Word of Salvation – Vol. 24 No. 47 – August 1978

 

How Does Your Faith Function?

 

Sermon by Rev. P. J. Berghouse, Th. Grad. on Lord’s Day 7

Scripture reading: Hebrews 11:1-16

Psalter Hymnal: 186:1-3; 45:2, 4; 165:1, 2, 4, 5; 378; 99:4, 5; 135:4

 

Congregation of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, Boys and Girls,

Has anybody ever said to you: “You don’t BELIEVE me, do you!”? Perhaps it was because you were not sure whether you could trust what that person said. Perhaps you thought it was only a joke. OR… maybe you KNEW that what the person said could not possibly be TRUE. Whatever it was, you had your doubts.

So: You most likely answered: “No, I do NOT believe you.” But, you COULD also have said: “I do believe, that you are NOT right.’ You see, to say: “I DON’T believe….!” is really the same as: “I DO believe the opposite, or something else.”

Let us use an example: There are many people who say: “I don’t believe in JESUS.” We usually call them UNbelievers! However, when you listen carefully, you discover that they ARE actually talking about THEIR faith – They believe ….that Jesus is NOT what the Bible says He is! Perhaps they believe Him to be “a GOOD MAN”. Or they believe that Jesus never existed. THAT is THEIR faith!

Don’t be fooled, when people say that they “Do NOT believe”. Every human being BELIEVES something! The question is not WHETHER you believe. The question is WHAT you believe! Of course it CAN be that a person does not KNOW enough in order to believe something. For instance: If you do not know, whether peanuts grow IN the soil, or ABOVE the ground, you may find it hard to make up your mind whether or not to believe a story which tells you about a monkey picking peanuts from a tree! But you can go to the library and find out what the experts say on the subject. THEN you are able to believe the story, OR… to say: “I believe that story to be untrue. THEN you are ABLE to make a decision as to WHAT you want to believe. And you are able to DO this because you are a human being! God has made you, so that you are able to read up information on any subject; AND God has given you a mind, which you can make up. YOU can decide what you want to believe!

Well, WHAT about Jesus Christ? What have YOU decided to believe concerning HIM??? SOME people say that they do not believe in Jesus, because they simply know so little about Him. We must realise, however, that God does NOT accept this as an excuse! Romans 1:20 states clearly that God has made things in such a way that people cannot use ignorance as an excuse. You see, God has made you so that you ARE able to find out ALL you need to know about Him and about Jesus. You can study nature and discover the POWER of God. You can study the Bible and discover the GRACE of God. THAT is why God can rightfully expect you to believe what HE has made known.

OTHERS of course HAVE had a look at what the Bible says about Jesus. YET they refuse to believe. This is because they prefer to believe something else. In other words: they make a deliberate choice as to: WHAT they want to believe – their faith functions in a NEGATIVE way towards GOD, and in a POSITIVE way towards SATAN. They do not want to listen to what God has to say.

Is it any wonder that God says in the end to such people: “YOU refused to know ME, while you lived on earth I now refuse to accept YOU into My eternal Glory. Depart from Me, you workers of unrighteousness!”?

Young people, boys and girls, make NO mistake about the fact that God does NOT leave you any options as to WHICH WAY your faith should function. God NEVER says: “Please accept My offer of Salvation. No, He simply DEMANDS that we turn to Him in repentance from our foolish ways of ‘living-without-Him’.

And ignorance is NO excuse for not heeding this demand. God HAS made known as much as you NEED to know in order to make up your mind that Jesus Christ IS Lord and that He is YOUR Lord! When you listen to what the Bible really says, you CAN believe that it is true. It is YOUR responsibility to do so! There is a tendency among many people today to expect that “the Church must be made attractive – in order to MAKE people excited about the faith.” This is very misleading! Because no matter WHAT the ‘Church’ does, you’ must realise that the only thing which can make you excited about the faith is YOUR OWN response to what God has made known.

You see, TRUE faith is like saying “AMEN – so shall it be” to what God has said. It is recognising it to be true because God is Truth. It is therefore a HUMAN activity – it belongs to ‘being Human’. Faith is the LINK between YOU and your God. Faith is – in a way – like the chain on your bicycle which connects the back wheel with the pedals. The FUNCTION of that chain is to make the back wheel to turn IN RELATION to the pedals. SO: the function of your faith is to make your WHOLE life to MOVE in relation to the driving power of God’s Word and Spirit!

