My friend Ed attended church Sunday morning and Sunday night faithfully. Rarely ever missed. He and his wife and their daughter were present in services and active in the church. He had worked for a particular corporation in Cincinnati for a number of years, but as sometimes happens and today more frequently than then, the corporation was sold to another larger one and as a result of that, Ed lost his job.
He went unemployed for a number of months and then was able to find a job with another company where he was happily employed for about two years until some kind of a corporate shakeup again involved Ed losing his job and by this time he was in his early 50s. He began to work for yet another position with a company, but alas he was too old or overqualified or for some reason didn't fit the qualifications the company was looking for.
As a result of that, months went into years with Ed being unemployed. Gradually his health began to decline. At the same time he began to drop out of church losing interest in spiritual things and the last report I had was that he never goes to church. He's basically imprisoned in his own home and has lost interest in spiritual things altogether. Tom and Mary were both saved living in the inner city with their large family.
As they began to attend church regularly, they began to grow spiritually and then all of a sudden one of their children, the one who really had the most promise because so many of the other children had years of inner city living sewed into their lives and were rather wild, but the one boy who had the promise of becoming something became sick with leukemia.
It went on for several years and during that time they prayed and expected that God would heal Bobby, but God didn't and there came a day when Bobby died about 12 years of age. That marked the high point of their spiritual lives and from then on they began to spiral downward.
They were not in church any longer and it came to the point that after a long series of events that I can't go into this morning, Tom broke into Mary's house where she was living separated from him and shot her to death and then turned the gun on himself and killed himself. A murder-suicide of two people that claimed to be Christians and came to our church. What happened to these people? What happened to their faith?
Perhaps that which caused them to lose confidence was the fact that they had built up in their minds wrong expectations of God and when God didn't come through according to their expectations they became cynical of him. Mike Bellah in his book Baby Boom Believers says, we Baby Boomers are our own worst enemies. It is not our times but our expectations that have defeated us.
But when I suggest lowering them, which is most often what I do suggest, I get strong negative reactions from religious over-expectors like Richard. Richard is a proponent of the success gospel. He believes you can never over-expect from a God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills. His words to me were filled with emotion, born of deep conviction. You're conforming to the world, argues Richard. You're not believing God, oh ye of little faith. Okay Richard, maybe you're right, I reply.
Tell me what is faith? Is it trust? Reliance? Yes, says Richard, both of those. The trust in whom, Richard, or what? Well God of course, replies Richard. Any God, I ask? No, returns Richard. Biblical faith is trust in the true and living God. Okay, I say, and what do I believe about this God? Is he holy and loving? How about detached and limited? Well yes and no, replies Richard. He is holy, he's not limited. Who decides, Richard, I ask? Can I envision God any way I please? No, he replies.
You must believe in him as he really is. And who decides what he really is, Richard? Do you? Do I? What about Romans 10, 17, so faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ? Would you agree, Richard, that the Bible defines God for us? It tells us what we should believe about him? He replied, I guess so, what are you getting at? Simply this, Richard. The Bible not only defines God's character, it defines God's actions.
Not only should my concept of God come from the Bible, my expectations from God must also be biblical. Perhaps it is because our expectations of God have not been biblical that some of us are on the verge of throwing overboard our faith. What do you expect from God? Are your expectations biblical? You say you believe in the God of the Bible, that is good. But what do you expect the God of the Bible to do for you? If your expectations are not biblical, you may be in for the letdown of a lifetime.
Even biblical concepts are shrouded in foggy mystery more than that of faith, at least in our day. What is faith? How does faith work? What does it do? We know that faith is important, but frankly I'm not sure that we know how to exercise it and to receive results in our lives. The heroes that are talked about in Hebrews 11 were men and women who exercised faith and got results. I'd like you to turn to that chapter with me.
Our Wimri verse in fact comes from this chapter, verse 6. I hope that it's a verse that you've hidden away in your heart this week. But that verse comes out of a context. The context is about Enoch actually in verse 5, who is mentioned along with Abel and Noah and Abraham and Sarah and many others as being men and women who believed God with certain results in their lives.
Regarding Enoch specifically in verse 5 it says, by faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found because God took him up. For he obtained this witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God, and without faith it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. It seems to me from that verse we understand what it was that those early heroes of the faith believed.
There were certain things they believed. In the first place, very simply, they believed that God is. And then they believed that they should seek God. And they believed finally that God is a rewarder of such. That's what they believed. They believed in God's existence. They believed in God's worth, that is that he's worthy of being sought. And they believed in God's nature.
