your faith. How worthy is the object of your faith.
That's the whole issue. You can have tons of faith, but if the object of your faith is not worthy of your faith, your faith is inconsequential. It's not about how much faith you have, it's about how much Jesus you know.
So if you're trying to build your faith, don't sit around trying to womp it up. Get in the Bible and learn about Jesus, and the more you learn about Him, the thicker your ice will become. And it won't take much to believe in him if you know who he is, because his record is so clear and so clean. you get emotionally involved with him. First of all, There's perception, then there's persuasion, but finally there has to be a performance, you say.
Do you believe that you have to do a work in order to be saved? Absolutely not. But You have to respond to faith. You have to let your will get involved. Saving faith is the whole of my being, embracing the whole of who Christ is: my mind, my emotion, my will.
And here's where some people get lost when faith is involved. I read a story about a philosopher and a scientist and a simple man, none of whom could swim. They were trapped in a cave with sheer cliff faces. They split up, but the tide kept coming in, and rescuers lowered a rope with a safety harness. And the philosopher said, Ah This looks like a rope.
But I might be mistaken. It could be wishful thinking, it could be an illusion.
So he didn't attach himself and he drowned. The scientists said, ah. This is an 11 millimeter polyester rope with braking strain of 28,000 kilograms. It conforms to the MR1081 standard. And then proceeded to give an exhaustive and entirely correct analysis of the rope's physical and chemical properties.
But he didn't attach himself and he drowned. The simple man said, I'm not sure if this is a rope or a python tail, but it's my only hope, and I'm grabbing on with all my heart, and it's going to save me. And he was saved. Real faith doesn't bypass the mind, doesn't bypass the emotion. But neither does it bypass the will.
Real faith says I will. Real faith says, I do. Real faith says, I believe it, I accept it. I receive it. And if you haven't come all the way through the process, you don't have real faith.
Then we have the demonstration of faith in this passage. And verse 2 says, For by faith the elders obtained a good report. Do you know who the elders were? Those are all the people who believed God. listed in the chapter.
Here, the Bible tells us that by faith, Verse 2, we commend ourselves to our Creator. By faith, the elders obtained a good report. You want to have a good report with God? You have to have faith. Hebrews 11, 5 says that Enoch's testimony placed the testimony pleased God because he walked with God.
We're going to learn in a few moments that you can't please God apart from faith. Faith is the one thing that gets God's attention. that pleases God. And then in verse three, we're told that by faith we comprehend creation. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
What an incredible text. This whole argument that we seem to continue to keep alive in our culture today about where did we all come from and how did the world start? Here it is, right here. The Bible says that we understand how the world began by faith. And the evolutionist says, well, that's the problem.
That's so unscientific. Hold on. Faith in God gives us an understanding of the universe. God created the worlds by His word. The Greek word translated world here means worlds, ages.
The natural universe. Here we are told that the world began in a certain way. How did it begin? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Listen to the psalmist's commentary on that.
By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made. All the host of them by the breath of his mouth For he spoke And it was done. He commanded, and it stood fast. That means that what we see, the material universe, was not made by material things. An unseen power, God, created what we see.
There is an old story about God and an atheist having a contest. The atheist said, I can make man just like you can. And God said, Go for it.
So he said, will each take Some dirt. and will make man. And he started and God said, Get your own dirt. Isn't that really the issue? All of the men that I know who are Atheistic evolutionists can reason all they want to, except when they get to the beginning of it all and where it started.
And they come up with some big bang, and that still doesn't answer the question: where did all the elements come from that the big bang expressed? and they have no way of knowing. Everybody says that evolution is a Scientific theory. Evolution is the most unscientific thing you will ever read. Not one of their theories can be proven.
and most of them have been disproven. Yet we carry it on in our schools and in our culture as if it were in stone. How did the world come into being? The Bible says by faith we believe that God spoke and it happened. If you listen to the modern atheistic evolutionists, they love to make fun of evangelicals because of our faith, but what they refuse to acknowledge is the fact that they operate on faith just as we do.
Say whatever else you want to say because faith is the evidence of things not seen. And as far as I know, there are no evolutionists. Who were around here when all these things they said happened so they could observe it and write it down? Sir Arthur Keith was a renowned evolutionist of the twentieth century. As a young man, he had attended evangelistic meetings in Scotland, and he watched many students make their commitments to Jesus Christ.
He himself often felt like he was on the verge of conversion, but he pushed it away, rejecting the gospel because he felt the Genesis account of creation was a myth. and that the Bible was a human book. Later, as a scientist, Keith became intrigued by a famous discovery in England. 40 miles from downtown London, in a gravel pit near the village of Piltdown, some bones had been discovered: portions of a human skull, a molar. and a lower jaw.