Well, HOW DOES YOUR FAITH FUNCTION?

Lord’s Day 7 faces us with three important aspects:

1. The Necessity of True Faith.

2. The Essentials of True Faith.

3. The Contents of True Faith.

First then, the NECESSITY of true faith. Question 20 asks whether or not everybody is going to go to heaven. Time and again, we hear people say that it does not really matter WHAT you believe, because in the end “everybody will get there”. We call this “Universalism”! But the Catechism points to what God Himself has said, and REJECTS this Universalism: – NOT everybody is going to heaven, but ONLY those who by a true faith are “ingrafted” into Jesus, and receive all His benefits!

In other words: your faith must FUNCTION properly otherwise your life will not move in time and tune with that driving Power of God’s Word and Spirit. And of course you will not and CANNOT be accepted into God’s Holy Presence as long as you refuse to have your life regulated by His Word and Spirit. Remember: Ignorance is no excuse! So much the less can plain refusal to believe be justified or accepted by God…. “You cannot mock God and get away with it!”

On the other hand, there is NO way in the world, that God would REJECT anyone whose faith is functioning properly. This is IMPOSSIBLE because such people are ingrafted into Christ. You see, TRUE faith unites us with Christ we are made ONE with Him. And God cannot reject Himself!! Can He?!

Notice also the careful choice of words here: “Ingrafted by a true faith”. Indicating that whereas faith is a HUMAN function for which WE are responsible, TRUE faith is always initiated by God! True faith is one of the fruits of the Spirit. That Spirit works irresistibly with His Life-giving-Power in people who were dead in sin!! True faith is a FREE GIFT of God in that there is nothing within US which would make God prefer US above other people.

THIS is a tremendous comfort because IF there were to be any requirements on our side, we would never be sure whether or not we would HAVE, or be able to meet that particular requirement! So: TRUE faith is necessary for salvation every other form of faith leads to separation from God! BUT: Praise be to God’s Mercy….No one but the Devil and his fallen angels can say that it is impossible to believe! Does YOUR faith function properly? Do you have TRUE faith? THEN – PRAISE GOD for His Word and Spirit!

Seeing then, that true faith IS necessary, the natural question follows: “What is true faith?” THIS brings us to our second point: The ESSENTIALS of True Faith.

In answer to this question, the Catechism mentions TWO essential aspects: Knowledge and Confidence. Many people live with the mistaken idea that “Faith takes over where Knowledge fails”. But Hebrews 11 gives quite a different picture: Verse 1 – “Faith is the assurance (or substance) of things hoped for and the conviction (or evidence) of things not seen.” This verse simply draws our attention to the fact that there ARE certain things which can NOT be measured by ANY “earthly” standards.

For instance: You cannot measure the greatness of God. You cannot measure God Himself in terms of time or space! You cannot measure angels either. You see, the things of God are NOT part of this world. THEREFORE they cannot be measured BY US. But that does not make them less true, or knowable. For GOD has given us the means whereby we CAN yet know the things we cannot measure: TRUE FAITH places our life and our world in a “Spiritual Dimension” so that, as verse 3 puts it: “By Faith we UNDERSTAND the mysteries of Creation.”

Then in verse 6 we are reminded that WITHOUT Faith it is IMPOSSIBLE to please God! Here is another thing WE cannot measure: How great is God’s Pleasure? Or, on the other hand what IS the extent to which God is DISpleased with our failures to serve and obey Him? But true Faith helps us to KNOW something of the greatness of God as well as of the SINFULNESS of ourselves! We look at Jesus Christ! And we learn to know that our guilt before God can ONLY be removed through His suffering-without-measure!

THUS: True faith not only gives a “Spiritual Dimension” to our created existence but also a “REcreated Dimension” to our spiritual existence! To look at what God does for you in Jesus Christ, gives you a “Firm Confidence” that remission of sins and the everlasting Righteousness of Christ are freely given to YOU IN CHRIST!