That because those who seek him are rewarded, therefore God must be merciful because we're sinners and God is loving and God is just. God promises that he will be found by those who seek him. In both the Old and New Testaments we can come upon various verses that tell us that God delights to be sought. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. God will be found by any who seeks after him. God responds to faith, for faith honors him.
If you would walk with God, you must learn what it means to walk by faith. There are three important definitions that I hope will help us together better understand faith. I'd like for us to define what faith is, to define what faith does, and finally to define how faith works. Walk with me along this line this morning, will you? In the first place let's talk about what faith is.
But to do that it might be helpful to think briefly about what faith is not, because here is some of the confusion of our day. In the first place, faith is not mere positive thinking. To hear statements like, your mind can work the miraculous, or what you can conceive, you can achieve.
The statements of PMA, positive mental attitude, that whole idea comes out of a secular origin, but it has been Christianized by some, and then propped up with biblical verses to become a major teaching of people like Norman Vincent Peale, for example. As I think of him, I'm reminded of what the late Dr. Vance Havner said regarding the Apostle Paul and Norman Vincent Peale. He said, Paul appeals, but Peale appalls, and I think he's right.
And then we have the more recent disciple of Dr. Peale, Robert Shuler, and the whole variety of prosperity gospel preachers, who in language that is sometimes uniquely their own, talk about faith as a positive mental attitude. Now of course, having a positive mental attitude is good, and it does give results in life. There's no question about that, but the point I'm making is that we must not make the mistake of equating that with faith. I'm not arguing for negative thinking.
Positive thinking is good, but please do not equate that with faith. They're not the same. Secondly, faith is not presumptive acting. It's important for us to distinguish between faith and presumption. Someone has defined presumption as acting on what God has not promised. An example of that might be the children of Israel after they failed to God and disobeyed, rebelled against him in unbelief at Kedish Barnea.
You may remember that God announced to them through Moses, his servant, judgment upon their whole generation. God said that this generation from 20 up will die in the wilderness. And at the end of that, he said, now turn this way toward the Red Sea. And when Moses announced God's judgment to the people of Israel, they were grieved. They were upset, and immediately they decided they would go into the land anyway.
And so the very next day, a contingent of them went up into the high woods country to attack the Canaanites. Moses said, don't go up. God's not with you. But they went ahead anyway. And the Canaanites soundly defeated them. What happened? They presumed upon God. They were not going in faith. They were going in presumption. They acted upon what God had not promised then. Faith is not presumptive acting. Well, then what is faith? I would define it, I suppose rather narrowly, but this way.
Faith is a trusting obedience in light of a properly interpreted promise of God in the Bible. Faith is a trusting obedience in light of a properly interpreted promise of God in the Bible. Now in that definition, I'm saying that faith involves an action, not merely an attitude. It starts with an attitude. But it must also produce an action. And perhaps we'll see later, even if that action means not doing anything but waiting when one desires to go ahead.
But it's more than an attitude, though it starts there. It's an action. Faith also involves quality and not quantity. We should not talk in terms of how much faith one has or does not have, but whether in noon is that faith placed. There is broad teaching today that certain things don't happen to certain people because they don't have enough faith. And yet the emphasis in the Bible is not the quantity of faith, how much you have, it's the quality of it. In whom is it placed?
Someone has said that faith is only as valid as its object. And it's right. The quality of faith is determined by the object that it's placed in. And then I'm saying too that faith involves a promise interpreted and not isolated. It is possible to go to the Bible and to pull out a phrase of words or in fact a whole verse and to say, well, this is what I am popping my faith on. And yet we had better be very careful in doing that. Because not every promise in the Bible is to us.
I've heard some well-meaning people go to Isaiah, for example, and pull out a verse or a phrase and they say, here is the basis for my faith. If you examine that verse or that promise in its context, you find out it's not talking to believers in this age at all, it's talking to Israel in the Old Testament. And so faith involves a promise that is interpreted, not isolated, off by itself. Perhaps the greatest need today is to learn how to interpret the Bible properly.
There's a terrible shortage of that kind of knowledge among the people of God. And it's not difficult to learn how to do it, it's just that people don't stop and think how to interpret the Bible. We don't have time to talk about that this morning.
But if you don't know how to interpret the Bible, if you don't know some of the simple rules that we use to arrive at a literal proper interpretation, then you need to pick up some tapes or some books that are available that would help you along that line. Because faith is a trusting obedience in light of a properly interpreted promise of God in the Bible.