Soon, it was announced by the Geological Society of London that these were the remains of the earliest known Englishmen. And anthropologists worldwide hailed this as the missing link in the evolutionary chain. The literature that was published on the Piltdown Man is legendary. Believe it or not, more than 500 doctoral theses were written. about the pilt-down man.
And Sir Arthur Keith devoted the rest of his whole life to studying and writing about the Piltdown Man. Which became, as you know, exhibit A for evolution courses being taught all over the world. And then in 1953, The British Museum proclaimed that the entire thing was a fraud. The jawbone was not much older than the year in which it was found. The bones had been treated with iron salts to make them appear old.
And scratch marks were detected on the teeth indicating that they had been filed down. Sir Arthur Keith was 86 years old when his colleagues visited him at his home to break the news to him that the fossil he had put his faith in for 40 years was a hoax. A great scholar had rejected the witness of both God's natural creation and the Lord Jesus, whose resurrection validated everything he said and did. only to put a lifetime of misplaced faith And what proved? to be a hoax.
Not your faith. It's the object of your faith. Don't ever let an evolutionist tell you they don't have faith. I'll tell you what, it takes a whole lot more faith to be an evolutionist than it does to be a Christian. The description of faith and the demonstration of it.
Notice the demands of it.
Now we dump to verse 6. For without faith it is impossible to please God. And that's true because faith is essential. Faith is essential. You cannot please God without faith.
You say, why is that? Let me tell you why. God makes the rules. Faith is part of the DNA of a Christian. You can't please God without faith.
Argue with God. It's just what God says. Faith is not only essential, but faith Is a divine explanation. It says, For he who comes to God must believe that he is. The beginning of faith is simply believing that God is.
I've read a lot of stories about atheists who have struggled to come to the truth, and many of them have come this far. That they believe there is a God. They haven't accepted Jesus. They haven't become Christians. But they've at least taken the first step toward faith in that they believe that God is.
They've come to the conclusion that there's no logical explanation of the universe if there is no God. Without faith, it is impossible to please him because The one who comes to God must believe that he is. Not only that, this is a divine expectation. Not only believe that He is, but that He is a rewarder of those who will seek Him. The Bible says that if you will seek God, he will be found.
Isaiah 55:6 says, Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Jeremiah 29, 13 says, You will seek me and you will find me if you search for me with all your heart. Amos 5, 4 says, Thus says the Lord to the house of Israel, seek me and live. And we all know the verse from Matthew 6, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.
What does the Bible say? The Bible says if a man will really seek after God, he will be found. Missiologists understand that. The Bible says God has revealed himself in his creation. That if a man really wants to know God and he seeks after God, he will be found.
You say, Well, I don't know that I believe in God. My question to you, sir, my question to you, ma'am, is: are you really searching for him? Are you really seeking after Him? Don't just come and say, Well, I'm not sure I believe in God. Here's the question.
How much do you care? How much have you sought after him? What have you read that helps you understand who God is and what God does? For the Bible says, God will reward those who seek after Him. God will bring those who seek after Him.
There are so many stories about people in places where the gospel has never been preached who have followed the knowledge that was available to them. Only to find themselves in front of somebody who knew about Jesus and told them how they could know God. I don't pretend to understand it all. But that's what the Word of God says. Then you come to the derivatives of faith.
What are the derivatives of faith? The derivatives of faith are the rest of the 11th chapter. This chapter is filled with the names of people who are my favorite characters in all the Bible. You know why? They made the Hall of Fame.
These are some of God's best people. There's 27 of them that are by name, and then there's a whole bunch of unnamed ones that we will talk about too. These people are going to tell us how the just live by faith. They're going to show us how You bring the right sacrifice. And so on.
Paul declared That we walk by faith and not by sight. He wrote to the Galatians, I live by the faith of the Son of God. Faith is not a passive word. Faith is an active word. Faith Does something You say, well, Pastor Jeremiah, where did you get that?
Hang on, this is going to be a fast trip through Hebrews 11. As fast as I can talk, so you get the message as empowered as it can be. Are you ready? Faith brings the proper sacrifice. Faith enables one to walk with God.
Faith builds an ark when it's never rained. Faith goes out not knowing where it's going. Faith dwells in tents in a foreign country. Faith looks for a city whose builder and maker is God. Faith receives strength to bear a child when the mother is past the age of childbearing.
Faith offers up one's own son in obedience. Faith believes in the resurrection. Faith promises not to leave Jacob's bones in Egypt. Faith refuses to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Faith chooses to suffer affliction with the people of God.
