Faith Matters

We were on the way back from Montreal a week ago, listening to a fascinating radio talk show. People were calling in about bad bosses. They talked about bosses who were abusive, controlling, evasive, and impossible to please.

Has anybody ever had bosses that we could never please? It’s list time. Would you jot down in your minds the names of all the people that you'd like to please in our life? Do we ever get there? How many of us had parents that we could never please? Who’s on your list?

Would you be interested to know whether or not you please God? If you're a person of faith, God says to you, "I am well pleased with you." And if you go all the way through Hebrews 11, that catalogue of people doing great things, their names are constantly prefaced by these two words: "By faith ... By faith ... By faith." Their faith energized them to do some things that pleased God greatly. So, when we look at Hebrews 11, we’ve been learning, with the help of Bible teacher Joseph Stowell, that there are two foundations that we need to ground our faith. Number one - faith that God is.

We’ve had five children, six grandchildren, and another grandchild on the way. Now I'm old enough probably to marvel at this. How can it be that a when sperm hits an egg, both of those microscopic entities loaded with preconditioned, designed material create a unique entity like nothing that has ever lived before? From that little egg, over the course of nine months, something mystifying happens.

And have you heard the humpbacked whales who sing a song that can be heard sixty miles away under water? Because of the increased underwater noise, they have to turn up the volume every year to be heard. But every year they change the song, and every year every humpbacked whale in the world sings the new version, and every four years it's a whole new song, and every humpbacked whale in the world sings that song. Interesting, isn't it? Especially since humpbacked whales, they tell us, migrated from land animals. Now, wouldn’t that be an interesting thing? Some land animal went and lived in six-inch-deep surf, told its young, "Now, don't go back up on land; you'll wreck everything. Just stay right here. We're in the process of mutating to be a humpbacked whale."

True science continues to talk about the fact that somewhere there was Somebody who really knew what they were doing when they put this whole thing together. For you to say "God is" is not a leap in the dark. Don't ever be ashamed of it. Don't be intimidated by world talk. But that's the focus of your faith, that God is. That's substance for you. That's a sense of confidence for you.

So there are the two foundations on which we can rest our trust. Number one, the faith that God is.

Foundation number two for faith: what that real God says to us is reliably true.

It doesn't take a leap in the dark to believe that God's Word is reliably true. Think about a book written over a span of centuries. Suppose some editor says, "Over centuries we're going to write a book. Somebody from this century in this culture, living in this country will write one chapter. It will be one of sixty-six portions of it. Then eighty years later--they've never met; they've never talked together--they'll write another book about their culture and what they think about God, and etc. And three hundred years later, somebody else will write." Five hundred years later somebody puts it all together and publishes it.

Let me ask you. Isn’t there going to be a lot of confusion in that book? Won’t that book be all over the place? Think about it! Can you believe that over centuries, people who never talked, who never knew each other, who were from totally different cultures, and backgrounds, and races, wrote a book? And that book's got a throbbing theme that never varies. It’s the big story of the fall of the human race and the dilemma of sin and the coming Saviour and of a new heaven and a new earth at the end. Or think of the fact that stuff that was written thousands of years ago still works in my life in 2004. That little pesky thing "Husbands, love your wives like Christ loved the church" works in my family. It was written two thousand years ago.

There are two foundations of faith: that God is, and His Word is reliably true. You plant your faith in those two places by choice by the empowering movement of God's work in your heart. I’ll still doubt. But every time today that I doubt, I always run back there. I may not be as cocksure about things as some of my friends are. I may long and yearn for more certainty about some of the details. But I can't deny that God is, and I can't deny that His Word is reliably true.
And it makes a difference in my life. James has helped us here big time when he tells us, "You say you have faith and your life's not different? The proof is in your life." You believe that God is, and His Word is reliably true? That does something to a life. I say, "I believe." You can legitimately say, "Let me see that God is and that His Word is reliably true in your life, and in my life."

True faith is not a hymn or even a worship chorus or just church talk. True faith is street stuff, locker room stuff, life stuff, where I live out the affirmation that God is, and that His Word is reliably true in my life.

Which brings me to my point. Our lives are going nowhere with God, - there is no hope that God will do great things through us, until a settled faith dominates our hearts. Period. Because these two little words that we've talked about are the preface to phenomenal things that God did in and through people. By faith, by faith. It was always because there were people who were stabilized by faith, who believed that God was, and His Word was reliably true. That was their foundation.

Abraham lived in the affluence of his city called Ur, where he was a wealthy man. God shows up and interrupts his life and says, "Pack it up, man. I want you to go someplace, and I'll give you a child out there that will become the father of a great nation, through whom all the world will be blessed." Promises. Abraham put substance to those by faith. But the problem was that there was so much that he didn’t know. He didn't know where he was going. Can you think of God saying, "Go." Where? "I'll tell you. Go," right into the face of the unknown?

Some of us this morning sit here and there is so much unknown. What will happen? Will people like me? Will I succeed? Will I ever find a deeper walk with Christ? All those what-ifs. If you don't believe that God is, and if you don't believe His Word is reliably true, if you haven't rested yourself on those foundations by faith, you're not going to last when God leads you places where it's really spooky, where it's dark and unknown, where it's insecure. Because in order to get that kind of work done for God, you have to believe that He is, and that His Word is reliably true. You can count on that.

Moses, - talk about a dysfunctional background! He was orphaned as an infant. He was raised as a Jew in a pagan household, where sexuality, paganism, and idol worship were rampant. He had to make a choice in his life. Would it be the pleasures of sin that were all around him, beckoning, seducing? Would it be all the sizzle that welcomed him? Or would he suffer affliction with the people of God for the sake of his God? A choice.

By faith. I wonder if those two words would be the headline of your life? That by faith you conquered temptation, that by faith you persevered, that by faith you went through sorrow with peace and hope in your heart. By faith. Those would be the words I'd want written over my life.
For you to say "God is" is not a leap in the dark. Don't ever be ashamed of it. Don't be intimidated by world talk. But that's the focus of your faith, that God is. That's substance for you. That's a sense of confidence for you.

Not only that, but God chose to reveal himself so God wouldn't play hide and seek in the universe in some cosmic betrayal of his existence. God chose to reveal Himself in the human life of a Mediterranean Jew named Yeshua or Jesus. And in a Book called the Bible, which is reliably true in all matters pertaining to Him, and life, and godliness, and eternity.

Everybody has faith. I do. You do. The burning question is, "In what have I chosen to put my faith? In what have you chosen to put your faith?" As for me, whatever unanswered questions I have, whatever uncertainty there remains in my life, I'll rest my faith in God and his Word. How about you?