There are people who have become cynical in their faith because they took a promise of God out of its context, applied it to themselves, God never intended for them, and God didn't fulfill that promise in their lives, and therefore God gets blamed for it. But God's not to blame, it's the expectation of the person who improperly drew upon that promise. That's to blame. What faith is, trusting obedience. Let's talk briefly about what faith does. I'd like to suggest four things that faith does.
In the first place, it honors God, it pleases Him. In fact, we read of that right here in our immediate context in verse 5 regarding Enoch. By faith he was taken up, before he was taken up though he had this witness that he was pleasing to God. Why? Because he was a man of faith in those days before the flood. Faith honors God, that's what it does. In the first place it recognizes his trustworthiness. It also recognizes his right to direct us. It further acknowledges my dependence upon Him.
It honors God. That's what faith does. In the second place, it brings salvation. Faith not only honors God, but it is the sole means by which we may be saved. I wonder in fact if that isn't really the context of verse 6 in Hebrews 11. At least it starts, it seems to me, with salvation in that verse, though it may be applied more broadly than that. Faith comes, rather salvation comes, alone by faith. By grace are you saved through faith.
And doubt not of yourselves, it's the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. What does faith do? It brings salvation. If there is one listening to me today who has not placed his faith in Jesus Christ, then you may know with dreadful certainty that you are not a saved person. For those who are saved are only those whose faith has been placed in the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who died for sin and rose again.
In the third place, faith achieves results. By this I am saying that it accomplishes certain ends. I am not saying that it always accomplishes the results that we desire. In fact, God may have a higher goal than what we are immediately praying for, but the fact is that when we believe God, it accomplishes results. Sometimes results that are hidden from our eyes, but God knows. I take for example Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sarah, who are patriarchs of the faith.
They believed God, but it says in verse 13, all these died in faith without receiving the promises. They believed the promises that God gave them regarding the land, the seed, etc., etc. But they died, they went to their graves without those promises being realized in their lifetime. Therefore their faith was invalid, right? Wrong. Their faith was valid because it was placed in a God who cannot lie and who gave them those promises.
And the fact is that one day they will be resurrected to share in the fulfillment of the promises given to them 4,000 years ago. But it wasn't given to them when they thought it might be. Faith accomplishes results, they are not always on our time schedule, they are in our way. You see another example of this most clearly in Hebrews 11. At the end of the chapter, the writer begins to summarize. He can't go on in detail like he has. He says, what can I say about Gideon, Barak, Samson, and so on?
And then he mentions some of the spectacular things that happened by faith, verses 34 and 35. 35 begins, women received back their dead by resurrection and others. Now once you notice what happened to others who also lived by faith. They were tortured, not accepting their release, in order that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes also chains and imprisonment.
They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with a sword. They went about in sheep skins, in goat skins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, men of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground. Who were the prosperity gospel preachers in those days, pray tell me? These are men and women who lived by faith, who sometimes lost their lives or lost their goods, their families.
And yet they weren't soured, yet they did not become cynical in their faith, they did not throw it overboard, why? Because they had the right expectations of God. They knew what they should expect and what they shouldn't expect. Only God knows how he fulfilled his promises in their lives as a result of their faith. Faith achieves results. All these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, says God. It is the fullness of salvation that Messiah would bring.
They all died previous to that. He goes on to say, because God had provided something better for us so that apart from us they should not be made perfect. That doesn't mean that they weren't saved, it means that their faith, their salvation would be brought to its fulfillment, to its natural consummation apart from us in this age. You see, God has a much different perspective on things than you and I have.
We get involved in some issue, let's take the abortion issue for example, and we pray and we work hard. And let's suppose in the end we're defeated and we say, well what happened to God? What happened to our faith? What happened to our prayers? We mustn't judge God with unreal expectations. Faith accomplishes its results, but sometimes we don't know exactly what those results are. Or the timing is completely different than we anticipate the timing to be.
We get upset because a spouse is leaving and we don't want that spouse to leave, rightly so. And we pray and we beg God and we say, oh please God, interfere, God change the heart of my husband, my wife. And what happens? Sometimes the divorce goes through and the spouse marries somebody else and sin. Is that time to overthrow our faith? Do we become cynics then that God hasn't come through, God hasn't been faithful? No. Not if we're wise. We've got to expect what is right of God.
There's one thought there, God is not in the business of overruling the will of a person. He works with the will, but he doesn't overrule that a person can harden his heart or her heart against God. Faith always achieves results, but not always as we measure them. Keep that in mind. And finally, what does faith do? It gains approval. It gains approval.