Knowledge WITHOUT this confidence is found with Saṭan! He knows Jesus, but he believes in himself. THIS is why Satan always tries to make you DOUBT the Truth of God’s Word when he asks: “Yea, HAS God said….???” It is a question that has often been repeated since it was first asked in Paradise! But… the FACTS of God’s Word can never be undone by some misleading question! We do well to take God ‘at-His-Word’. Again – it is OUR responsibility to do so. And when we DO, we discover that this confidence is the work of the Holy Spirit THROUGH the Gospel!

Well,.””HOW DOES YOUR FAITH FUNCTION?” To function properly, to make your whole life move in a harmonious relationship with the driving Power of God’s Word and Spirit, it needs to be a TRUE faith – that is: to function properly, you need to KNOW (and hold for TRUE) whatever God has MADE known by His Word. AND you have to have that SPIRITUAL confidence that GOD has taken your guilt away and has given you RIGHTEOUSNESS instead! Without these two ESSENTIALS no true faith can exist! But seeing that God made Himself known through His Word and seeing that He grants us this confidence through the working of His Spirit, NO ONE needs to go without this True Faith! Is it any wonder then, that God DEMANDS that we turn to Him in repentance for the way WE so often hinder His Word and Spirit to work freely in us?

This leads us to the third question: WHAT must be believe? If our faith is to function properly, what are the CONTENTS of a True Faith?

We answer to this: “ALL that is promised in the Gospel.”

In other words: the contents of our faith embrace the COMPLETE revelation of God. The meaning of this statement becomes obvious when you compare faith again with the bicycle chain: you cannot pick SOME of the links and leave the rest! You need them ALL. And ALL of them need to be equally strong. Otherwise you get troubles!

So it is with FAITH! You need to respond to ALL that God has revealed! You cannot pick and choose SOME doctrines and leave the rest out. One of the weakest spots in the faith of many sincere Christians is that they concentrate on Christ’s work of Salvation only: OR… in the case of others they concentrate on the Holy Spirit’s work of Sanctification. But little attention is paid to GOD’S work of CREATION! The result is that such a faith can never be expected to function properly! Did you ever realise, for instance, that Noah would never have built the ark had he not believed that God controlled the rain! And Sarah would never have given birth to Isaac had she not believed that God controls fertility! And what a disaster THAT would have been!!!

Brothers and sisters, young people, is the function of YOUR faith restricted because there is a link missing or too weak perhaps?

We surely need to accept as VITAL TRUTHS, all that God has revealed! Furthermore, in order to function properly, our faith needs to be a response to all that God has revealed… “IN THE GOSPEL.”

THIS is one of the most beautiful aspects of a TRUE Faith. It is a response to the Creator Himself, rather than to anything He created, or worse still, to anything MAN has made for himself.

The Bible warns us against many forms of FALSE faiths… Faiths,which may have the APPEARANCE of being true, but which ARE false because they respond to such things as Historical events or figures. We call this an ‘Historical Faith’. In Acts 25 we read that King Agrippa believed the Prophets. He knew them as ‘Historical Figures’; but he did not accept their prophecies as revelation from God. His faith was NOT a response to the Gospel.

Then there is what we call a ‘Temporary Faith’. Demas went along with the N.T. Church for a while; but he did not accept the communion of Saints as a gift from God. So…he forsook Paul. He responded more to a love for a godless world, than to the challenges of the Gospel.

Judas Iscariot serves as a warning against a ‘Miracle Faith’. He was impressed by the supernatural Powers of Jesus. But when these powers brought him no gain for his ‘earthly status’, his love for himSELF caused him to HATE Christ and to BETRAY his Saviour.

Do you see how the false faith of these people functioned to move their life in the WRONG direction? They ended in disaster! But TRUE Faith functions to SAVE from ruin. This is because true faith responds to THE GOSPEL! That is, to what God has done in Jesus Christ. This includes CREATION as well as SALVATION. TRUE faith responds to the CROSS – the payment for man’s UNbelief. And it responds to the Resurrection and to the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit – the equipment of every true believer to every good work!

Young people, boys and girls, THIS Gospel places you and me and ALL people everywhere, under a solemn obligation, a tremendous RESPONSIBILITY.

HOW DOES YOUR FAITH FUNCTION IN REPLY?

AMEN.