Faith esteems the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. Faith forsakes Egypt for the promised land. Faith passes through the Red Sea as on dry ground. Faith walks around Jericho till the walls fall down. Faith subdues kingdoms, works righteousness, obtains promises, stops the mouths of lions, quenches the violence of fire, escapes the edge of the sword, turns flight to the enemies of aliens.
Faith receives the dead back to life and faith receives the promise. What does faith do? You see, don't let anybody tell you, oh, faith is just a feeling. No, faith is something that happens. Faith acts.
In fact, let me just take it one step down. Let me get rid of all the descriptions. Let me just read the verbs. Faith obtains, understands, offers, pleases, prepares, obeys, goes out, waits, receives, embraces, confesses, declares, seeks, desires, offers, concludes, blesses, worships, mentions, refuses, chooses. Esteems, looks, forsakes, fears, endures, keeps, passes, encircles, receives, works, obtains, stops, quenches, escapes, and becomes.
All of those are verbs. Isn't it interesting just to go through this chapter and realize? That when you have faith, it empowers you. It empowers you not just to sit back. and admire your faith.
But to turn on the switch, faith initiates your relationship with God. Faith is not only the obstetrician bringing you into the family. Faith is the pediatrician that helps you learn how to live in the family. And if you don't have faith, you don't have anything. Because without faith, it's impossible.
to please God. You can't get to God without faith, and you can't walk with God without faith. And I'll make a prediction. That you and I are going to learn a lot more about faith in these next years than we have ever learned in history. Even now today, When we look at our 401k, we're walking by faith like we never have before.
So the question becomes Do you have it? Do you have faith? In Christ. in God. in his word.
In his book the power of positive praying. Pastor John Bassanio tells a story from his relationship with his daughter. Gives us a really good picture of how faith functions. He said one day his daughter Melody Jin, age five, came to him and asked for a dollhouse. And John Vassanio promptly nodded and promised to build her one.
And he went back to reading his books.
Soon he looked out the window and saw his daughter with her arms filled with dishes and toys and dolls. making trip after trip until she had a huge pile of playthings in the yard. And he called his wife in and he said, What in the world is Melody Jan doing? Oh, she said, honey, you promised to build her a dollhouse, and she believes you. and she's getting ready for it.
John Bassanius said, You would have thought I'd been hit by an atom bomb. I threw aside my books, raced to the lumber yard for supplies, and I quickly built that little girl a dollhouse.
Now, why did I respond? He said, because I wanted to know. Because she deserved it? No. Her daddy had given his word.
And she believed it and she acted upon it. And when I saw her faith, nothing could keep me from carrying out. My promise.
Now it's an imperfect illustration. Because John Bassanio is the flawed father. But our Father is not flawed. He's perfect. What he has promised He will do.
So we should be carrying the toys out into the yard, shouldn't we? Faith. Responds. to the promise. of the Father.
And his promise, men and women, is this: if we will place our faith in his Son alone for eternal life. He will give us his Son. as our Saviour. And we will receive the gift of God, which is eternal life, and we will spend eternity with Him in a place that is even now being prepared for those. who will put their trust in Jesus Christ.
You say, well, When I can fully comprehend it and understand it through my logic, I will receive Jesus. If you wait until then, it will never happen. Ask God to energize your faith. Say, Lord God. Give me faith today.
so that I can believe your promise. And I will receive eternal life through Jesus Christ.
Some of you need to do that today.
Some of you need to say, I believe, help my unbelief, Lord. And then you take the step. You take the step of faith. And watch what God does in your life. He will change you.
You will look back and say that's the most important moment in my life. And you will come to know him, whom to know is life eternal. How later yet? Amen. Amen.
Hey, we have so much great stuff to talk about in this month, so don't miss a single program as we go through this chapter together. Friends, I was just recently in Canada visiting with the people there who carry our program throughout the boundaries of Canada. And I want to remind all of you who live in Canada that when you give to this program, your money stays in Canada because it Covers the cost of the Canadian stations. We have an office there, we have people there that work to get resources to you. I know some people think, well, I don't want to give money across the border.
You don't have to do that. When you give your money in Canada, It goes to Canada and helps us be strong there with the many people who love God's word and love God at Love Turning Point. Just a thought, and I'll remind you of that several times because I think it's important. And we love you guys there and we want to keep ministering to you faithfully every day. See you next time.
The message you just heard originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Dr. David Jeremiah, the senior pastor. If you're growing because of this ministry, We'd love to hear from you at Turning Point PO Box 3838 San Diego, California 92163. By visiting our website at davidjeremiah.org/slash radio. or calling 800-947-1993.
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Visit davidjeremiah.org slash radio for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue the series Ordinary People: Extraordinary Faith on Turning Point.