It says regarding these people of old, they gained approval through their faith, though they didn't get everything God promised them in their lifetime. It will come yet. God has his time and his way to fulfill it, but it hasn't been yet. Back in chapter 11 verse 2 it says, by it the men of old gained approval by faith. So what does faith do? It gains approval from God. God testified to these people they were faithful.
It is God's stamp of divine witness to the legitimacy of the faith of these people. Oh, that God might put that stamp on your faith and mine. And that because our expectations are what they ought to be of God, and our faith is a trusting obedience to a properly interpreted promise of God in the Bible, God says, I approve that faith. Doesn't mean that we're going to get everything we wanted. We may lose that loved one. We may die to that illness. We may not get that job, but God hasn't failed.
God is working on a grander scheme than we are. We've talked about what faith is and what faith does. Let's talk briefly about how faith works. I believe that faith works in the first place like a muscle needing exercise. The more it's employed, the greater the tests it can pass. You understand what I'm saying? Faith is like a muscle that needs to be exercised in our lives. The more we exercise it, the greater the tests that we can pass.
I noticed that Abraham was not tested with the offering of Isaac until much later in his life after he had learned some things about faith and his faith had grown stronger in the living God. God knows when we can take the test that he passes us through. He never sends us through a test to cause us to fail, but always to prove our faith. God never delights in seeing us come short, though sometimes we do.
But God measures out our trials so that as we pass through them, he knows that if our faith is properly resting, we will pass it. As we pass this test, we'll be able to pass this test that may be harder, and this test, and this test. There are people who have gone through experiences in life and I look at them and I say, I do not know how they've managed that. I could never do that. But God knows that my faith perhaps is not as strong as theirs. My faith has to be proved a little longer.
And then the devil comes along and he says, yes, but you know something? If you really desire to live the life of faith, God's going to do something terrible to you to really prove that faith. That's just the way that he works. He's a liar, has been from the beginning. But let's suppose that God does allow something to come into our lives that is grievous. Does that mean that God doesn't love us? Does that mean that somehow now God has turned against us? Not at all.
God is up to something that is far grander than we can possibly understand at that moment. Friend, God is not cruel. God is not mean. God is loving and God is kind. And God does allow us to pass through tests because that matures us and grows us. God is more concerned about what we are than our comfort. God is concerned about our character, not our comfort. So God is always about in our lives testing us and proving us and maturing us and taking us on.
Faith is like a muscle needing to be exercised. Then faith works like a child taking a parent's hand. Seems to me that that's a simple illustration of faith. It communicates dependence and at the same time brings security. Can you put yourself back into that childhood time of your life?
When perhaps you did not know who your parent was, I can remember occasions like that, being in the store and running off and then suddenly finding myself alone and not knowing where my mother was and beginning to be worried and running down the aisles looking to find where she was and then seeing her and running up to her and grabbing her around the leg or taking her hand. Can you remember occasions like that? What does that express?
Well it says that you're dependent upon that parent and also that by taking that hand or hugging that leg, you are expressing the fact that you find security in your parent. And so it is with God. The problem that we face is that our human tendency is to be independent of God. It is frankly not easy to live by faith in the culture that we live in. Because so many of our needs we can meet ourselves one way or another, good or bad.
We can take it into our own hands and we don't really need to involve God, thank you. We can do it ourselves. It is much more difficult for people in this country to live by faith than in some impoverished country I believe. Because we have so much and can produce so much and help ourselves. Therefore we tend to be independent of God. We need him certain times but most of the time we can go along pretty well. Because of that we fail to learn the walk of faith that God approves.
I've asked God to show me what it means to live by faith in our culture. What does it mean for me in my middle-aged time of life in a nice home, in a comfortable suburb, in a church like this, what does it mean for me to live by faith? You might ask yourself the same question. How do we apply faith to our lives? How does it work for us? If you strip away all of the things that we tend to attach ourselves to you find in the end that you're a child, a child of God.
What you really need to do is to take him by the hand and express dependence on him and find your security in that hold. How does faith work? It works like a pilot trusting his instruments. Because in the end it brings you to the right destination even when you cannot see the way there. We have some pilots here in our church. Some of them are trained to fly by instruments. Those are the kind I prefer to fly with because you never know when instruments may be needed.
All flight is all right but it's nice to have the knowledge to fly by instruments. Not only the knowledge but the training and there's a difference. One may know how the instrument works but you have to be trained in it because we have the tendency to follow how we're feeling.
Pilots who do that and who fly into a cloud bank are in a heap of trouble because it's not uncommon for that pilot in a case like that to begin to lose his orientation and to feel that the plane is turning one way and to adjust for it and as a result of that put himself into a spin. I heard a tape of a pilot one time who did that. It was in a cloud bank and to put his plane into a spin could not find out what was wrong, couldn't figure it out and crashed and killed himself.
But all if you just had paid attention to the instruments and knew how to use them because the instruments will guide you. You have to learn to rely on them, to trust them. Not the way you feel, not the orientation at the moment, not what you can't see but the instruments. And if you concentrate on the instruments eventually you'll get to the destination that you're looking for. That's how faith works.
I'm talking to some people today who are in the middle of cloud banks in your lives and you don't know what's up. Your orientation at the moment is lost. You don't know what's out there in front of you. Well, friend, get your eyes on the instruments that God has given you. The promises, the properly interpreted promises of the word and let your faith work just like a pilot trusting his instruments. Faith is the key to the storehouse of God's blessings.
I don't know of a Christian who would say, well, I don't care about the blessings of God. I want the best that God has. But if we want the best that God has then we must learn what it means to walk by faith and not by sight. If we want God's approval in our lives then what we do must be of faith. Faith can be described variously. I think we see here in this chapter faith that worships. You see in Abel, for example, who offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain.
We see faith that walks like Enoch, one of the two men before the flood who walked with God, it says, Noah and Enoch. We see a faith that works as in the case of Noah who built an ark. We see a faith that roars such as that in verse 30 when the walls of Jericho fell down by faith, not because the walls believed by the way, but because the children of Israel believed and therefore the walls fell down, a faith that wars.
And we see a faith that waits, Abraham and Sarah, live like aliens in the land of promise that God had given them, a foreign land it was to them and yet it was their land. What a contradiction it seemed to be. They lived in tents as did Isaac and Jacob, but they were willing to wait for God's time. Frankly I see in the lives of some of you faith that worships, it thrills me. And I see a faith that walks with God and my heart is challenged. And I see a faith that works and I'm thrilled.
And a faith that roars and is victorious. And I see a faith that waits. Faith is multi-dimensioned in our lives. How pleased God must be with you. Your faith causes you to find God's approval. But the fact is that all of us, even the most faithful of us is on a journey. None of us has arrived yet at the destination. Our faith needs to be exercised. Our faith needs to reach up and take God's hand. Our faith needs to stay steady on the course that God is laying out for us.
Warren Wiersbe says faith is living without scheming. Let me ask you a question, are you busy scheming? How you can get what you want without God interfering? And without God's blessing on it too, by the way. Is your life a series of schemes as to how you can concoct and produce what you want? Or how you can manufacture the end that you desire? Just leave God out of it? That's living by scheming, not by faith.
Well let me ask you this, is there something that God has clearly stated in his words that he wants you to put into practice in your lives, in your life? Something that up till now you have not done because you just haven't believed God for it. Or some of you in your giving have been that way. You've not been faithful in giving because you just don't know how that money can cover everything plus a gift to God. Will you believe God? God says put him first and he'll provide for your needs.
What are your expectations of God? Have your expectations been biblical in the past? Or have they been unbiblical? And therefore you find in your heart today a doubt, maybe even a creeping cynicism that you don't really like but it's there because quote, God has failed you, close quote, in the past. Well was it God or was it your expectations that were wrong? Because God has never failed.
There may be though that those who are in greatest spiritual peril are those whose lives are filled today with success and who are experiencing prosperity and who are tempted to live therefore independently of God. Maybe that describes you. I would pray today that we might determine to live by faith. I don't know how God may interpret that and apply it in your specific life but he'll show you.
He wants us to gain approval, he wants us to be added to the list of Hebrews 11 of men and women who know what it is to trust him and in our faith to war and to wait and to work and to walk and to worship. The worshiping may include sacrifice that God will call upon us to make. The walking will include God in our daily activities, putting him number one. Working faith means that God will cause us to be involved in serving him.
Wearing faith means that God will call upon us to enter into the battle for souls, to enter into spiritual warfare. Waiting faith may mean that God is calling upon us to be willing to be quiet, to be still and know that he's God or to accept God's holding pattern, God's delay and gratification of our desires. How does faith need to be applied to your life? Will you take the project this week and say, God, show me how to use the key to your blessing?
Let's bow together. Oh, Father, I'm sure I would speak for most of us here today as we would confess that our faith has at times been inactive or improperly placed. We've had unbiblical expectations of you, but we want to learn what faith really is and what it does and how it works because we want the key turned in our lives so that the door to your blessings may be opened.
Oh, Lord, I pray that you would impress upon us your faithfulness and that resting upon that we then would learn also to be faith-filled. In Jesus' name, amen.